Salim Muhammad (right) and son Jasim with their 116-year-old projector and the blue bioscope cart that came back home on Wednesday after four months in a police station junkyard. Picture by Pabitra Das

The festive season that had started on a sad note for Salim Muhammad finally brought some cheer on Chhath when he was reunited with his “lost child” — a blue cart with a story that inspired an Oscar-nominated short.

“Akhbar mein ek report aaya, uske baad kuch TV channel-waale aaye…” said bioscope man Salim of how he got back his cinema on wheels from Calcutta police’s hackney carriage wing within days of Metro highlighting his plight last Saturday.

Salim, 58, and his eldest son Jasim had made multiple visits to Jorasanko police station and the police headquarters in Lalbazar over the past four months to get back the cart custom built for their 116-year-old hand-cranked projector, the star of their travelling film shows.

Salim’s family uses the Japanese projector to screen discarded film scraps, mostly trailers and snippets of songs, for a fee of Re 1 per viewer. Their patrons are mostly slum children.

“We got a call from the police station on Wednesday evening and I went over. They said they had just received instructions from the deputy commissioner of police to release my cart and that’s why it was being returned to me,” Salim recounted.

Two cops from the hackney carriage department had confiscated the cart from Oriya Para, off MG Road, last June because it wasn’t licensed. The police said someone had filed a complaint but didn’t reveal the person’s identity.

A Congress member named Utsha Mitra, among those moved by Salim’s plight, on Thursday helped him apply to the Calcutta Municipal Corporation for a licence. “She (Mitra) called us to her office today. She was keen to see our reels and projector, about which she had read in the paper. She helped us with the documentation required to get a licence for our cart from the corporation,” Salim said.

The blue bioscope cart, now back in its place in the narrow Oriya Para lane, is one of the last surviving pieces of bioscope history.

Salim and his cinema on wheels were featured in American filmmaker Tim Sternberg’s 14-minute short Salim Baba, nominated for an Oscar in 2008.

Since then, Salim has been felicitated at several state events and invited to television shows and high-profile parties.

“I have grown old with this cart. Not just in Bengal, people from around the world know about my cart and value it. Many people have offered me a lot of money but I have never even contemplated selling the bioscope. My father started this and I have continued the tradition. I want my sons to do the same…that’s all,” Salim said.

Salim runs a tea shop and his sons have learnt embroidery and how to make footwear to survive beyond the little money they earn from the bioscope on Sundays, special holidays and festivals.

“Aaj khushi ka din hai (Today is a day of happiness). This cart is like my child. I have invested in it more than I have in my children,” said Salim on Thursday when Metro visited his tiny house in a lane off MG Road.

Son Jasim said: “We are four brothers and the bioscope gari is our fifth brother. We have grown up with it. It means the world to us.”

The cart, which had been dumped opposite Jorasanko police station after being seized four months ago, will go for some repairs before it is ready to hit the road again and hog the spotlight in an unfinished film by city-based documentary maker Subha Das Mollick.