Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Life Amidst Stars

I have always lived amidst the stars. The Amitabh of the early eighties, to the Roshans and Oberois of the day, life's always been interesting with the stars around me.

What's an interesting life without colour?! From the innocent crushes for Meenakshi Sheshadri of 'Shehenshah', to the current day bubbly girl Miss Zinta, life's been colourful too.

But there's always room for the sweet and demure Miss Balan. ;-)



Then, 'Paheli' happened!!!



Amol Palekar has given some ace performances in Chchotisi Baath, Golmaal, and others. But, why did he have to punish Shah Rukh for the arrogant overacting in earlier movies ?!

Squandering Shah Rukh's money on all the colourful costumes, the awesome picturisation of the dry, dusty Rajastan, the candid capture of the local culture, Mr Palekar presented to us, something which resembled the India Hour of National Geographic. Ofcourse, there was some small thing missing.

THE SCRIPT!!!

But the nostalgic Indian population of Minneapolis, US, did chuckle out laughter, time and again, for the few PJs that he had managed to stuff into the documentary. Remember the "Phala..............Phoooola.........aur.........."

I had joined them too. ;-)

The most interesting part, was ..... THE INTERVAL. Delicious samosas served with the green chutney, by the Punjabi aunty (she did manage to get it to all the Hindi movie screenings), who did not ape the American accent. She had all the desis, some chingis and blacks too, standing in a queue to get them. It almost resembled the the Saturday evenings at the Forum, Bangalore.



My career in films had begun quite early in life (watching films ofcourse ;-)) ). I don't remember it, but am time and again told by my mother about the anecdote at a Bangalore's theatre screen Sharaabi, of Amitabh, when I was two-threeish. I am told that I was so very excited at the scenes of Amitabh bashing up the bad guys, that I had jumped off from the seat in excitement. Aunt, and mother had to pull, and pin me back on the seat. Later, I had refused to accept that Amitabh had been acting all while. I had believed for sometime that he was a drunk hero, and earth was a safe place as long as he was there.



Highschooling in the famed National High School helped my career in films.

WHAAA......T?!!!

Well, the highschool takes attendance two times in a day. The first time is at the beginning of the day, and the second time is right after the interval. Hence, if a person was cunning enough to maintain the minimum attendance, and was the elected representative of the class ;-) , and was believed to be innocent by all the teachers ;-)), he could take an occasional half day off, to watch movies at the nearby Urvasi theatre, at the second class price of Rs 10. He could also take the first half of the day off on Fridays, if a big movie was releasing.

This is not mentioned in the school brochure ;-))



I had managed to cover all the movies from the good ones like '1942 - A Love Story' to the stupid ones like 'Hum Hain Bemisaal' (don't blame you if you haven't heard of this one) in the year '94.



One question ?!

Why is 'elected class representative' characteristic required?

Well, ask that friend of mine who had enjoyed 'Kaadalan' (superhit Tamil movie) , and was court marshalled the next day, in the first class, by the class teacher, in front of the whole class.

"Hegithappa Kaadalan?" (How was 'Kaadalan') she had asked him harshly. He had his head down, sadly facing everything she had to say.

Later, he told me that, he was actually analyzing the movie then. "Madam, songs are good, but heroine is a little fat," he had wanted to say, before he was told to go back to his seat.



Our enemies were black ticket marketeers.

The three of us were standing in the queue to the ticket counter of the Sagar theatre. Five more guys to go, and we could get the tickets to '1942 - A Love Story'. Suddenly, like the Yama announcing that 'your time has come', a dark man appeared beside the counter and announced 'Sold Out'.

"What do we do?" I looked worriedly at the other two.

"We will have to buy it black," my friend announced. I was horrified. Wasn't that illegal?

The Rs 20 ticket was bought at Rs 45 each. I was apprehensive, as I believed that we were cheating the government. The other friend bought three tickets. We looked at him, puzzled.

"I am expecting a friend, and her friend," he smiled.

The bugger had ditched us!!!

