Friday, 26 December 2008

12 hours of Gajini

The plan was fool proof.
Buy the movie ticket 2-3 hours before the show
Get good seats
Hang around for an hour or so
Have dinner at one of the Indian restaurant
Walk back to the theater
Enjoy Ghajini
By the time movie ends, be ready to celebrate Christmas Eve with fireworks and foam holi.
Awesome! Isn’t it?
This was our idea of an awesome night. We, a bunch of Indian researchers (some working, some hardly working and some studying god-knows-what…but none a pub loyalist and drinker as is the trend among Indians in Singapore)

The only problem with my plans is, they never work. My friends know it, they always disapprove it, they agree to it finally, they curse me in the end, and then they forget about it to get into the trouble all over again.

So, we starter at 4:30 pm…office was half day due to Christmas Eve… The show we targeted was 8:45 pm. We reached the theatre at 5: 45 pm. Bought tickets. Planned to go Little India for food... It takes 30 minutes or so walking… walking will make us hungry suggested somebody…Met another friend there. Forced him to give us a treat for no apparent reasons…We enjoy taking treats like that. Our treats come as surprise, at least to the host. Having stuffed our self with Indian delicacies, we leveled things up with an Indian masala tea.

Walked back to the theater. Walking is good suggested somebody again. It helps to digest any Indian food.

The theater was crowed as expected. The show was houseful. There were lots of desis flaunting their Indian ness. It’s a good place to check out new desi gals in the town. Finally, we manage to squeeze in to the theater, and found out our respective seats. We do not like to miss our initial dose of trailers which they show during the start of the movie. It was Billo Barbar this time. And then came a heavily built guy with his family, to shatter our dream.

Apparently he wanted to sit on out seat. I, being the perpetuator of the plan, was left to handle the situation. I got up like Gajini’s Aamir (I realized this later) only to be beaten by the Gajini himself (not literally). How could two groups have the same seat numbers for the same movie for the same show? They cannot. We had been given the last show ticket by some mistake. By the time I decided to leave the theater, my friends already had.


I walked out of the theater to meet the lady who sold us the ticket. She denied. We persisted. She denied some more. We made a scene. Manger intervened. She accepted her fault. Manager agreed to give us the next show ticket, which was at 12:15 am. What will we do till then, and we will miss our Christmas Eve fun too if we go for this show. The manager solved our first problem. He offered us Rab ne bana di jodi for free. What more an Indian love other than a Bollywood movie? A free bollywood movie show.

We agreed.
Watched both the movies.
Came back to our respective abode by 4:30 am.

After 12 hours of Gajini
Still feeling sleepy. Waiting for the next day
To be abused by my friends in suffering.
But I am sure they will forget about this mishap and will again agree to be part of my New Year plan.

12 comments:

Zephyr Girl said...

Hi Friend,
Nice to read ur post. Its quite interesting to see u writing whatever happened each and every moment.Wish u a happy and prosperous New year.
I wish to share my blog with u. My URL is www.cycadelia.blogspot.com

KayDee said...

hey in your complete every moment story, you forgot to write about your half an hour stay in between. Mention that also.

Ashraf said...

@Zephyr
Thanks for coming. I will definitely visit your blog


@Kapil
Ha ha ha...That half an hour was my personal moment. Let us not discuss that here

v said...

This is how I saw the whole event:

Ashraf went to fight for the seat with those guys with his ripping 10-pack abs...as soon as he realised the mistake was ours his tummy dropped below the belt! :D

Ashraf said...

Ha ha ha....Looks like I have to work hard to maintain those 10-packs-abs

Zephyr Girl said...

Hello Friend,
Thanks for reading my post.
I'll add myself in ur blog followers list. Hope u too add my link and follow my blog.

Mona said...

hehehe, quite a story that!

I'm off to see the night show of Gajni today! I hope I don't get jinxed after having read this post ;D

Ashraf said...

Any plan that has a shadow of me, even infinitesimally small, is jinxed. You better check ur show timings Mona ;-)

Anonymous said...

2 bollywood movies at one go! Hats off to ur strength! :P

Ashraf said...

We like to test our limits, Piyush :-)

indicaspecies said...

I had a hearty laugh reading about your fool proof plan going awry. But you ended up watching 2 movies, so call it a successful plan.;)

Surely you have online reservations of tickets for movies over there? Did you like Ghajini? I did.:)

Ashraf said...

@Celine... Yeah, two movies for the price of one...indeed is successful. But my friends wouldn't agree.

We do have online booking here for almost all the theaters, multiplexes, except for the one which shows Indian movies. This theater still follows old in-person booking or credit-card-via-phone which nobody feels safe about.

Well, Gajini is making lots of money, and if would have got the show i intended to, i wud have liked it. But, the show which i managed finally left me sleepy...so I am not so sure if i liked it or not :-)