The Chetta Spirit Rockksss!!!

For the uninitiated, Chetta is the Mallu equivalent for Brother or “bhai”, and being in Kerala I need to use this word to attract attention of a passer-by if I want some help to find my way on the road. To avoid being sexist, let me also introduce the Mallu equivalent for the other gender, “Chechchi”, fondly used to address the lady working at the coffee vending machine in the campus.

Many of you may ask now, why am I teaching you Mallu at the first place? The reason is the adventures we had last night when we went to watch the movie Om Shanti Om. Being in Chetta land, we were highly fortunate to be able to watch a Hindi movie at the first place. The tickets are dirt cheap, you get to sit in a balcony seat, which we have long forgotten with the Multiplex era, and that too in 35 rupees (We spent 100 bucks on travel though). Compare this to the price of a pack of popcorn in PVR Gurgaon!!! And one more thing, you can stretch your legs also for maximum comfort. Coming back to the experience, I should divide the fun in two parts, the paid fun and the unpaid fun.

The movie was fun. The only condition is that you need to leave your brain either in the car or if you forgot to do that, put it on the seat next to you. Once you have done this, you are ready for an awesome joy ride. It starts with Rishi Kapoor dancing with Shahrukh, it shows you Manoj Kumar being beaten by the security guards, it shows you Deepika Padukone (God! She is Gorgeous, we will come to it later) dancing with Sunil Datt and Rajesh Khanna, it shows you flying Shahrukh Khan etc etc. And believe me, I enjoyed it!! The story is copied and the movie makes it clear in the first scene itself. The director nowhere pretends about showing a sensible and logical movie. Deepika looks stunning but is grossly underutilized. She doesn’t get any screen time, every moment of it is gobbled by SRK who looks ugly and malnutritioned dancing topless in the item song. Now here lies the difference, in Chetta land the entire crowd goes mad as soon as SRK makes an appearance on the screen and goes silent when Deepika appears. Whistling is on full swing for SRK but Deepika draws a blank crowd. From previous encounters with Chettas, it is also reported that the same was observed in the movie DON with Kareena and Priyanka failing miserably in luring Chettas with their pelvic thrusts. SRK is a craze here. I have never seen such loud claps, whistles and shouting for SRK before in my life.

The best part of the movie was when the projector stuck for 15 minutes. In such a case, some hooliganism is expected but we were shocked to see Chettas dancing and singing. Imagine 20-30 chettas singing Mallu songs and dancing bhangra to their own tunes, slapping chairs to generate some background score for it. The same situation in Delhi would have caused a silence resembling a morgue with a boy watching his girlfriend popping the popcorns with amazing grace and the same situation in Bihar would have caused a riot with the manager being beaten up. It was amazing to see the spirit of fun and enjoyment in a moment of frustration. Chettas rock!!!

I am longing to go back for a movie again there and praying for a power failure again. The net return on 35 rupees can nowhere be more than in a movie at Chetta land. Once again, Chettas and the spirit of Chettas surely rock. They sure know how to enjoy a movie. Way lot to learn, Delhi!!