Not because he was going with his girlfriend at the last moment, but his girlfriend was bringing along only one other girl. We were two :(

"Not yet a girlfriend maga," he said apologetically.

We realized that, when she later turned up with her mother, and her brother. Her burly brother was one of the last to get tickets legally.

My 'lover-boy' friend had to sell his tickets for half price later, when she had refused to even acknowledge his existence there. ;-))

With the guilt of the black tickets, I watched the movie. (The guilt was there only till Manisha made her appearance through the window of the wintage bus, on the silver screen ;-) )



Some people liked Shah Rukh, and some loved Aamir. But, my hero was the Amitabh of my childhood. Tall and masculine. Where could I find one, amidst the dwarfs, who were generally made to look tall by the camera placement tricks?

Then, Kaho Na Pyaar Hain hit the screen.

Masculine, with ripping muscles, and a height, which could tower above all the heroes of the present, Hritik represented the typical hero. I had an immediate liking for the guy, till he started crying more than his heroines, in all his movies.

Lagaan was an experience I would remember for a long time. Dil Chahta Hain is a script I was bowled over.



After the advent of the Home PC, movies came to be categorized at 'Theatre Movies' and 'CD Movies'. Theatre movies were big movies with wide landscapes, and huge stars. Movies, which required prior planning to grab a quick breakfast and stand in the burning sun for tickets, only to get the evening show, where there was no chance of sighting college girls with tight jeans :(.

Most of the other movies consumed were read out of pirated cds, which the CD-ROM drives hated, but we always had the last say, after fighting with them using the Windows Media Player, and repeated restarts when the media players hung unceremoniously. After all, the CD-ROM drivers were pirated too ;-)

Almost all Govinda movies, and some english comedies fell into this category. Rs 20 movie rentals were shared by 5-6 friends.



One cold Friday night in march earlier this year (it is winter in March in the US), just two weeks after I had come to the US, after a dinner at a MacDonalds, my friend was getting me back to my hotel in his car. My eyes fell upon a cine multiplex. 'Avaitor' , the quaint poster with Leonardo Di Caprio announced, on one of the display windows. I had planned to watch this movie, but had missed it out in India. I made a mental note to watch it the next day.

"What is this place called?" I asked my friend.

"Columbia Heights," he said. I noticed that the multiplex's name 'Regal Cinemas' glowed in large letters.



The next day, unaccustomed to the American way of finding out places (google maps, and mapquest ), I browsed through the local yellow pages to locate the Regal Cinemas.

There was one in Edina. And I had no clue where and how far it was. I called up the phone number against it, and I was told that it would take approximately half hour for me to go there from downtown, where I lived. I called up a cab, and gave the address to the cabby.

"Where are you from?" I put the question across to the middleaged man.

"Somalia," he replied, "Are you from India?" he asked me.

I was surprised. "How did you know?" I asked him. "Oh! There are a lot of Indians here in Minneapolis," he said.

That was true.

After quite a while, I was watching the fare rise from teens to the early twenties, and now, it had just crossed thirty.

Was a movie outing such an expense for the people in the downtown? I mused. The ticket would definitely be $8-$10. If the one way fare was going to be thirty, to the movie theatre, one had to shell out almost seventy - eighty bucks. Was that acceptable? Why didn't these guys have theatres in the city? Don't Americans like movies? I thought that Hollywood was the ultimate place for cinema productions.

I was very, very puzzled.

"Are you going to the cinema?" he asked me.

"Yes," I said.

"Why are you going so far? There are a lot of theatres in downtown," he said, as though reading my mind. I felt like a fool. I didn't know that.

"Actually, there is a movie which is played only in that theatre," I uttered to save my face.

"Alright," he said. "It should be an Indian movie," he said to himself, aloud.

"We watched a lot of Indian movies in Somalia," he added.

I was taken by surprise. "Is it?"

"Oh!Yes. I remember Durrmendrr, Omitabb Bochchon," he uttered. "And also there was a beautiful lady," he added.

"Rekha?" I ventured to help

"No...it was ...some ....Malini."

"Hema Malini," I uttered aloud, to which he agreed excitedly.

