a movie and some optimism

Watching Urumi was on top of the to-do list when I came home. Readers of my blog are well aware that I was slightly smitten by atleast one song from the movie. And for quite unknown (to me) reasons, and inspite of the questionable quality as well as veracity of the post, not to mention the outright “I don’t know”s, that post continues to be one of the most viewed in my blog. A few weeks back, I made a call with much concern to my only film-buff friend (the ‘only’, for much practical reasons when I am back at home, applies to ‘friend’ too) Praveen. I was to come home in two weeks from then and I was not sure if the movie was going to stay. Praveen was very confident. It is not going to go out for a very long time. I should have known that for a great many people one’s own judgment of things works in quite ascriptive ways, ‘I like it, so people should also like it’. The good thing, the flip side, of such a thought is one firmly grounds oneself among people. I think it is better than saying “It’s a good movie, but people won’t like such movies”.

Coming back Urumi. Once I was back home I realized that it is not playing anywhere that is between my home and Shornur Railway Station (which is one and a half hours’ distance in a public bus). I made a frantic and complaining call to my friend and he was still quite cadre, “wherever it is playing in Kerala, repeat, wher-e-ve-r, I shall let you know, and if you want, I will give you company too.”

Quite true to his word, three days later I found myself in this place where we never go. There are reasons why some places remain static like that. Places expand in footfall due to very limited factors in my part of the world – they should have one or more good hospitals, one or more well-known schools or colleges, one or more amusement parks or a regularly picturised waterfall… this list might utmost have one or two more points, not more than that. The movie theatres follow rather than lead these developments, and A-class theatre status (they are also called “release-centres”) is anyways a quite recent phenomenon for small towns when a few movie distributors rightly calculated that the only way out for superstar movie from the creeping hisses of Shakeela is to release movies in atleast some three score theatres at once and thereby make it more “democratic”.



At the theatre, there were hardly 20 people. The ticket distribution, which starts with a bell (like in schools), started just fifteen minutes before the showtime. But most and most importantly, and this was very strange considering that the movie had ample skin and more than enough gorgeouness – Genelia, Vidya Balan, Nitya Menon, Tabu –that there was no hooting, no whistling, not even one comment at all those action sequences. I couldn’t believe that our class assumptions can go awry at a very democratic (there was only one range of tickets- Rs.30) rundown theatre where all you expected were jobless people (like myself) coming for some cheap thrills. Especially that even multiplexes are not all that “decorous”. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the movie. My prejudices would have forced me to think that they might have all fallen asleep. But we all rushed back after the interval except for one guy who was savouring chota Gold flake, watching it drizzle over the paady fields that bordered the theatre. Definitely not sleeping.

I do have things to say about the movie, and I would definitely not write “Genelia + Urumi = Genelia”, but that I will reserve for another day.