Film enthusiasts in the strife-torn state of Jammu and Kashmir are having second thoughts on whether to go to movie halls to have a glimpse of their favourite Bollywood stars on screen.

Ever since his youth, 48-year old Abdul Majid, a resident of this downtown city, had been a die-hard cinegoer . When cinema halls were shutdown in Kashmir valley in early 1990 following the eruption of the bloody separatist movement , he would travel all the way to the winter capital Jammu, undertaking a tiresome 300-km journey, to see a Bollywood blockbuster.

When the sole functioning cinema hall here - Neelam - started screening movies again in 1998, Majid must have made a substantial saving. After all, he did not have to travel to Jammu to see a movie.

But a guerrilla attack barely 20 m from the cinema last week shattered Majid's love for films. Though Neelam is still screening blockbusters, Majid had to promise to his family that he would never go to a cinema.

Two terrorists and a policeman were killed in that attack as the guerrillas tried to enter the side entrance of the civil secretariat in the city that houses the offices of the Kashmir chief minister, his cabinet colleagues as well as top bureaucrats here.

"The Neelam cinema is close to the highly secured civil secretariat building and so I thought it was safe to visit. If they tried to enter the secretariat, entering the cinema would have been just a child's play for them," told Majid.

"The owners have leased out the cinema to a Jalandhar-based film distributor Puri and Company to make up for the losses suffered. The hall has a seating capacity of 400 but even during the screening of blockbusters there used to be an audience of 80-100," Noor Muhammad, general manager of Neelam cinema, said.

"After last week's incident, attendance at the cinema has fallen drastically," he said.

An employee at the cinema, requesting anonymity, said the running costs were much higher than the returns.If this hall closes, it would be a tragic commentary on the glorious past of both cinema and theatre here.

Kashmir had its first cinema hall in the 1930s during the autocratic rule of the Dogra Maharaj. After the end of his regime, many new cinemas were opened here.

When the separatist violence broke out in 1989, Srinagar city had over a dozen cinema halls, each screening three shows a day.

"Cinemas used to run to their full capacity then. The local people thronged halls screening not only Bollywood movies, but also Western classics. I remember films like 'Benhur', 'Ten Commandments' and the James Bond series attracting huge audiences here," said Abdul Samad, 59, who claimed to have seen Dilip Kumar's "Mughal-e-Azam" a dozen times in one of city's cinema halls in late 1950s.

The elderly locals, like 72-year-old Ghulam Muhammad Gilkar, fondly recalls the eager wait for the Alfred Hitchcock master pieces like "Dial M for Murder" and "Psycho."

"It was sheer entertainment and education to see those movies. It was an experience I pity my grandchildren haven't been fortunate enough to have," Gilkar said.

Separatist guerrilla groups banned cinema halls, beauty parlours, video parlours and wine shops in Kashmir in 1990.

Today, one of the cinema halls named Naaz has been converted into a storage house. Cinegoers were attacked with a grenade outside Regal Cinema and since then it has remained closed. Shiraz and Firdous have been converted into makeshift barracks for paramilitary forces fighting the guerrillas in the city.

Khayam cinema is now a heart care institute while Palladium in the centre of the historic Lal Chowk is in ruins after it was gutted in March 1993.

For movie lovers, especially those who still believe the television to be inadequate in providing the right feel and ambience necessary for an involved audience, there is little hope. For the die-hard cinegoers like Majid, it is already curtains in Kashmir.