“Bhaiya, theen lazzy laana… Dher lagega kya?”, was an eloquent yours truly’s question to a boy at a Punjabi Dhaba near over bridge on Monday 9:40 PM. “Bas dhas minute”, was his reply. I was very much complacent with myself not only for being able to converse 2 sentences on the trot in Hindi without any forethoughts, but also for being able to understand what he said at once!! Sooper cool.
Well, I was sitting along with Sriram and Jagadish at the Dhaba eating our dinner that night. We had just booked tickets for the 2nd show of Chak De India, parked our bikes at the SL theatre and made our way to the Dhaba, all assuming that we’d get back in time for the movie. But it was already 9:40, 10 minutes well over the time the movie would have started. Sriram and myself wanted to get to the theatre as quickly as possible, while a calm Jagadish was not as worried as we were; he had already seen the movie (he’s seen almost all movies to date and he’s now waiting for the next set of releases!!).
Well, the sole fact that we were getting late was because we had all planned for the movie only that late afternoon. And Jaggu and myself were planning to leave office by 5-5:30 so that we could spend time at the Shangumugham, then eat outside and then go for the movie. It again happens, as always, that whenever your’s truly plans and proposes, God disposes!! And this time God was just around in the form of my PL!! He came up with an urgent task that needed to be completed by end of day, and that too at 5 PM (guess that was already EOD, so probably he was referring to EOD at Dufai probably!!). Finally left office at 7:45 (Indian time this time!!)… reached home by 8:30… Sri and Jaggu came home by 8:50, and we reached the theatre, booked tickets, and came to this Dhaba for the food.
Being very fluent in Hindi (read otherwise…), I decided to sharpen my skills (my listening and understanding skills at Chak De India) by conversing with the Dhabha boy!! See how such Dhaba’s in trivandrum can work to your conveniences under such circumstances!!!
Finally we got back to the SL theatre complex. For those who do not know about SL theatres, it’s a theatre complex that houses 4 theatres inside. This could very easily be compared to the INOX and other multiplexes across the metros of our country, why, even abroad…!! It has an elegant elephant statue at the entrance that symbolizes a warm welcome. We got back there only by 10.. and the watchman had already locked the gates, and there was none in the vicinity.. Oh my God, lot of shoutings and screamings, and finally a person came up from inside and told us that there were no tickets available for any of the shows there.. We had a small conversation to convince him that we had already booked tickets, and had gone for our dinner. He finally let us in.
But this time around, we neither got in thru the entrance nor did we get time to get the elephant’s warm welcome – we simply dashed upstairs to the one screening Chak De.. finally we were in!! Thanks to the Dhaba boy for bringing the Lazzy on time and the watchman who had not dosed off before our return!!
By the time we located our seats in the dark, it was the one 3 rows from the back, and what more, the theatre was a very small one in width – it could house only 6 seats in each row, but had a length equal to that of any ordinary theatre.. it gave me the effect of watching the movie from inside a well!! To add more fun, we had two big huge men sitting in front of us, and any time the one in front swayed to one side, we’d all sway to the other!! And within moments of taking my seat, the Lazzy had taken it’s intended ‘dessert’ effect and started putting me doze off. But I resisted this, and concentrated hard on where we were with regard to the movie. With Jaggu’s knowledge in Hindi, and his pre-experience of this movie, I was able to get my footholds on the movie (I realized that the conversation at the dhaba really did not prove much!!)
But believe me, this movie’s worth a watch… one would really get the feeling of watching a hockey match all 2 ½ hours!!!
With Bollywood already having done a movie on cricket, and now one on hockey, I’d bet someone’s gonna try squash or golf next time!!
