A Cute Movie, but strange evening

Last evening we did a “Shayantan”. What is a Shayantan, I’ll tell you in a bit.

After work, we decided to catch a flick at Fame South City Mall. Much to our disappointment when we reached the counter at about 8pm, the guy in the ticketing booth informed us that we’d have to come back since there wasn’t a single ticket booked yet for “My Mom’s New Boyfriend” which was showing at 10.20pm. We’d have to come back closer to the show time he informed us. So just keeping our options open, we asked if there were any other movies playing around that time, and were told quite enthusiastically “the International” was playing at 10.10pm and we could buy tickets for that show right as it had seats available. So just inquisitive about his hard sell tactic, I inquired about the movie and neither could he tell me who was in it nor what the movie was about, but still insisted that it was good. I didn’t want to dampen his enthusiasm, but politely said we’d be back closer to the show time.

So what would we do for two hours? We decided to do some shopping and dinner at the food court, which we managed comfortably given the two hours in hand. After we had done some shopping, we had some real (or so we think) value for money Gosht Biryani and Non-Veg Meal at the Food Court.

After Dinner we went to Fame and got tickets for the movie we wanted to watch and rather than sitting inside, we squatted on the wooden benches just outside the hall entrance, since the seating inside is pretty uncomfortable in the waiting area. Just about 5 minutes before the show we rushed in and went straight into the hall. The usher was given a brush off, since we always knew our seats, having picked them ourselves. So we were seated in D12 & D13. I just kept telling my wife, for some reason the seats seemed a bit off-centre compared to the ones we had picked in the hall layout when we were booking. Anyway the National Anthem played and we stood for it, followed by 3 ads for HDFC Life Insurance and then the FAME ads themselves. Finally we see the Censor Certificate and it says “The International”. And so it starts playing! For a moment or two we are quite perplexed and wonder if it’s a trailer for the movie? We had tickets for “My Mom’s new Boyfriend” and it was a bit past 10.20pm now. After a couple of seconds, which seemed like eternity, my wife starts insisting that they are showing the wrong movie in our hall, I on the other hand, believe we are probably in the wrong hall.

I look over my shoulder and see that the row behind us is empty, but remember seeing the booking sheet while we were selecting our seats and seeing that three entire rows behind our seats had been booked. So I decided to get up and my wife followed and we walked out, in fact by the time we were near the door, we were literally running with the usher in tow. Once we came out and stood in front of the doors, did we realise our blunder. We had tickets for Hall 2 and entered Hall 1, which was right alongside it. We immediately walked in and stopped dead in our tracks to stand to attention for the National Anthem yet again.

We then got seated and laughed through the first 10 minutes of the movie on our little “Shayantan” Adventure. Yeah the first time my wife introduced me to Shayantan was when he was running from one hall to another at INOX Forum Mall, having spent 10 minutes in the wrong hall watching the wrong movie. Since that day we had called it the “Shayantan” and didn’t really think we could be as spaced out to do a “Shayantan”. I guess everybody is loses it once in a while.

Back to the movie starring Meg Ryan, Antonio Banderas, Colin Hanks & Selma Blair, “My Mom’s New Boyfriend” is a comical thriller if I can call it one. It’s got bad guys, good guys; good guys who you think are bad guys and LOVE. Yes Meg Ryan’s speciality. So go watch it if you want. If you don’t you won’t miss much.