"I watch them, when I was young," he said

I began marveling at the reach of the Bollywood movies, before even the software industry was born, and to the countries where the 'software' is yet to be distinguished from cotton clothes ;-)

"Is Omitabb still hero?" he asked.

"No, his son is acting as the hero. Amitabh is acting middleaged roles," I told him. Then, the conversation shifted onto his experiences of hindi movies as young boy in Somalia, and so on to other topics about his country.

When I got out of the cab, I was $37 poorer, but literate about Somalia.



To my surprise, the multiplex resembled the multiplex in Bangalore's Forum in all respects.



Two weeks later, the superhit Kannada movie 'Joke Falls' was being screened in one of the multiplexes in Minneapolis, according to www.localfiles.com (I was getting accustomed to the American way of finding information ;-) ). I had wanted to watch this movie in Bangalore, but had missed this one, too. Hence, reached there on the Sunday evening. There was a diverse group of people, some scurrying around, and others socializing, leisurely.

As I had already got the tickets from a Kannada colleague of mine, and wanted a refund for another that he had bought, but could not make use of, I ventured to the ticket counter. The two men behind the counter, flood with DVDs of 'America America', and 'Nanna Preethiya Hudugi', handed me the refund for my surrendered ticket. As my eyes were searching for people whom I could befriend, I noticed that the ambience was different than in Bangalore.

In Bangalore, the theatres screening Kannada movies in KG Road, had audiences which could leave one irritated. The multiplexes in Bangalore had the youthful crowd, north Indian guys with black tights, and their weirdly dressed girlfriends, busily speaking over the mobile phones, blending with the crowd of spectacled software engineers with drooping shoulders reading sms forwards. This was very much unlike the laid back crowd here.

Suddenly, my eyes fell on a handsome young man resembling a Punjabi (north Indian), and his two well dressed friends. I wondered if this person had come to check out a Kannada movie, or his south Indian girlfriend/fiancé had dragged him to it.

Casually, I walked upto them, and introduced myself, which they reciprocated.

They were all Kannadigas, with two of them Infosysians ( am sure there ain't a place left where Infy has not reached, but Mars… and that is because TCS has a monopoly there ;-)) ), and the Punjabi-looking guy, Chetan, was a MS guy working for a local software firm.

"Oh! Bangalore??!! Where do you live in Bangalore?" I asked Chetan. "Girinagar," he said.

"Oh! Girinagar??!! I live in Girinagar too," I told him. The three of them laughed out aloud.

"What street number?" Chetan asked. I smiled.

"There are no 'street numbers' in Bangalore. I live in 13th 'Cross'," I mocked.

"Oh! I just live three streets adjacent," he said, not minding my remark. I definitely felt like a FOB (Fresh Of the Boat… nickname for fresh desis who didn’t know the American way of life yet).

"Hmm, I know the street. I have a friend of my father who lives there," I said. I joined the 'street' jargon users group ;-).

"Actually, in the beginning of the street, there is a house with name 'Banni Mane'," he ventured information.

"Ah! That is the house that I am speaking out. Would you know my father's friend?" I mentioned the name.

"He is my father!!!" the guy blurted out the guffaws, leaving the other two bewildered.

I was taken by great surprise, no less than he was.

Of all the countries in the world, of all the cities in the US, of all the multiplexes in the city, he had to make it to this one??!!! (Inspired from a line of 'Casablanca' :) ). More than a decade we lived in the same city, with our fathers being friends, but we were destined to meet at this point in timeline??!!! That's destiny for sure :).



The evening went great, with the company of 'Hudugru', watching Ramesh (the movie hero of 'JokeFalls') moving around the naturally landscaped, green Malnad of Karnataka.



I have always been around stars. The peep of the Bollywood stars into my life may have become less frequent now, but there are my friends, who are my stars. They not only form my comfort zone, but also amaze, support, and inspire me untiringly. That makes life interesting.


Thank you for joining me on the cyberspace for this slice my experiences.

Have a great week ahead.

With warm regards,

Teju