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So there is this huge discussion going on amongst some of the authors about “quality” posts. Tons and tons of bytes being used to explain why “quality” posts are needed, PFC needs some standards, there have to be rules, guidelines et. all.

And since “I’m like that only”, I’ll break the rules and write the shittiest posts of all. Right from the heart. About my honest to motherfucking life’s enchantment with movies. Sorry for so many “fucks” in the same sentence… but then I warned you… I’m writing the shittiest one, but right from the heart post.

Why do you, dear reader love cinema? Inspite of the 99% bad junk… sorry… make it… really mother fucking bad junk thrown at you? In other words why the fuck do you and I spend 99% of our time in celluloid trash?

Simple. It’s passion. I don’t know where you got it from (do share in the comments if you care), but I got it from before I was born.

You see Mom was addicted to cinema. Skipping class to run to watch the latest movie in the two standing theaters of old town Gurdaspur. She would be lost in those movies. Even today any black and white movie appears in front of her eyes for even a fraction of a second and she can rattle down the names of actors, director, producer, the story and whatever happened during the making of a movie.

She’s a fucking encyclopedia of B&W Bollywood movies. Would she slap me if she saw I used the “f” word in the same sentence as her. You fucking bet she would. But then again, this is supposed to be a low quality post.

My parents, when moved to Bombay, had a weekly Saturday evening routine. Have a light Bhelpuri-Lassi dinner at Jain Sweet and Bhelpuri House in Kandivili before walking to watch the 9-12pm show at Sona Talkies. The theater I hear seems to have made way to a multiplex. Back then, it was a nice family theater, till Jeetendra’s white shoes and the crowd it attracted threw out the middle class family from the theaters for the next decade. Anyways, that light dinner and the 9-12 Saturday show was like some kind of pilgrimage my parents took each weekend.

22 years later, I took my mom to the same theater, with tickets paid from my life’s first paycheck. The movie, alas was 1942 A Love Story. Had the movie been something I liked, I swear I would have engraved it in gold, as 1992 My first Paycheck story… mother fucking son of a bitch… how did Vidhu Vinod Chopra fall in the movie… Did he have to fall so hard on my first paycheck… MY FIRST FUCKING PAYCHECK… but then quality is in the eye of the beholder… for example - Look at Ron Jeremy… now don’t ask me who he is… This is a low quality post not a porn one.

Well let’s get back to how you and I have the passion. Sorry. It’s my post so it means it’s all about “my” passion. ( I know I can be a prick at times… it’s a GGG… God Given Gift)

So oz and his mini me (Who is mini me? Read desitrain) arrive on Mother earth. The opening credits… produced by mom and dad… directed by oz’s mini-me. I tell ya. There’s this old dialogue in a Harold Robbins novel… a man spends 9 months getting out of a woman, and then spends the rest of his life trying to get back into it… Ooops did I offend any of you? Sorry… but read the title of this post again will ya?

Fast forward. So I’m two years old now… and am not talking. I can walk. I can run. I can kick ass. But when it comes to dialogues… fucking shit… I can’t talk (yeah we know how that has gone) not even a papa, mama or a mother fucking “meeneee mee”. Nothing.

They take me to the doctors. After spending a lot of my dad’s money, the rich and the famous doctors don’t get anywhere. It’s then when on the advise of an old friend (it’s always that old friend) that Dad takes me to this doctor who has a dingy old clinic in which if three patients sneeze at one go, the whole damn clinic falls apart.

The old doc looks at me. Look at my dad… and his first question is…

“How many of you in the house where this boy lives?”

Dad replies

“Three… me, my wife and this idiot” (well he’s always called me an idiot… and honestly Sirjee is a lot of Dad-jee)

The doc with the almost falling apart clinic replies…

“Turn on the transistor (that’s what they called the radio in those days) and keep the kid in front of it for all day and night. Come back to me in a month”

“So what’s your fees doctor?”

“Nothing”

Next whole month I’m listening to “Vividh Bharati” the only goddamn understandable radio channel.

A month later my first words pop out.

“Babumoshai”

I kid you not. My first words were not Mummy, Daddy or Mini me… it was Babu moshai from the movie Anand who’s dialogues and songs were constantly playing on radio.

So where did you and I get the passion for cinema? Hmmm… I wonder?

It gets worse. I stole money. A lot of money from my parents. To buy tickets for movies.

Let’s rewind and fast forward. So I’m talking…. push the fast forward button say 16 years later.

Now I’m not sure what the situation in India is now, but back in the eighties if you were depressed, you could either drink alcohol, go distract yourself by watching a movie or visit your friendly neighborhood astrologer. The word psychiatrist still was an alien undecipherable language back then.

Since at the age of 15 options one and three were out of question. Option two was chosen by yours truly. Shatrughan Sinha’s “Bhawani Junction” was the first movie I watch by using my pocket money and skipping school. The producer of Bhawani Junction must be a very lucky man, cause I was really depressed for three consecutive fucking days and watched the 12-3 show of the movie three days at a stretch.

I think I was the only person in the theater, the third day of the show.

Well, watching movies by skipping class was a neat distraction. I got “horny”… wanted to see each and every movie in Bombay. And when problems arose I would try every trick in the book to get to watch the movie. Like I came back dejected 16 times from the Jaya theater in Borivili which was showing the movie “Mard”. Reason? The tickets being sold in “black” were more than what I had in my pocket. 17th time lucky though. The scalper got tired and took pity on me seeing me go back dejected each day. He sold me the ticket for 2 bucks less to let me see the movie… which I did by sitting in the first row my neck tilted at a ninety degree angle and my eyes moving from the extreme left corner to the exxxxxxtreme right corner each time Amitabh Bachchan walked from the left to the right of the screen.

Passion makes your eyes go groovy I say.

It’s never about the quality. It’s always about what hit your heart. And that’s why some of us become so attached to this medium both as a maker or as a viewer. You come out of the theater after watching a movie that hit you, you never go thinking about how low the production quality was or the shot taking was too amateurish or how bad the editing was… no… all you do is look back at the ticket window of the theater and go I’ve gotta come back and take another look

It’s a relationship. You fall in love again and again. With each new movie that hits your heart and pulls it’s strings.

It was never about quality. It was about - always - the heart.

You never go mute amongst your friends when you talk about cinema? And that’ what it has been for me. Talking to you is just like talking to you… a friend or an acquaintance or a stranger talking about the movie during the interval (ah! Memories of Drohkaal)… you speak, I speak and we indulge ourselves more in this itsy bitsy tiny thingy called movies.

Call me old fashioned… but I’m like that only. These heavy duty management words of quality, streamlining and such, make no sense to me. If it strikes my heart, I’m in love… and that’s all there it is to it… be it movies or write a post on PFC… quality be damned… and if you are still reading this line… I think I haven’t done a bad job either… Adios!