black ticket

It’s Saturday, 12 pm, im still in the bathroom, getting ready endlessly. My mom’s screaming “bloody how much time will u take, u total waste on earth”. I promptly ignore the last few words and reply to how much time and I scream back two minutes. After two minutes I hear a bang on my door “ur coming out or shud I call the fire station”. I come out, and im all ready to leave. My mom’s fuming, and she knows she can kill somebody to vent it out. I make funny faces and try to make her smile, she says “bloody u know very well we wont get tickets if we don’t go early, u know tat right”. “The show is at 2.30pm and we’re still here, when its 12. I apologize and we’re off. To galaxy theatre.

15 years after. It’s Saturday. Its 2.00 pm. IV just woken up after a night full of unending whisky shots and great music. I suddenly realize im running late for the show. I completely forgot, my friend asked me to buy tickets for the movie. Here I was on my bed, still wondering wat to do. In the next 5 minutes I get ready (no really) and head out, take an auto to inox. Reach there in 10 minutes and I see my friend waiting for me outside. I tell him I haven’t bought tickets, a few abuses about me and my drapes of fat layer follow and we rush to buy tickets. We get to the counter and behold! The tickets are still being sold and there we are just in time for the last two blessed tickets (not corner ones thankfully). The time is 2.25pm.

Yu might wonder, what the hell am I trying to infer. Well, I think it’s kinda clear. Its abt the way movie watching has turned out to be. We might never realize, or even if we do, we might never give it a serious thought, but you know wat, its freaky. A few years ago, we waited outside galaxy, or naga or rex or any other theatre two hours or sometimes 3 hrs before a movie show for tickets. The queue invariably consisted of 1)loafers 2)totally vella ppl 3)horny couples 4)frustrated aunties with screaming and nose leaking kids 5) and of coz us (if ur my age right now). It was a total picnic of sorts. Our moms packing stuff for us to eat in the theatre, getting ready, and I mean READY, planning the entire day ahead, and of coz the world famous black ticket sellers trying to sell the ticket come what may. The entire plan seemed like a plan and hence watching a movie was like a treat, u literally enjoyed even if it was a stupid family flick called hum aapke hain kaun. The entire family (of 4 or 5) watched it together and the tickets were jus 30 bucks or sometimes 50. Yummy popcorns or oily frayams or ancient veg puffs or samosa filled with cute little bugs. Oh! They just made you wait for a movie to release. And the best part is you first watch it with your parents and then if some aunt of yours hasn’t watched it then she will insist on you coming again and if you have cousins coming from even as close as Chennai, they will simply thread you to the theatre. So it was just not watching the movie once, but it wud be twice, thrice or sometime more than that. And you never felt bad or bored watching it so many times. But now, it has all changed, I honestly don’t know if it’s for the good or for the bad. It’s very subjective. I mean, someone who never went through the above experience will not agree I know, but also tat the person probably dint have a great childhood, or he lived in “ the then just being built jp nagar”, or he had irritating cousins who never asked him out for a movie or his parents preferred sugam sangeet. But u know wat, it has changed. The entire experience has changed. The whole atmosphere has changed. Imagine when ur watching the movie u don see ppl spitting, or u don see couples getting crazily cozy or u don’t see young dads walking their ever crying babies up and down. Those things vanished long back; those special things went away with time. Now its all abt last minute. Its all abt convenience. I don’t have to worry about getting tickets cos I can get it online. I don have to stand in queues with hundred others and fight for it with a few punches, I don’t have to worry abt the food, cos as soon as I walk out of the cinema I have 30 restaurants staring at me with all sorts of fancy logos and offers. I simply don’t have to get dressed, because watching a movie now, is just another thing. Back then it was what the entire family waited for.
Im not completely ridiculing the multiplex phenomena. Im only saying that the things IV mentioned above, even though extremely silly were loads of fun. Now its all so prim and proper that there’s no struggle at all. Steven Spielberg once said, “Watching a movie is not about watching, it’s about experiencing it”. Ofcoz the multiplexes now have the state of the art infrastructure and sound and wat not, but they haven’t been able to provide the atmosphere. They can never make u get up and dance at an incredibly insane hindi song, because ur scared who’s watching, cos almost everyone can see everyone. Its an amazing development some would point out and debate it out with me, by giving great examples of saving and luxury and quality and etc, but I will end by sayin , that this development has made the experience of watching a movie very common. Watching a movie is an occasion, and it should always remain that way. How can any Indian enjoy any movie without at least one fight in the hall and one on the screen.