At an Indian Cinema.

Indians are avid movie watchers and it doesn’t take long to figure out why.

Life is grim and the movie is like a dream come true.

The teenagers flash around in fast cars, come from wealthy home, fall in love in exotic locations and never seem to have a job to do! What more can anybody ask for ?

Every music shop I passed in Palika Bazaar, an underground shopping centre where you get frisked by security men before you enter had the same song on. Roughly translated, it went " The world is a bride and India is the dot on the bride's forehead. This is my India, I love my India."

But if there is love, the Indian don’t show it.

At a shop in a place called KamalaNagar where tea was served in paper cups I was unable to find a bin to throw the cup in so I left it on the table. As I stepped out of the shop to move into another shop, I saw the attendant of the previous shop open the door and fling the cup out into the street. If there is love for a country, isn't keeping it clean one of the responsibilities? And this did not just end there. The streets remained filthy in most of the places I visited and the only place I ever saw sweepers studiously doing any work was in the Government area in Delhi where the foreign embassies are lodged.

Indians not only watch movies but they watch them resigned to a fate assigned to them.

At two cinemas in Amrtisar I observed how tickets were sold. There are three queues.. One for Gents, one for Ladies and one for the third sex, Military.

The ladies queue is short because ladies know the pitfalls of going to an Indian cinema where the hordes look at women the way wolves look at sheep.

The Gents queue is longer than long. The film is entitled "Ishq" which means "Love" It is a run of the mill movie about two men (rich as usual) who want to ensure their children marry into a house with a standing equal to their own.

15 minutes before the box office opens someone brings out a wad of tickets from the box office. They are worth 25 rupees but put on sale for 40 rupees. Idlers and queue jumpers with money to spare grab the tickets. The crowd in the queue waits with stoic silence. Not a murmur. It is black-marketing on the open. The tickets vanish fast. The crowd prays because they know that only a few tickets will be left to be put on sale at the box office.

When the idlers and others with money to spare have vanished with their tickets, the leftover tickets are taken back to the box office to be sold at the regular 25 rupees.

Needless to say, the further back you are in the queue the less your chances of getting a ticket.

But the Indians waited, resigned to their fate. The people who owned the cinema had their rights and they were just rank outsiders waiting to catch their dreams.

I thought this was just a one off happening at the night show but it happened again during a dayshow at another cinema.

Watching all this, I never failed to recollect the magic words from this song.

" The world is a bride and India is the dot on the bride's forehead. This is my India, I love my India."