Monday, February 11, 2013

Talash ki ‘Khoj’

The phone call came through in the wee hours of Saturday. Deep in my early-morning musings on nothingness, I had missed the first few rings. But my home minister did not. ‘Who’s calling up papa so early in the morning?’ she snapped.
Before I could feign ignorance and put up a blank face, she muttered, ‘must be pipi from Kolkata’. Sure enough, papa’s excited chatter in Bengali came through the closed door.

‘Ki shanghatik!’ an expression in Bengali which means ‘event extraordinaire!’ kicked off the morning’s tea-table conversation. Not knowing how to react to such out of context exultation, I quickly metamorphosed into my trademark ‘I am interested to know about it…’ expression. A quick glance at the home minister confirmed that the ruling party has seconded my actions. Phew! what a relief!
I was just in time to focus my attention to Papa, the source of the early morning exclamation, and he began, ‘Did you know that pipi at 78 years of age, watched Aamir Khan’s Talash last night! Can you imagine? At her age, all alone, she just walked into a multiplex and watched the movie! Truly ‘shanghatik!’’

Both my home minister and myself, nodded in unison, our eyes wide open, waited with bated breath for papa to continue. One extra-long sip of black tea later, he continued ‘she said that movie is a hit! And that we should watch it too! She also mentioned, not to delay too much!’

Flashback: My pipi is a die-hard Aamir Khan fan, in early 2010, when papa was in Kolkata, pipi had taken him along to watch ‘3 Idiots’. Both of them, along with the entire nation, loved it! In that one fateful day, pipi rose to the stature of a ‘super movie buff’ and nobody in our clan could dare question her judgment.
Fresh from my flashback, I blinked and realized that papa was looking at me for some reaction, or rather, the movie timings? I cleared my throat and looked around for support at my home minister, and found her looking at the kitchen chimney with unusual intensity….a ploy, a ploy to withdraw support from your ally! I felt like the Prime Minister, who was just going through a grueling ‘no confidence motion’.

‘Ki holo ta ki?’ (what happened?) jolted me out of my reverie… another way of asking when am I booking the movie tickets? I gulped down my now cold, sugarless, black tea and conceded defeat. ‘Let me see if I can get tomorrow’s tickets…’ I meekly surrendered. Through the corner of my eye, I could see a classic smile of triumph slowly spreading across his face. I am sure the home minister too must be celebrating the victory. Everybody likes movies and popcorns and outings, as long as there is no payment involved.

All through Saturday, once I confirmed that the movie tickets for Sunday have been booked, there was palpable exuberance running through every member of the family except me.

I was wondering if Amir Khan was ever so excited about any of his movie releases. Anyways, not to stick out like a sour thumb, I decided to keep mum. After all, more than being golden, silence has no enemies!

I decided to take my scooter along, my only empathizer since Saturday. It served the others well since the car we had booked would otherwise have gotten a touch crowded.

45 minutes before the show timings, papa walked out of his room, impeccably dressed, phone in hand and paan in the mouth, ready to call pipi and inform her about the triumph and impending victory ceremony. My home minister came out, son tagging along, dressed to the T, deplorably glaring at my two-day-old stubble. But I did not budge an inch. I had made it very clear during our ‘getting ready for the movie’ phase that I would not dress-up for the movie, much to my dad’s chagrin.

As everybody got into the cab, my dad admonished ‘Do not try to overspeed and match up speed with the car, drive slowly, safely! Then, to add insult to injury, turned to the driver and said ‘Thoda slow chalana, mera beta bhi hai na scooter pe’. The driver nodded with a smile and then glanced with a hint of disdain at my ‘limited speed’ transport.

As I reached the multiplex a good 20 minutes later, I could see my folks standing in a straight line, on the pavement. As I was passing them towards the parking lot, I realized that papa was not smiling. Perhaps I kept them waiting too long, I thought. In that case, I am due for another session of lecture on timeliness. God save me!

Anyways, I parked the scooter and got back to my family, and sure enough, nobody was smiling. My heart sank, I realized that I am about to get a dressing down in public.
My speed slowed and as I reluctantly reached them, Sunny shouted out ‘Papa, papa, that driver told dadaji that Kareena Kapoor is a bhoot in Talash!