~* Movies in the Monsoons*~. Review on INOX - Panaji - Goa

I was wondering what to write about in my next review. I then remembered that it was mentioned somewhere to write about your own experiences. So I decided to write about one of my great escapades in Goa :)

It was a Saturday... A very rainy Saturday. But a bit of water (major understatement) wasn’t going to stop me from having fun! And besides, my auntie had promised to take me to watch a movie. So we drove through the torrential rains, whilst the cars fought their wars of water spray. Scooterwaale rode at their own peril…

Finally we arrived at our destination – the huge INOX cinema complex built behind the old GMC (Goa Medical College) building. It is old; it used to look like the perfect setting for horror movies (think of all the dead bodies in the post-mortem department). But now its been painted a bright-yellow, so it resembles less of a haunted house and more of a museum (after all, we had to create a good impression on the people from IFFI).

The actual cinema complex had a kind-of space-age look to it. The tickets were being sold outside. How that works in the middle of the monsoons I really don’t know. Did we have to queue for tickets? No! Because we had pre-booked them and had them delivered to us at home :) Great idea…

Inside the building everything was just like the cinemas in the UK. Actually it went way past international standards. You definitely don’t get bhelpuri in a Cineworld! And there was even a tv to watch whilst waiting to enter the cinema hall. And guess who was dancing in some music video on the screen? I’ll give you a clue – she was wearing a horrible shade of red lipstick with a navy blue outfit, resembling some sort of air-hostess. And Shahid was not linked to her by the arm, lips or anywhere else. Just then my 7-year-old cousin, Sonu, decided to say to me “you look like Sanjana, na?” Do I need to mention whose name was Sanjana in MPKDH? Thanks Sonu, for saying that I resemble Kareena Kapoor. Thanks ever so much.

At that point I thought I felt seriously ill (I put that in the politest way possible), so I decided to pay a visit to the toilets. And, surprisingly, they did not worsen my condition of bad health! Ok, so they did look like silver ship storage crates from the outside, but they were kept in very good condition, clean.

When I came back out, I took another look around (5minutes for film to begin). And I smiled when I saw a very familiar logo on a banner/poster type thing- mouthshut.com! I presume it was advertising their INOX contest…

And at exactly 4:10, the doors opened and we made our way through to the cinema hall. The interiors looked smart, not like some tacky places I’ve had the poor fortune to have visited. It was fully air-conditioned. The walls had a reddish glow, and the place was huge! We went up the steps to find our seats, which were in my favourite place (centre, near the top, but not back row). The seat were very comfortable, the type which fold back when you get off them (the ones which are there in practically every cinema hall on the planet).

The movie finally began. Or, rather, a sign came up saying please stand up. I was really confused at the point in time, because I had no clue what was going on. But then up came the Indian flag and everyone started singing the national anthem! It was strange, but the gesture was nice. My dad later told me that they used to always play the anthem at the end of the movie, but at that time everyone just got up and left.

Then the movie actually began! The first half was like a longgg series of advertisements – use this oil, paint walls with nerolac, take calcium sandoz, etc. Occasionally there was the ghost of John Abraham decked in white. The second half comprised of Amitabh Bachchan and Sharmila Tagore fighting a court case, and my little cousin constantly saying “Mamma, I want a chocolate”. Need I say I was watching Viruddh? Lets just say that the comfort of the cinema made the film a lot more enjoyable…

After the movie finished, we exited through the exit (I bet, you would have never have guessed that). The exit led straight out to the car park, where it started raining again! We then went to Café Coffee Day, but that’s another story :)

Thanks for reading, comments will be most appreciated!