Ponto de Vista

For more years than I can remember, I’ve wanted to go see a film at Deepak Talkies, one of the few single screen cinemas in my neighborhood. When we moved to Prabhadevi in 1987, Kirti Talkies on Caddell Road had recently shut, but was still a landmark. These ‘Talkies’, by virtue of their location, catered to mill workers who inhabited the charming two-story tenements that dot Lower Parel and Prabhadevi, and are now being replaced with ugly metal and glass high-rises wherever you look.
Every time I cross Deepak Talkies on my way back from Lower Parel, I try
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What a thrill, right? To see my brother’s film posters on buses and walls 🙂 But the movie was unfortunately timed; it released with 8 other films and was almost totally ignored by the mainstream press (Ok, the Mumbai Mirror did review it and decimated it, but the Times Group seemed to have decided to boycott it. Others said they’d had to choose three or four of the eight and “Toss” just didn’t make the cut).
So, we tried to salvage some of it by creating a buzz in the social media fraternity and while that didn’t really take off either (logistics, quick-changes of movies in theatres, I left for Cambodia), it interestingly garnered a mention as a sort of case study in Campaign India magazine. It didn’t talk about the results, but I’m glad someone noticed the effort! Read the story Do Indian Bloggers affect consumer views? here. What do you think?

We went out in the sweltering, mind-melting heat to catch a film recently and on the way, 5 minutes from the venue, 6 minutes from the start of the movie, our auto broke down. The driver said “do minute, madamji, sirf do minute,” but we didn’t believe him. Shame on us. He literally took under two minutes to pop out a spare tire from under his driver seat, prop up his scooter with a handy stick (no jack around), undo the bolts, pop out the punctured tire, replace it with a new one and vrrooom, we were off…