Kites.

How many of you would run away at the thought of going to a movie?

Ok. i will simplify the question for you. How many of you will run away from the thought of a movie which stars Barbara Mori. I think most of you will not. But How about it also stars Hrithik Roshan and is called ‘Kites’?

Now you seem to get a vague idea of what I am talking about.

No, this post is not a review of the movie or about me going to the cinema hall and then sleeping/ walking out in the interval (though I think i would have done just that). Infact, this post has nothing to do with the movie at all. This post is about all that happened ‘because’ of the movie.

Let me fill you up with the background a bit.

There is a certain friend of mine whom we lovingly called ‘Nagraj’ (No, he does not have green scales on his chest though he might have a red underwear which he wears on top of his pants at night). My friend here just got through the coveted CAT and is leaving for IIM-L in a while. Presently, he works in an oil based company which makes him work for 2 weeks a month on a rig far far away from land, and the rest two weeks of his are spent at home. Every week, on a certain day, he takes a helicopter from the rig to touch land and then spends time in Mumbai before he leaves for home.

Yesterday was one such day.

In the evening at around 7, I gave him a ring asking his whereabouts. He was sitting in some anonymous cafe in Santacruz surfing the web. Yes, he had touched base in Mumbai.

When we met, our conversation went something like this:

Me: Abe Daaru maarne chalte hain be.

Nagraj: Nahi be. Mere ko movie dekhna hai.

Me: abhi koi dhang ki movie nahi lagi hai be.

Nagraj: Koi bhi dekhenge be. Chal,

Me: Kahaan?

Nagraj: Oberoi mall (Goregaon)

Me: Wahaan?..chal.

Both of us took an auto from Santacruz to Goregaon, a trip which took around half an hour and a part of our wallets (actually his. He was the one giving the treat). Our destination was the PVR mall at the corner of the top floor in the mall.

By the time we reached there, it was 8:30 and we had only two options left. Kites (9:20 PM) and Shrek Forever After (11 PM).

Though we are not so much of newspaper readers, we had still managed to hear about the harrowing experiences of people who had watched the movie. People had freaked out in the middle of the movie and had gone out tearing their hairs out. So much so, that People were being asked ot go to watch the movie at their own risk. Now, Nagraj is a person who drinks Mountain dew (you get the joke, right?) so he was game for it. But I am a creature of a very weak heart. I enjoy simpler tihngs like ‘no kites’ and ‘Shrek forever’. But My friend here is not so much an avid fan of animation as i am.

Nagraj: Kites Dekhte hain be.

Me: Paagal ho gaya hai kya?

Nagraj: Problem kya hai?

Me: Problem to kuch nahi hai. Par jaisa suna hai, kaafi khatarnaak movie hai. It might scar us for life.

Nagraj: hmmm…

Me: Shrek dekhte hai be.

Nagraj: nahi be. Wo to nahi hi dekhna hai.

Me: Aur koi option nahi hai. Kya karna hai bol…

After a few minutes…

Me: Abe Daaru maarne chalte hain be.

Nagraj: Ruk saale. Wahaan se yahaan aaye hain, ab phir waapis jaaein?

Me: To kya karna hai..Kites Dekhni hai?

Nagraj: Abhi Landmark chalte hain, phir sochte hain.

We went to Landmark and browsed through the stacked books there. Nagraj was looking for a book on chanakya neeti. He had noticed it in a Landmark in the Airport and was hoping he would lay his hands on one here too. There was no sign of one here except for the Chanakya DVDs of the TV series. We came out of the place and headed back to the PVR. halfway, we changed track and started walking towards the food section. We had still not decided what to do.

The clock chimed 9. We were running out of time.

Me: Shrek dekhte hain be. 3-D mein hai.

Nagraj: Nahi dekhna hai be. Animation hajam nahi hota hai.

Me: To phir kya karna hai?

Nagraj: Khaana khaate hain.

Me: Ok.

We went and stood in the KFC counter not paying much attention to the fact that we were actually standing in front of a closed counter. People in the adjacent lines kept ordering and going while we waited for someone to come and ask us when suddenly, I spotted the obvious.

All this was happening because our minds were preoccupied. Such was the terror of the movie that a soon to be IIM Grad was not being able to make up his mind whether to go inside the Cinema hall or not. We stood in a running counter. Just as our number came, the counter closed and the one where we were standing earlier started running.

Maybe it was a sign.

We looked at each other. It was 9:15. It was the time when we finally had to make a decision. I looked at Nagraj as to what should be done. Either we can catch the movie, or we can have our food in peace. Nagraj finally opened his mouth.

Nagraj: Ek kaam karte hain…

Me: Kya?

Nagraj: Chal daaru maarne chalte hain.

So off we went down from the topmost floor of the mall to the ground floor and out, into an auto and traced our way back to Vile Parle to our regular joint: the place I had initially told him we should be in.

While having drinks, the thought of how the movie would have been crossed our minds. We had drinks all the time, but an experience of something as scary and never-experienced-before boredom as ‘Kites’ was a once in a lifetime one. And we missed it. How would it have been? would horns have grown on our heads while watching the cinema? Or the pretty girl sitting next to us would have started throwing up? Would we have nightmares about the movie after going home? How would Kites have been..

I think we would never know. Or would we.