TGIF

If you are ever a tad depressed, lonely or upset on a Friday evening and have near-suicidal feelings or self pity, take my advice and go to the nearest VCD store to get a VCD. Doesn’t matter if you don’t have a VCD player. Just go there. You will realize that there are people like you or worse off than you, and may be you will even pick up a good title or two in the bargain.

Friday evening 9 PM, VCD Express, Aundh. I go to get a copy of Lord of The Rings Part III. They are about to close the store (they have a life). There are at least 8 people in the semi dark store, besides the three store guys.

In one corner, two girls are arguing whether they should watch a romantic film or a horror film. In another corner, a group is having a debate on whether to watch an English classic or a Hindi thriller.

I go in and ask for LOTR part III. The store guy is so happy with my decisiveness that he makes the mistake of asking me whether I want something else too. Three minutes and 10 titles later I am glued to the place. The conversation around me has me terribly interested. I don’t want another film. I just want to watch the fun.

In this group of two girls and a guy, the guy is terribly bored and least interested in films of any sort except porn (you can see that by the way he is eyeing the adult film titles), but of course he can’t watch porn with his wife and sister around. So he doesn’t give a damn about what they r going to see. He just hollers every 10 seconds "guys pick a film fast".

Meanwhile the girls have a serious problem. Every film falls into one of three categories - either one of them has seen it, or they have heard of it and it is a bore, or they are not sure about it bcos they haven’t heard of it.

It’s hilarious just to observe these people, on a Friday evening, at a VCD store. The way there faces are, you'd think somebody would hang them if they picked up a wrong VCD. People probably go through more mental permutations while picking up a VCD, than when they are choosing a college or choosing the nations prime minister.

Sometimes having a choice can make your life so much more difficult and unpleasant. I see these people and can’t help but pity them. Here they are on a Friday night. Surrounded by 300 VCD titles and they can’t pick up a film. And they can’t go home either. Their evening is ruined anyway. The moment they pick a film and come out of the store, they will feel shitty cos they will remember the hundred other films that they always wanted to watch and were better than this one. And if they don’t take a film, they will feel shitty anyway bcos there were so many nice films and they didn’t pick any and now they don’t know what to do with the evening. Believe me; having choices sometimes ruins your life.

Reminds me of my days in college. Every weekend we had this big argument about which films we would see over the weekend. For starters no one could remember a single good film that everyone had wanted to see. All 10 of us suffered a simultaneous selective memory loss. Then there was this huge controversy about almost every kind of topic that could be controverted on - Hindi or English, porn or not porn, action or romance. It was crazy to see everyone arguing intensely as the evening rolled on.

Finally, after a couple of name calling and brainstorming sessions, we'd decide to go get a particular VCD. The normal routine was for the VCD store to either not have that film, or have it on a camera print. So the two of us who'd volunteered to go get a film, would be a huge life shattering fix, having to decide a new film on the spot that would be acceptable enough to the others, or risk being crucified.

Sometimes life would be good to us, or seemingly so, and we would get the VCD. Happily we'd get on our bikes, buy some chips and cold drinks on the way, and with expectations raised, get back home. The lights would be switched off, the junta would gather and start bickering about the most comfortable places, and there would be a lot of commotion and excitement in general. Two of us meanwhile would be trying to get the computer up (we had an old old box in those days that took ages to do anything) and put the CD in - only to find that the CD was corrupt.

That started another round, of troubleshooting and computer gimmicks - none of which of course would work. A corrupt VCD was a corrupt VCD. And every one would curse the computer, then curse the volunteers who had gone to get the VCD and the volunteers would reply back and everyone would be insulting everyone else’s mothers, fathers or sometimes even neighbors. In general it would be much fun. The brunt of this would have to be faced by the person who was unfortunate enough to own the old old box that refused to play VCDs that had been scratched, eaten upon or stuck together with cello tape.

Most of these VCD viewing sessions culminated in our giving up the entire exercise, returning the VCD and then whiling away the remainder of the evening through other means. In retrospect I find it rather weird that this entire episode repeated itself so many times through the two years we were in college. But I guess everyone had more fun in going through these motions and ending up not watching some stupid film. We usually ended up hanging around the tank bund (in Hyderabad) or on the terrace of our flat. That was anyway much more fun than any film on earth. And we all knew that in the back of our minds always.