Stupendous Man

Begining this post, I aim to start reciting some of experiences of my younger years, especially from my college days. I have a lot of them to write about and I think it will be a fun concept.

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Around 8 years ago in 1998, the movie Satya was released. After hearing excellent reviews about the movie, especially from Khalid Mohammad, I and my roomie decided to give this a look. On the given day, 2 of my other two friends decided to join us for the movie. Since the movie was running “house full” and my other friends had something to take care of, it was decided that I and roomie would go to the theatre and if tickets were available, we could call these guys up.

I and my roomie made it to the theatre for the 9′ O clock show - the movie was running in an appropriate area to its theme; the area was as shady and as rowdy as the movie promised to be. To our dismay, even the line to the ticket window was pretty threatening. At that point, we thought it would be better if we called up our friends and ask them to come over to theatre as the line seemed really long.

Now this theatre was in the middle of timbucktoo - often the rickshawallahs would wonder too where this theatre was in Hubli. It was not surprising then that my friends didnt know the way either. When I called up the hostel, they were not there - hence I left a message with a friend to inform our friends to rush to the theatre as soon as possible!

At the theatre itself, my roomie thought that the line being so long, there was no chance of getting tickets for the show. It might have been a better idea, if my friends didnt come at all - as it would be a waste of a trip. I thought it was a wise idea too - I rushed to the nearest telephone booth and called up the hostel again. To my dismay, I discovered that nobody knew where my friends where. They could have left for theatre, or they could be waiting elsewhere for my call - or worse still, they couldnt hear someone calling out to them - our central telephone was atleast 70 feet away from the hostel itself and it required someone to really shout to get the message across. I left a message again, saying that if someone saw my friends, they should be informed that they are not supposed to come over to theatre until and unless I call them.

Rushing back to the theatre, to my surprise, I discovered my roomie had got the tickets already! I dont know what transpired or how he ever got ahead of the line, but the net result was - he had 4 tickets - 2 for us, and 2 for our friends. Immediately he asked me call back to hostel and ask those guys to come.

When I called back again, to my horror, someone had given them my previous message, but the wrong theatre name! And those guys had already gone towards the other theatre. I reasoned that since the other theatre would not be screening Satya, the would naturally head back. I left a message again with the third guy to tell my friends (if he saw them!) that we were in another theatre and they should head there ASAP.

The clock ticked - 8.20 pm, 8.45 pm, 8.55pm.. It was five minutes to the show. We decided that my friends had probably not got the message from the third guy, and wouldnt turn up. We were not in a mood to miss any part of the movie for them either. It was decided that even if my friends came, bad luck, we didnt wait for them.

But the problem was, what were we to do about the extra 2 tickets?

We sold them… err in black. We made a profit of 5 Rs/- per ticket, which financed our colas inside the theatre :). The movie turned out amazing, and as I had expected, my friends travelled all over the place, except of course the theatre and missed it all.

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The incident still brings back the memories of that night so vividly; I still remember causing the entire confusion by relaying 3 different messages through 3 different people - one asking them to come over, other to stay put and finally the right message which they never recieved. Also given the fact that the hostel had 300 guys, what was the possibility that my friends would meet the people I left message with anyways? The fact that the moron who told them to go to the wrong theatre did prove that, but well, it was a message lost in translation. Of course, I was welcomed back by the other friends with some angry sneers and jeers when we finally came back after enjoying the movie.

I was wondering today… what if we had a cellphone during our times? Clearly, there would have been no miscommunication on anybody’s part. Clearly there wouldn’t be anybody else involved in the whole melee - and my friends could have very well come to the theatre and enjoyed the movie with us. But perhaps it was this lack of technology in our lives that made this mundane incident so memorable to me. I and my friends would often joke about how our messages and my calls misled them. Perhaps, the lack of cellphone did make the incident humorous and memorable.

Sometimes, technology just takes away too much out of life. Man has just become a slave of Cellphones, and nothing seems to work without a cellphone around. Sad.