Motion pictures, till the summer of 2000, were nothing to me but 24×18 posters stuck on flaking walls featuring doctors who treated objectionable diseases next to posters of smiling politicians.
It was the during the fall, a few months before my 7th birthday, when my father finally decided to take me to the theatre. Similar outings had been planned before but were more often than not ,foiled, mostly by the well meaning Sharma Uncle.After pouring down two scotches down the epiglottis and a third down his shirt he would rant on about how he wasted his youth following the dream of becoming an actor after watching too much theatre. This coupled with my grand dad's fears of naked girls running around on beaches kept me away from the theatres for the major part of my sexually-ignorant childhood. My knowledge of the female body came mostly from the 'nahaans' at the Sangam ghat where modesty was discarded in the name of washing away sins.
My grandfather was the quintessential betel chewer. The only time when he did not look like a blood hungry vampire munching on a kong toy was when he had to brush his pearly reds. He said that it was the long hours of studying that got him into this habit but I have always suspected it to be a byproduct of the movie Don. Another reason, when I think about it, why he vehemently opposed the cinemas.
My mother's refusal on the issue always had The-Charge-Of-the-light-Brigade" feel to it
"Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die"
With an OCD about respectful behaviour , any attempt at an argument was met with a glare that would have caused Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for his life.
My father had a very quiet personality. This was in high contrast to his soundbox which could put jet engines to shame. This odd combination resulted in neighbourhood wide aneurysms on the rare occasion that he became angry. The ideal Indian student, he never concerned himself with anything even remotely related to the word 'recreation'. The Bollywood column in the newspaper was meant for pot smoking hippies and movies were just one of the many marketing strategies to rip off hardworking people like him.
All this changed though, on that warm summer evening, when one of my older cousins finally convinced my father to take me to the theatres. The persuasion was successful mostly due to the fact that my cousin had just cleared the PCS and kept a full blown Rajputana moustache(another of my father's whimsies). The movie was Sarfarosh, one of the year's biggest hits. But it was Jagjit Singh and not Amir Khan who made my father consider becoming the pot smoking hipster himself. We have a shared a common love for the cinemas ever since and as for all the movies that I missed ,the 90' s wasn't a good decade for the silver screen anyway.
Points:
Time spent:
IP address:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
139,134 Literary Works • 672,414 Reviews
Okay, Nire here to review.
I actually look for articles to read,as i do not quite understand poetries and their various weird formats.
But.
I didn't quite understand your article, not entirely sure whether it is okay to call it an article. It is sounding more like a personal blog. And, it is indeed pretty hard to understand. You only talked about bollywood and indian movies and all that, you know? So, it is not easy for everyone to understand what you actually said. Like the way it is hard for me. Anyway.
You seemed to just criticize the whole cinema thing. They are not that bad though. There are pretty much a lot silly and not-so-silly mistakes i can see. I suggest you to revise.
And, another thing. I am very sorry if my review stinks. I don't know that much about bollywood and that, so, i don't know how to put this. But, i didn't find it interesting, reading the entire thing, i mean. Sorry about that.
Good days ahead.
Nire.
Nothing seemed to be interesting in the article. You had just criticized the cinema for its bad influence on people. Most of the sentence constructions were totally wrong. For example:
"
Similar outings had been planned before but were more often than not ,foiled, mostly by the well meaning Sharma Uncle
It should be as: Similar outings had been planned before but it was often foiled by means of Uncle Sharma.
"
After pouring down two scotches down the epiglottis and a third down his shirt he would rant on about how he wasted his youth following the dream of becoming an actor after watching too much theatre.
Try: After pouring two glasses of scotch down the epiglottis (?) and a third on his shirt (What do you mean by it?), he would rant on how he wasted his youth by following his dream of becoming an actor as inspired from the theatrical films.
Fears of naked girls running on the beaches must keep you away from beach not the theatre. State it clear, it misreads. I think you tried to mention about obscenes in cinema there.
You can replace 'sexually ignorant' with 'innocent'. The reason of your grandfather for the habit of betel chewing was strange. That's common, people get bad inspiration from some of the films. You should work more on grammar. Keep Writing.
As for the sentence constructions, I agree with you that they are a little overextended and hence have become haphazard structurally. But most of your other will kill the narrative which, as you've already mentioned, is hardly alive anyway.
"A third down his shirt" was in reference to his inebriated state.
And as for the betel chewing, that really was the reason why my real grandfather took up the habit.