#Scurf145: Moviegoing as a formative indulgence
On going to the movies with friends and suchlikes as a nerdy teenager and then some
Going to the movies with friends was a formative activity in my very tiny social life as a nerdy teenager. Most of the time when plans were made, even back in school I was too settled to leave the house. A new book of algebra, a Vedic maths assignment, some garbage English language novel — I always had something better to do. Except when I didn’t — then I went to the movies. My second biggest love affair.
It first started off as movies that we went to as educational trips organized by the school. Those were usually Ants, Babe, Troy, Lakshya, Munna Bhai, and others. A handful of outings where we got to rebel and revel in our own ways. Then, it was the act of sitting straight up, paying heed to the screen but also to the gentle cadences around — whose elbow was nudging whom, who tried to pass a chit with a message for whom, which boy finally mustered the courage to hold his lady crush’s hand.
Our small-ly bigoted minds played hide and seek with ourselves, each other and the watchful scrutiny of teachers. Always the teachers but sometimes also the seniors who quite (surprisingly and unnecessarily) patrolled us viscerally from god knows what corners. The naughty ones among us (mostly always the boys) got to hold hands with the girls, sometimes even stealing a squeeze of the palm and then sliding their tiny fingers into their lady-love’s gentle hold. A lot of the mood of the place would already be set even before the movie started. In fact, the choice of the movie had very little contribution to the ambiance. All of us starved for touch, thwarted with love, and divided into confusing gender roles, would generally coalesce into the darkness of the cinema hall and try to find ourselves through each other while there.
I remember the trauma teachers had to go through after our progressive, Bengali school principal had decided that we horny 15-year-olds of the ninth standard would be permitted to sit inside the dark womb of the theater and witness the absolutely divine lovemaking in Troy. (Brad Pittttttt!!!) After the movie when we got back to school, we girls gathered at the fag end of the classroom to discuss, just to verbally analyze *that* scene! Simple souls getting caught in the gravity of a pastiche category.
Then there were the movies I watched with friends (generally ultra-large unwavering groups of 14-15) as an out-of-school, weekend, Diwali or Christmas kind of celebratory thing. Though our choices were highly limited — Woh Lamhe, New York — we tried to carve for ourselves a bookish semblance of upper middle-classness. Maybe if we watched these movies like the kids in bigger cities we’d become them. Little did we know. I also distinctly savour and remember the pang of being secluded from plans for movies like Cheeni Kum (which a friend’s mother boldly took all girls to), Rang De Basanti (for which I wasn’t yuppy enough!?!?) and Jhoom Barabar Jhoom.
Cinematically speaking I know I missed so much, and I’ve tried to recoup those individual losses by watching these movies as many times as possible with as diverse gangs of people as I could muster. But above all else, the pang I feel the hardest is that of having missed watching these with those friends, taking in their scents, those goofy stares, the corny jokes, the excited kicks, the screeches, and maybe also the popcorn. I know for a fact that a (major) couple from my school gang had proposed to each other after the end of Rang De! I mean that’s the only obvious response suburban middle school small-town northies could cough up to a movie about national rebellion against the state’s disorder. But what would I have not given just to be able to witness that drama after RDB!
Su kar mere dil ko was even our group’s anthem for the trip we made to Dalhousie later that year! Even though the Su in question was conspicuously absent and her DJ ever so shy at the mention of the song, each time someone sang it his face lit up and we’d all fawn.
Jhoom Barabar (JBJ) was also a similar, middle-of-the-day, weekday kinda plan that I missed. It was crucial first of all because JBJ was also the name of the troika of commerce stream class 12 teachers in our school (Jacob-Bakshi-Johnson). While my parents did allow me to go to the movie, my friends couldn’t come over to pick me. I was ready and waiting on the front porch of my parents’ house for a couple of hours or so (as was my destiny in those years) before the landline rang and they told me that they might not be able to travel to my side of town. Those small things singe to date, but one moves on. The friends, they never shared any details from the JBJ screening with me, which was good in a way that saved me the missing but also bad because I couldn’t ever conjure up remote scenarios that could’ve taken place that day.
Last night, as I saddled in for a late-night Oppeheimer show with a friend and his girlfriend, some portions of school memories came back. It was a Nolan movie so there was that absolutely unmissable, school camp vibe — studied, prepared kind of an atmosphere — to the crowd, to us, to the time of the night, but there was also something other. I was reminded of late-night and other movies I’d been to with my then-best friend and closest of all cousins (J!).
In 2007 scrapping through our limited winter vacation days, she and I had cobbled up some money to go and watch Juno at PVR Anupam. One auto ride away from Alaknanda into the recesses of what was then a dappled area, full of foliage and trees so buoyant and beautiful it certainly does feel like a false Delhi memory. The teenage pregnancy, the football, Cera-fanning, Page, the music (OH GOD THAT ALBUM RULESSSS) — we were both beyond ourselves by the end of it. As American as Juno and her experiences were, that movie continues to be a corner of hope and quietness to me simply because of our joint memory of seeing it. Us 14-15-year-old weirdos watching that movie on that hot winter noon, then ambling back from Anupam to our house and closing the door of the room to talk endlessly about the movie, about Juno, her struggles!
Then there were other movies J and I watched out of sheer exhaustion and desperation. Exhausted with the limbo of our lives in the year 2013 and the desperation to do something, anything at all that could be seen or felt as us “pushing boundaries”. Unnamable Hindi movies were watched deep into the night with kids screeching their lungs out inside the movie hall. Insanity was on our drive back home when we were nearly chased at the GK2 24*7 by a clutch of teenagers in a hatchback!?! Delhi’s never not peaking.
Being in the mall past three in the night yesterday brought back a volley of memories. Even though Oppenheimer is so depressing, Nolan’s so frustrating, and my company equally soothing — I came back smiling for a whole different reason. Thinking about the last time I was inside a mall after a movie that got over at 3 am, it was with someone who meant so much to me. The movie however meaningless, if it’s playing on tv, I do pause even today and watch for a minute just to relive those moments of carefree loving that are created by watching movies of all shades together!
