A Recent Trip To The Multiplex With Pradeep

I am running late to see a film scheduled to screen at half past two. It is already 1:50 p.m., I book a taxi, and the app estimates the arrival time to be 15 minutes. I cancel, rebook, and the same driver accepts the ride. Pradeep arrives at five minutes past two. After sitting in the cab, I realise that my restless agitation ten minutes ago stemmed from having succumbed to the cosmopolitan myth of speed. Pradeep looks middle-aged, but in a way that makes it unclear whether the right address for him is “bhaiya” or “uncle.” I settle for bhaiya.  

He adjusts his rear-view mirror and remarks that the previous ride took slightly longer because the passenger라이브 바카라 payment app kept crashing. I nod while looking at his reflection in the small rectangular mirror.

“You cancelled this ride, didn’t you?” he inquires with a hint of suspicion.

Embarrassed, I reply that I’m running late.

“Going to the mall to eat, have fun?” he asks with rhetorical certainty—his tone perceptively marking the difference between a working man and a girl of means out and about in the city.

A fragment of a reel I watched on Instagram flickers before my eyes, where an old professor recounts an anecdote about Gloria Steinem and her disavowal of driving. I struggle to remember the details and assume its content involves a driver who challenges the homogeneous construction of man by communicating to Steinem what a day looks like in his blue-collar job.  

“No,” I respond, “For a movie.” In a desperate effort to fit myself within the supposedly expanding yet actually shrinking middle class of India, I mention my general reluctance to take cabs in favour of the metro. He overlooks the naivety in this auxiliary information and asks, “Oh, for a 3 p.m. show?” 

“No, actually, it라이브 바카라 at 2:30.” The phone mounted on the dashboard shows the GPS calculating our arrival time for a quarter to three. After making a few casual observations about the Delhi traffic, Pradeep asks which film I plan to see. I reply, “Flow.” “Flow?” he repeats. “Yes,” I admit, “A foreign one.” 

“Well, I remember buying tickets in black for Ako-nan-da,” he reveals. 

“Anaconda?” I clarify. “Yes, yes. They advertised it as the scariest film you'd ever see. I couldn’t tolerate it for more than ten minutes. My friends and I left the hall regretting our decision and cornered the man from whom we bought the tickets, asking for our money back. I used to watch many films in the theatre with friends and family. Govinda was my favourite actor.” 

His train of thought continues to chug, “Once, I took a couple from Calcutta to Jaipur. We couldn’t get tickets for a film at Raj Mandir, but the hotel concierge arranged three, albeit at exorbitant prices. We went anyway and watched that film with Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai.” 

“Hum Kisi Se Kam Nahin?” I enquire. 

“No, no…” he shrugs the answer. “The one with the famous song, with black sunglasses…” 

“Bunty aur Babli?” I ask. 

“Yes!” He goes on to talk about Liberty, Milan, Moti and Golcha Cinema halls. While the first is barely running, the others have shut down. Like an avid cine-goer, he would sit five or six rows away from the screen, in the middle, so his eyes could surrender to the spectacular enormity of visuals. He loathed the balcony seats; saw the film once from that height and could never adjust to watching in that manner.  

“I have even been to the projection room, you know? It was awe-inspiring…I remember people perpetually scratching the surface of the jute seats until the fabric splintered.” 

What is the history of chairs in Indian cinema halls? The multiplexes use a velvet-like or faux-leather type of material. Was jute really the one used in single screens? His voice interrupts my wandering thoughts. “Now it costs too much. I make no more than 1000-1500 rupees a day, and all of it would get spent on tickets alone, and then you need something to eat…Once, I went to a drive-in theatre in Chandigarh, but there were only two cars, so they didn’t screen the film,” he chuckles.  

I agree that cinema halls serve notoriously expensive food. “I do not eat at the movies,” I apologetically reply. “Really?” He seems genuinely shocked. “The film라이브 바카라 flavour is sucked dry if you don’t have a popcorn in hand. Besides, when everybody around is eating, it feels alien.” His memory of the material space of the theatre, and the economics of accessing a film along with its by-products is so powerful that he often forgets the name of the film. A vagueness shrouds his memory when I prod for filmic details.  

His making of cinema is so inextricably linked with the experience of going to and being in a hall that any gaze, such as mine, that locks a film into a textual object of analysis gets befuddled. He brings to mind Annette Kuhn, who studied the film culture of 1930s Britain. In her interviews, she foregrounded how people often remembered the architecture of theatres, the reactions of the audience and those who accompanied them, the smell of popcorn and the emotions they collectively encountered. I wonder whether cinema is no longer a part of daily life for people at large in our country. Has leisure become that unaffordable?  

“When was the last time you watched a film on the big screen?” I ask him. 

“Oh, it must have been a decade,” his loud sigh envelops the car. I let out an exhale in return, recognising his primary emotion as melancholic. Cinema seems to haunt his memory, where nostalgia is forced upon him to rein in his desires. 

“It is already past 2:30,” he declares, while taking a turn. “I am relying on the commercials and the trailers that come before…(the feature presentation).” “Are you going alone?” he wonders. I offer a quick yes, rummaging through my backpack for cash. “Alone?” he reiterates. “That라이브 바카라 not how you watch a film; you should go with others,” he continues. “I write about them…It라이브 바카라 more productive that way,” I respond, having found the two hundred-rupee note that was hiding in one of the pockets. “But cinema is not something to write about; it is something to experience,” he says as we come to a stop. I smile at the delicacy of his argument, despite his lingering suspicion about the art of film writing. As I exit the car, he adds, “The next time we meet, tell me about this film you’ll see.” 

No matter the hyperconnectivity of our age, the possibility of our meeting again is slim. We rarely encounter the same delivery person, the same driver—any gig worker—more than once. I begin to run; the film could start at any moment.  

Srishti Walia is a doctoral student of Cinema Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.