GOOD FRIDAY

GOOD FRIDAY

                    “Niru, Call for you…”, this was Rahul. Truly speaking, I don’t like such interruptions when I am busy in some really important work and especially when I was chatting on messenger with my special friend regarding the Valentine’s day celebrations…but my experience says this is the time my PM calls me to discuss something about the project. So anyways I got to the phone a bit reluctantly. “Ya, Niranjan here”, “Hey Niru, What about a movie today?”. Damn…. This was Sanket, my roomie. He was interrupting me in some of my very very important works. But anyways, you have to suffer sometimes (almost always in my case) because of your friends.

                    “Which movie maan? This Fame Akurdi is showing just 3 films. I had enquired yesterday. They are showing GURU, Salaam-e-Ishq and Black Friday. I have seen the first two. So me coming only if you people going for Black Friday”. “Obviously yaar. We also have seen the other two. So we are going tonight for the 10.15 p.m. show. Done”. “Done”, I said and literally slammed the phone down. I actually didn’t like the idea to spend the 3 hours of my snoring time in watching some art film based on the Mumbai ’93 blasts rather than having some cool imaginary dreams and on the top of that discussing the plan about it leaving my chatting window unattended for whole 5 minutes. Till then she had gone offline. I cursed Sanket like anything and started for some other person available for chat.

                    It was around 9.35 p.m. when we reached the Chapekar chowk. This is the place where we could get a rickshaw to the theatre. There were 3 of us, me , Paras and Sanket. I have observed one thing always; when we have to go to Chinchwad Station, the rikshawwallas are ready to go to the theatre and when we want to go to theatre they want to go to the station. After waiting for a whole of 5 minutes there were 2 more people and a rickshaw Walla ready to go to Fame. I really don’t know how much powerful the engine of that rickshaw was but it was simply able to reach Fame with a total 7 big and heavy masses each weighing around a century. It was Thursday so the crowd was very much less. We got the tickets easily and I think we were the first ones to reach the hall and occupy the seats.

                    Watching the ads in this theatre is also a good experience. Cool ads, cool models, and cool jingles attached to these ads. And then there was the National Anthem. The theatre has to show this before each and every movie. We like it. This anthem clip consists of all super people including Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Pt. Bhimsen Joshi and even A.R.Reheman. The anthem was over and now just a few moments for the actual movie to start when a large group of around 15-20 people entered the hall. They were all in white clothes and talking to each other in loud voices and at the same time, occupying the seats arbitrarily.

                    Truly speaking we didn’t like their arrival. They seemed to belong to some political party and such a group arriving for a sensitive movie like Black Friday was definitely not a welcoming thing. But anyways we didn’t have any choice so we just ignored them, the only thing the so-called white collar people would do in such a situation.

                    The movie started soon and the dialogues, music and the cinematography just made us to get so much involved in the movie that when a person yelled to the top of his voice with a bad word, first of all we thought the Police officer in the movie is yelling at the convicts. This guy had just entered the hall and bad words were coming out of his mouth just like water from some leaky tap. He again was in white shirt and we simply assumed him to be belonging to the same previous group. Again we ignored him and started watching the movie again. But this guy was not much cool like his friends as we thought. He was continuously passing some comments about the dialogues in the movie. Cursing a particular community and also yelling at their symbol of worship.

                    Everyone was getting disturbed, not because the dialogues of the movie were not audible because of this moron’s unnecessary comments but he was unnecessarily commenting on them, their lord, which would have been really hurting if anyone of them would be present there. But again we the so-called white collar people were just quiet hoping that he will shut his mouth sometime later. But he didn’t. The comments’ frequency went on increasing and that too each time using more and more cheap comments. We didn’t do anything. We now had just mastered the art of filtering out those unwanted comments and listening just to the movie.

                    There was the height of his nuisance when he started yelling at the community’s lord. He didn’t stop for around 4 minutes and the language he used was just getting worse as the seconds went by and finally a guy spoke up, “hey you please shut your mouth. And behave yourself.” “Who was that telling me to shut my mouth? Come here and try it yourself” and then there went a long Rajdhani Express of some of really worst words almost all of them were completely new to us. The brave guy who dared to speak up rose and started walking to that nuisance when one of his friends just said in a voice clear to everyone in theatre, “Wait till the interval. Just watch the movie now. We’ll tackle this later.” The guy again sat down and started watching the movie.

                    We thought this was just a threat to the nuisance guy and were sure that nothing gonna happen next, just that we will have to curse our luck that our timing for viewing the movie was bad. Soon there was the interval and we were about to move to the snacks counter to get some refreshments when we noticed the white-clothed group was moving towards the nuisance. We didn’t anticipate anything and neither he that he was sitting on his seat comfortably without bothering anything. There were 2 friends of the nuisance accompanying him there and now they were getting alerted that the whole group of 10-15 people was standing surrounding them. One guy I think the brave one went ahead and gave him simply one tight slap… I think they slap definitely softer in those saans-bahu serials since the sound of that slap was so powerful that even the maintenance persons in the theatre left work and run to the group. Then there were some questions asked to the nuisance, the questions which had no purpose and also were not intended to have any answer. People were asking him why he was delivering such bad words and why he was disturbing the others and before he could even open his mouth he would have got minimum a couple of slaps and before he could recover from that some more questions were ready with even more slaps.

                    It was around 3 minutes and around 15-20 slaps that he somehow managed to apologize and leave the hall. He straight away went to the toilet to wash his face. I think till then the whole effect of the liquor he had consumed had completely disappeared. He was there with eyes filled with tears trying to wash his face, when someone again asked, “Why the hell were you making such comments? Are you out of your mind?” “Sorry sir. I said sorry already. I am really sorry.” And this was the last time he spoke anything. The brave guys’ group was now in the toilet and now they were asking him the questions in their own style. He was now completely strengthless and was now just trying to escape from them. But people were not allowing him to let him go so easily. They were beating him just like anything. It was this group that threw him out of the theatre and then only came back to the cinema hall to watch the remaining part of the movie.

                    It was a completely memorable experience. We really liked this. Although the nuisance was punished more than he deserved, but when such sensitive matters like religious beliefs are being attacked by the people, not all of them consider them just to be the words to be ignored. Some might take it harsh and since we have a very long tradition of taking A’s revenge from B, this can result in a total chaos. There are always some people in the society who have some prejudices about the things happening around them. They view each event from that point of reference and they also try to convince the others about their views. Generally the youth is very much susceptible in such matters. If the anti-socials are able to captivate the youth’s brains then it’s really difficult to take them out of it. Especially while the movie had some really disturbing scenes and dialogues and really it meant for mature audiences only, people forgot to make sure that the maturity is not merely dependent upon the age but the mental capacity of the person. If a grown-up like the nuisance can behave in such a completely irresponsible manner then the criterion for viewing the movie should be changed from 18 and above to above normal maturity level.

                    I just wanted to congratulate all those people who showed the daring to throw that nuisance out of the theatre. I am not commenting whether India is awaking or my thinking power is not that much but whatever happened there was indeed good and showed a good sign of youth coming out against the wrong things. It’s usually normal practice for people to ignore things till they don’t become a big nuisance and physically hurt you and till then the things are turned worse at times worst as they are almost beyond correction. Timely control of these things is of utmost importance and that’s why I would like to congratulate all those who made the later part of the movie really better in the absence of those moronic comments. Really the Black Friday showed us a Good Friday.