A 13-year-old boy stepped into a movie theatre for the first time on Thursday. He did not know whether that was more exciting or getting to see a film together with 50 of his friends was.

For Dip Dey, whose family earns barely enough to make two meals a day, choosing what he was more excited about was a kind of dilemma he wouldn’t mind.

“Feels very nice,” he kept saying. “Sitting together with all my friends and watching a movie…. As if I could touch the people on the screen,” said Dip, who is in Class V.

On Children’s Day, the group of 50 boys came to Ballygunge multiplex London Paris for a screening of the Hindi film Bala. They had come from Chinar Park in Rajarhat where they live in a facility for boys from deprived families.

Mahadeb Mandal was grinning in joy long after the show. Inside, the Class I student, was grinding his teeth. “Ki thanda (so cold),” he said.

Many of the children had seen films before but only on television. On Sundays, they are allowed to watch TV.

They clocked another first this Children’s Day: munching popcorn.

The children came from the NGO Siddharth United Social Welfare Mission that supports boys from financially deprived families in Bengal and the Northeast. It was started in 1992 by Buddha Priya Mahathera, a Buddhist monk who felt the need to provide children with their basic rights of food, shelter and education.

The film screening was followed by lunch and games, an initiative of Awfis Space Solutions, a co-working company that provides shared office space in 10 cities.

The theme of the event was “Children of Today Will Make the India of Tomorrow”.

“We wanted to do something extra for the children. Not just bring them to a centre and do a food event but do some fun activities. Some of our clients who wanted to be part of this celebration have also joined us. It’s like a family who have come to support the cause,” said Biswapratim Dasgupta of Awfis.

The Ayushmann Khurrana film the children saw is about a young man who struggles to emotionally cope with thinning hair and comes to terms with his baldness only towards the end.

Little everyday things that many children in the city would not be thrilled about had these children wowed. Like the dimming lights in an auditorium.

“There are so many lights around… it’s so bright. And then it was dark…. Ki sundar,” Sagar Soren said after the film. Many like Sagar were bereft of words. Some of their senior friends stitched together that feeling of happiness in words during the bus ride home. Thank you, Didi,” they told the young woman accompanying them.