To ESCAPE from Cellphone

Most of the times you choose the movie you want to watch. Sometimes the movie chooses you. Sometimes the movie you watch would fit perfectly to your mood, so perfectly, that you can draw some ideas out of it. Whether you build on those ideas or not, is secondary. Under an extremely irritated work environment and stressful time, which might go on endlessly, that I took this day off from work, switched off my mobile phone and escaped to watch a movie alone.

Coming to think of mobile phones I feel I have got Telephon-o-phobia of late. How would you fell if your work condition is such that you might get phone call any time? That too I'm not in public service. I'm not a doctor. I'm not in call-center business, to be getting calls at odd times. I'm not a stock broker and late nights are not when markets function. Shit happens. Even the thought of being without a mobile phone is so liberating. World would look so beautiful with lots of sparrows instead of tall cellphone towers. World would sound so pleasing to your ears when birds chirp, instead of cellphones scream.

Taking just my wallet and NO mobile phone, smelling freedom in the air, I jumped in to some bus, not having decided which theater to go or what movie to watch. When you are unsure of what to watch and you have plenty of time in hand, 'Express Avenue - Escape Cinemas' is the right place to be. Of all the movies, I chose "Zindago Na Milegi Dobara". Dil Chahta Hai is one of my all-time favorite films, and I liked Rock On too. So I decided to watch ZNMD for Farhan Akhtar without much thought. I don't understand Hindi that well but one needn't know Hindi that well to watch Hin-glish movies nowadays. The movie was thoroughly entertaining, impressive and helped me get out of my bad mood. It was DCH-like. It was RockOn-like. And it was in parts like Spanish government's advertisement film. But who cares! It had some stunning visuals, nice music and its own good moments.

In a scene when Hrithik keeps getting phone calls from his work place in London, while driving in Spain, Farhan (ZNMD's version of DCH's Saif Ali khan) grabs his mobile phone and throws it out! How I wish someone does that to me! I can only switch off my phone for today but have to switch it on tomorrow again. How painful. It was like a signal to me, asking me to throw away cellphone and feel liberated. Not just about cellphone, but the entire movie was like that. Like asking me to throw all nonsense and jump out and do what my heart says. Very much like Paulo Coelho says in 'The Alchemist' - "Look out for signals around you, there will be clues around". Very few films have mad me feel this way. "Into the wild" being the most prominent and the most influential of them. "Bucket list", the next. And "The motorcycle diaries". Purposeless travels, but very meaningful ones. That's exactly what I like the most.

--S--