Movie Nights

It nearly four years since we went to see a movie in a theater. Looking back I cannot find any reason for this lull as I am an avid moviegoer. Perhaps, the main reason was that there were not many theaters nearby that were screening movies in Tamil/Malayalam, and even if they screened the movies in these languages, it was at odd hours causing much inconvenience. More over, their charges for the show were exorbitant.


Thinking about the charges,I could still remember vividly the excitement when one of my cousins offered to take us to a movie way back in 1962. He had come on vacation and the theater had newly come up. The pricey tickets were at Rs.1 and he took us all by bus for the movie. But after seeing the movie we had to walk down more than 7 kms in semi darkness as there were no street lights worth mentioning. However, it was pleasant to walk during the night amongst a group of people listening to their discussions on everything under the sun (that time the moon) on the earth. This was my second movie experience, the first being a Hindi movie which I had seen along with my classmates when we were taken to a show by the school authorities. As I did not understand anything in that movie and I returned home cursing the moment that I decided to join the group for I had to pay a hefty contribution of 25 paise to join the excursion.

After these two movies, I did not watch any till I started earning. My friend & I used to go for the last show in the theater and we cycled down the distance without worrying much about traffic rules. We had no light on our cycles and it was sheer luck we reached home safely every night. I remember we did this exercise thrice in a week, as by that time, three theaters had come up in our village and they would change the movie every week.

Later I shifted my base to Bombay & on getting the job there we patronized the late night shows once again, so as to accommodate my friend who worked in shifts. We did not leave a single movie which came to the theater for a number of years. The movie going madness finally ended with my marriage and there was some lull in my movie seeing mania that I again resumed with a vengeance in an unexpected manner. This time around we bought a vcd cassette player and our living room turned into a tiny theater during successive nights. The number of movies we saw during this time was so huge, as we saw movies in three languages. The surprise was that we still found time to see some good English movies in the theater as well.

Coming back to the present, after my retirement, we restricted our movies to the ones we came across on TVs and thanks to power cut and black out of cable, we either saw the first half or the second half of movies. I am waiting for the day when the channels, instead of repeating the movie, would just continuously run the same movie on the same day - something similar to the "All day runs of Law and Order" that we have seen in US televisions. We then just might be able to see the movie in full until of course the power situation improves.

Today's movie which we saw in the theater was 'dashavataram' and in spite of my eagerness, I reached the hall 10 minutes late.The culprit was the advertisement for the movie. In it, it was mentioned that the matinee will begin at 10.30, but the theater people started the movie at 10.00 for reasons known to them. The movie turned out to be a good enjoyment with some good action scenes and excellent photography. For a change there was no separate comedy track in the movie but the characterization of the heroine turned out to be irritating at times. While returning from the movie, traffic was light and there was a dip in the air& the ride was pleasant.

I may resume my movie madness yet again!