Lacking movie manners

MYSTERY GUEST

It's a race to catch Amitabh Bachchan. We're already running late and after my colleague deftly maneouvers her vehicle, it screeches to a halt at the parking lot of Wave at Noida's Sector 18. "Bachchan must be already there," I mutter nervously, and soon we were running even on the escalator. "He's on the sixth floor," I gasp.

Bags checked, bodies felt (all in the name of security check) by an unenthusiastic lady security officer, we are just seconds away from Mr Bachchan. But we're late by a few minutes, and ouch, Cheeni Kum, a modest budget film starring Amitabh Bachchan and Tabu, directed by R Balki, has already started. Settling down, we start watching the film, with its nice, cheesy dialogues, powerful acting and some gorgeous shots of London. It's all going very well and we're at the scene when Tabu and Amitabh (looking fetching in his designer Versace glasses) are out on a dinner date.

And just when Tabu begins eating pan-fried fish, and my mouth drools, I feel a hard kick from behind and cantankerous screams from a five-year-old monster. Tabu's already polished off the fish from her plate, and now we have popcorn bullets jetting out in our direction. The five-year-old is, by now, jumping and calling out to his "Papa".

"Yes, where is the brat's papa?" I whisper audibly to my colleague only to watch another kid compete with the previous little monster. "Papaaa," he wails too, while I glare at him, gesturing him to be quiet. I turn to give his parents a nasty look, only to find them discussing the film aloud. "Can you please keep quiet?" I thunder, to which the lady retorts: "Oh, it's okay." "No, it's not okay," I snarl.

By now my blood pressure, I'm sure, is shooting higher than Paresh Rawal's "" who plays Tabu's father in the film, and is aghast to hear that Tabu wants to marry a man who is six years older than her own father. Making things worse for us is another man screaming into his phone, discussing office politics. "Do you want to take your call outside?" blasts my colleague, as the man whimpers and rushes out.

Did anyone say we're celebrating a decade of multiplexes in India?