The queue was bloody long . It reached till the empty patch of land outside . The movie Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak had just released at the theatre and was greeted with an enormous response . the reviews were good and we all landed to see the movie , fifteen of us straight from the college at five pm for the six pm show . Fifteen engineering students armed with a strategy to see the movie on its' first day of release and it's second show in town .
We stood in the queue impatiently , as usual , we wanted to see the movie and wouldn’t go back without seeing it . Come hell or highwater . Getting the tickets was the issue as always , but we were armed with strategies , a sum total of our experience from buying bulk movie tickets many times in the past . To return without seeing the movie was definedly shame and akin to flunking an exam .. The queue was quite well behaved till about fifteen minutes before the movie . Then suddenly all hell broke loose , as everyone wondered if they would get the tickets at all and why the queue wasn’t inching ahead at all . A typical reaction to a stationary queue anywhere in India .As everyone started shouting , we broke into three teams , one that would attack the counter straight breaking the queue and adding to the confusion , the other would break the middle of the line so that the middle of the queue din’t protest the commotion at the counter when team1 landed there and the last five at the back would hold their positions in case the first team didn’t manage to get the tickets . The hefty musclemen standing guard sprung into action , brandishing their lathis . The first hit managed to send no message as the two guys who bore the brunt of the lathi swore back and engaged him in a verbal duel.
‘Look at the counter , there’s absolute confusion . If you have balls, get them in line ‘
‘First you get into the queue , b* ’
‘Am standing where I was standing , m* ’
The thing with dirty abuses is that ; if a stranger does it , you revolt . If your friend voices them , they are part of a seemless conversation with no malintent . Anyone unknown using the b or m word to you is cause for a fight .
That’s exactly what happened .
The guy in the queue shouted back , ‘ Go and tell this to your dad . You m* ’
The dhoti clad six foot hefty guard brandished his bamboo stick and hit him harder .
Three man broke queue and punched the guard .
There was utter chaos .meanwhile at the counter window , there was some success . I pushed in my hand with the money . Some three hundred bucks . Twenty bucks was a balcony ticket , and we saw balcony all the time .
Just the hand thrust in was not enough , you needed to shout for attention and your hand was part of a set of ten hands being thrust at the same time .The guy at the counterwindow would engage with you only when he took the money from your hands .
Just as the burly man at the counter took money from my hand , a powerful force grabbed me back . Another guard had got to me . Bargi and Khot had held him back for some time , but he managed to reach the counter through brute force and a thick bamboo stick .
‘Get back . You broke the queue , get back , get back ‘
‘My money is inside , ‘ said me , just managing to tell the guy at the counter for fifteen tickets .
The guard let go of me and I emerged unscathed through the mass of flesh of people at the counter , sweating profusely .
We had a good laugh , the movie was fun and memorable .
And most movie tickets , we bought this way till one day ,Maheswary had an idea . He suggested that we tie-up with the manager for tickets . Some kind of a pre-booking everytime a movie would be released , blocking fifteen tickets with payment in advance . No theatre manager bought the concept . Trade practice demanded that they block the tickets themselves and sell it in ‘black ‘ at five to ten times the value of the ticket . This was dynamic pricing at its best . Each blockbuster movie guaranteed that the demand for tickets went high and prices shot through the roof , making a parallel booking system with select vendors selling the tickets at this unauthorized premium . It would always force us to make a choice – to see the movie with this high premium , skip it for another day or negotiate it down to a mutually acceptable price ?
Yesterday , seeking relief from a tiring work day in Bangalore , I wanted to see a movie ‘Gangster’ .The movie released just a day back , with rave reviews for Shiny Ahuja , the star of the movie . I logged onto the net , checked the theatres it ran in , only to find one single ticket available in PVR at Forum in Koramangla . Netizens in Bangalore generally don’t leave a ticket free . All theatres , all shows were booked , except for this one . I clicked on it , paid for it by the credit card , and got a confirmation number .
Later in the evening , I glided upto the ticket counter on the fifth floor through its four escalators at the swanky mall, Forum .
There was a small queue of five people buying different movies . A slim , meek and small girl no more than eighteen or nineteen , was manning the counter .
On my turn , I gave her the confirmation number .
The screen showed the seat I had bought in a sort of position chart of all seats in the theatre .
Sitting in great airconditioning , with a well mannered crowd , she probably doesn't know what it was like to see a movie years back .
She punched out a ticket and gave it to me with a smile.
One can’t fight any longer for first day first shows , as there are neither first day first shows nor fights for tickets , atleast in urban India . We have moved from an economy of scarcity to an economy of abundance . While theatres then showed four shows a day , multiplexes show upwards of fourteen a day . There's a movie after every half hour that you land in a multiplex .The concept is to hold movie premieres where the actors would watch the movie with you and you could quiz the actors , directors and producers on key aspects of the movie, mostly a day or two before it opens to public. Also ,there are paid previews , you can pay and see it earlier than its public release .
Great seats , some like Fame adlabs in Andheri have 180 degree seats that become beds , smaller plots , shorter movies and swanky multiplexes .
No sweating , swearing , scuttling or strategy . And no black !
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