Memorable Tidbits From Times I Went Out With Friends For A Movie

• Kyaa Dil Ne Kahaa: This was, quite possibly, a strong contender for the title of The Most Difficult-To-Put-Up-With Movie Of All Time. I went to watch this one with nine or ten friends from my school. This was probably the only time we managed to gather so many of us together in one place, given the fact that a lot of us were studying in different cities all over the country. Sumit really wanted to watch this one, and he recommended a certain movie theatre in Rajouri Garden, which turned out to be full of people who whistled every time Esha Deol appeared on the screen. Even to this day, I taunt him about his "favourite movie hall." But well, this was a time when none of us were making any money and hence couldn't really afford PVRs.
• Devdas: I've often gone out with Aditi, Sumit, Doodlee and the other friends I have from my school for movies that I'd already seen. I think this was the first such. There are a lot of things about this one that all of us remember distinctly. This was the first time I experienced Doodlee's driving, when he was not too confident, but did a pretty good job anyway. This was probably the first time Sumit observed that, when going out with me for a movie, one should prepare for the fact that I am going to sing along with all the songs in my friends' ears. This particular incident was another strong manifestation of the fact that none of us could afford PVRs. We watched this one at a place in Model Town which was a pretty popular hang out for us North Campusites, but not for any of the other three people I watched it with. On this particular day, the screen was in a particularly bad state, because of which, Sumit still says that we watched Makdee and Devdas at the same time!
• Kal Ho Naa Ho: Another of our visits to Sumit's favourite theatre, another movie that I watched with these folks after already having seen it about three and a half times. There is this one amusing bit that I remember very distinctly from this one. When Preity and Saif were talking about what happened when Preity went to confess her feelings to Shah Rukh Khan, and Preity asked Saif, "If I'd known that he was already married, would I have fallen in love with him?" I couldn't really help saying, "Of course!" At which point of time, Doodlee was too busy feeling Preity's hurt to notice whatever was going on around him, but Aditi and Sumit gave me slightly amused looks, at which I kind of launched into an explanation for why I really thought she would have fallen in love with him anyway. A little later, when Preity was talking to her mom, and put forth the same question to her, both Sumit and Aditi looked at me and said, "Of course! Hai na, Dabbo?" (For the uninitiated, that's my nickname from school.)
• Bunty Aur Babli: This one came at a time when my batch mates from my MCA and I were preparing for our placement with a lot of gusto. The first company was supposed to visit our campus in about ten days. But it was my birthday, and I had to celebrate. It was the standard protocol to round up all the school friends who were in town and celebrate with them. As it happened, that year, Aditi was the only one who was around. So we decided to meet up for a movie. So when I went to the box office to get our tickets, the guy at the counter misunderstood the show we wanted to watch, and gave us tickets for one that had already started about fifteen minutes back. Since then, I always make it a point to check my tickets before I accept them, but that day, I did not. We supposedly had about an hour before our movie was supposed to begin, so we went to grab a bite, in the middle of which, I suddenly noticed the time on the tickets, after which, Aditi launched into an argument with the counter guy and then the manager, and did eventually manage to get him to change the time on our tickets, because he kept saying that he couldn't issue new ones. Oh, and the tickets for shows starting before 1 PM were fifty bucks cheaper than the others, so I actually saved a hundred bucks in the ordeal, and wished that there's been more of us to witness the event and to enable me to rob the PVR guys some more. On this particular birthday, almost all my friends called to wish me by the time the movie was over, except Doodlee. He called me at about 8 in the evening, for no apparent reason, and struck up a casual chat. He asked me what I'd been doing that day. I told him I'd gone out for a movie with Aditi. He asked why I'd done that, when I was supposed to have been studying and calling up HR people. I asked him if he knew what the date was. It was at that point that he suddenly remembered what he'd forgotten. Interesting coincidence for him to call me on my birthday, when he did not remember that it was my birthday!
• The Day After Tomorrow: This was the birthday just preceding the one I talked about right before this. That year, almost everybody was in town to celebrate with me, except Aditi. The memorable thing is that, the movie was scheduled to begin at 2:30 PM and Aditi called to wish me at exactly 2:30. What's so special about 2:30? That is the time at which I was born.
• The movie we never watched: There was this time when we'd all just finished our second year of college. Aditi's sister had a few passes to an NIE (Newspapers In Education, a programme run by the Times Of India in various schools all over the country.) film festival. Now her sister did not want to go watch any such movie, so Aditi asked Sumit and me if we wanted to watch one with her. Now this was supposed to be a movie beginning at something like nine in the morning, at the other end of town. We got up really early in the morning, to meet up at a common point near Aditi's place. Aditi arrived more than just a little late at that meeting point. Now we'd just started moving towards our destination when Aditi realised that she'd left the passes in a diary by her bedside! She called home and asked her folks to verify if that was indeed true. Now this happened in a day and age when mobile phones were not too commonplace, so this very act took up a significant amount of time. By then we realised that we'd never be able to make it in time. We ended up spending the day together and having a good time, but never again did we ever let Aditi be in charge of any tickets, movie or otherwise.