At The Movies
We are like any other Indian family and love our dose of Bollywood. Some of the first few dates most Indian couples go are to movies as the dark theater offers a good amount of well … Entertainment (it’s a family blog if you have forgotten).
Now with multiplexes mushrooming in every corner of most cities, most of us have abandoned simple joys of life like a walk in the park or the magic of great outdoors.
Ever since we became parents our outing to theaters were restricted to animation movies as they were the only one that the elder one would allow us to watch.
Things became further complicated with the 2nd daughter coming to in our life. Now this kid loves her animation and other stuff like any normal kid, but by now our elder one all has developed a taste for Bollywood.
So soon we started going to Bollywood movies again with the kids in tow. Both me and missus will carefully do research about the content and dialogues of the movies trying to go to as clean a movie as possible now a days. Not an easy task when every movie has an item number where Sheelas and Munnis are competing for your attention.
But soon we learned a thing or two once again about movie watching with the kids.
- Always take corner seats, closest to the exit door, you never know when one of your kids will declare the movie sucks and you need to get out.
- You learn to be a barrier between the kids so Missus on corner, then kid no 1, then you, then kid no 2. You don’t want people to stop watching movie and watch your kids practice punching on each other. (And these are girls!)
- No matter how economical the family pack of nachos or popcorn is, please for god sake don’t be a cheap father; always buy individual grossly overpriced single pack of popcorn for each kid. You may miss this one if you are ok with popcorn wars in the cinema hall.
- You will soon start believing that your kids are clairvoyant, as the moment a twist in the plot is about to be unfolded one of them will have an urgent need to go to the bathroom. Spend a good amount of time there and come back and declare “ Not coming”
- Be ready to cover your eyes when your 4 year old daughter tells you, “Papa don’t watch that Nangu aunty, she is hardly wearing anything” Your wife secretly notices the comment, parks it safely, to be used in the next SDS ( spousal disagreement session), a name we have given to our screaming sessions, when she is out of arguments.
- If all else fails, the younger one decides she does not likes the movie and wants to go out immediately. Soon instead of watching movie you are taking a hike in the food court of the multiplex. The icing on the cake you are the only parent with a kid in tow walking the food court, while thousands other are blissfully watching the movie behind the closed door.
- You cool down the kids nerves with some hot French Fries (ever wondered how hot French fries cool down the hottest temper of a kid?). So you decide to go back to the theater, only you have forgotten the Audi your movie is being played and you enter the wrong Audi. So instead of Deepika Padukone on the screen you have the Avatar fight in full form and the kids gives a scream on seeing a bullet piercing a chest. You rush out and try to explain to her about computer graphics and science fiction. Wrong timing.
Dear readers next time you are in a multiplex and see a poor guy trying to calm a hyperactive kid and feeding her French fries, please don’t judge him for his parenting skills. You are free to judge him for picking the wrong movie, but not for his parenting skill.
Sasha and Prasad Np are proud parents of 2 girls whom they fondly call Princess and Pinkette. He wears many hats after taking a break from being corner office critter for a long time. He is now an entrepreneur, blogger, photographer, traveler and a potential investor in start-ups with unique concepts especially if they are in travel related business. He blogs at Desi Traveler, and can be reached at Facebook and Twitter.
