Friday, April 25, 2008

movie watching

Here's a new habit my roomy and I have developed...watch the weekly movie premiere at Satyam...called “blind date.” Most of you have already heard about it. It affords you to watch a movie premiere before its release the next day but the catch is you are not told which movie is screened..Of course you can make informed guesses in accordance to the releases next day...after which its a partial blind game of probability...you can eliminate on the basis of rating...so my roomy who is our “booker”, okay that is not complicated, she does the online booking and arranging, has developed some fairly complex systems to predict this weekly event. If it is “A” rated then you know it is an English movie, if it is “U/A” then it can be either Tamil, Hindi or English...but then who will want to watch an “U/A” rated English movie, she says...that is not entirely true as I am not averse to animation, fantasies and magical realism...but on an average both of us prefer a serious English movie with a little bit of kissing maybe...so “A” rating is our first preference...
After having been to this auspicious screening three-four times....we realised our luck alternates...first was American gangster, good......then it was Epic movie, yuck!! the worst so far....then came 'there will be blood”, good...and the recent screening last night was “water horse”, so-so, could have been much better...or I have grown old...since my roomy clearly doesn't share my preference for children's movies...I have to do the rating myself...we did give a five minute analysis as to the possible occurrence of our luck...was it our company? Was it just an alternating factor?this is hard to say...since except for the two of us who remain constant, our company has varied from friends to colleague friends to colleagues to just us....so then its probably only the alternating factor...having said that the potential of the next week premiere being good is very high...in all probability an Oscar winning movie....thus every Thursday due to the frequent recurrence of this event now it has become fairly simple to predict conclusively one main component of our dinner- popcorn- buttered, buttered and mixed with these flavours, plain....but popcorn all the same.
Seeing a movie in Chennai takes me to the next diagnosis- the movie watching experience in Chennai ... I cannot conclusively decide whether its my social status improvement or just low cost of tickets at movies halls...but it definitely is better than Delhi!! Yes its still expensive for the masses and promote a sort of elitism without struggle. Having said that, it also has 10/- special offer tickets that our honourable chief minister has offered to the masses...yes a low percentage in comparison to the volume, still a better deal in that sense. Now to differentiate it from the Delhi experience, it is important to enunciate a bit about the latter....


They are huge mega plazas where there are multiple frisking modes....some halls don't let you take your handbags in....it becomes a pain for someone who suddenly decides to watch a movie or someone who is late...most of these mega malls have elaborate décor but no space for the bags of the poor ignorants who come with sometimes expensive bag or bags with expensive contents....you can't carry food in....you try to sneak it in like every responsible citizen in our country...but the guards at the entrance don't just have detectors but mastiff olfactory sensors....so while you try to decipher that strange feeling in your tummy when the uniformed lady casually browsed your private parts, she has already sniffed out the bag of chip and cigarettes. Pitiable state. You are forced to throw them while they evaluate you, with absolute disgust...


Hunger is an instinct that takes over most people while watching a movie in a theatre...as it is an integral part of the modern movie watching scene...it sort of becomes associative...movie begins your mouth waters for a small munch...(remember Pavlov).....you reach a counter that has well elaborated picturesque menus that makes your mouth look more like a slimy pond and stunts your rational thinking....soon you have bought yourself that poisonous liquid they call fountain whatever or something...cause you were told that a combo of that and your fave popcorn came cheaper....you are convinced except that the price is higher by a margin and the drink is more ice, essentially water, than anything else....victim of the new-age corporatism and fanciful brain-fucking experience, you come back to your seat to realise that the air-conditioning has turned your seat and the drink to ice....well it is a marketable deal for a rich guy or girl eager to be close to their companion...otherwise it sucks...All this costs you nothing less that 250...inclusive of taxes and popcorn of course...and the shame of being felt all over (places you never dared touch yourself!!!)...you console yourself thinking its worse at Taj Mahal...where feeling wonder-eyed tourist has become an artful profession.


Chennai is not radically different but prices are lower, nobody frisks you in most places and those who do are partially blind....you can sneak in food or fags by strategically placing it...some even let you in without tickets...of course you need to smile real sweetly....popcorn is way cheaper and there is real butter in it!!! loads of it!!!....its not just a picture outside the popcorn counter...bags of all sorts are allowed or just browsed before letting in...one can take pains to stand in a long morning queue and afford these services for a price of 10/-...movies are a part of everyday living in this part of the country and so the culture varies too...

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

the known

This is the longest break I have taken from this page. Can't really say I was in hibernation or reflecting on the different modalities my page should take...rather, I was stuck trying to deal with the eventualities of my life and the everydayness of my existence...simply speaking, I have been going mad at work...if there is a moment I wait for, it is one I spend in the company of people I agree with. But as always people I agree with say the same things I say....there is a grandeur in the familiar but there is also a sense of redundancy....of a continuity that distances into terrible discontinuity....to the point where one wonders what effect all this dialogue has...knowing very well unconsciously that all dialogues ultimately have this effect....in spite of this one can't help wondering about the repetition...the realisation dawns that interaction is better with things inanimate....no, not inanimate...but things that do not speak one's language....the interaction is more poignant and effective...the interaction with a book, with a place, with a photograph bring out concrete experiences that simi-lingual animate objects don't bring...root cause is probably as simple as escapism....escaping having to tolerate one more like oneself


After having gone into detail on the importance of the inanimate and recourse in its arms...one still looks for the familiar....yes it is severe contradiction that I am suggesting.....switching between the comfort of one and at once claiming a dislike for it......middle path one knows is knowing the unknown animate ( i didn't take my logic classes for nothing!) but comfort zones prevent the interaction....so here I am planning on taking swimming classes, guitar classes, music classes.....trips to place...of buying a camera....to avoid the known.


Articulation is becoming problematic day by day...I have no thoughts except the ones required for execution of tasks that are remunerated at the end of the month...at the same time I am becoming precisely articulate at that task....if I am asked for a reason I would say I am receding...but I know I am not...I am pretending to...if I recede, with me recedes this blog and all in it...for the blog is nothing but me.....no, a slice of me...


Once again I climbed the steps of that familiar staircase in that familiar city looking for the known....luck might have that the known sensed my arrival and made itself present....a hour of the known was like meeting your soul in hell...if hell be a place of vice pleasures...once again I indulged in the act of love, of self-love (philautia).....I couldn't let go of it...the pleasure was intense...but pleasure is overrated....and like all vice pleasures this slipped once again to redundancy...still when it slipped out my hands I felt nothing but sharp pain...a pain of having lost the known self again...that my friend, hopefully describes the contradictions running through this piece....this pleasure visited me again not so long after the first...the pleasure was intense, so was the loss....but now it worries me if I will lose myself to this pleasure or to this being....