A Perfect Itinerary

(Dedicated to Ani and Lincoln)

*Based on true events.

It was the 5^th day of November 2003 when The Matrix Revolutions released in India. Like all movie buffs, after watching the first two parts of the amazing Matrix trilogy, we were waiting for this big day. But to our dismay, we lived in a place called Warangal where English is the third language, after Telugu and Hindi. So leave alone English, the movie wasn’t even released in Hindi there. And I had promised myself, that I will watch the final part only in a theatre. So as ridiculous it may sound, I decided to go to Hyderabad (which is 150 kms away from Warangal) to watch it. Luckily, two of my dear friends, Animesh and Lincoln shared the same emotions for the movie and thus we grouped up to go and watch it first day in the IMAX screen at Prasad IMAX theatre. For those who don’t know it, Prasad IMAX was one of the very few IMAX theatres in the world and had the largest IMAX screen in Asia.

And thus the journey began. The plan was simple: we’d catch East Coast Express from Kazipet at 2:30 pm, reach Secunderabad by 5:45, quickly rush to the IMAX which is a couple of kms away from railway station and get the tickets for 7:30 pm show. Then we can easily catch a train by the night and get back by 2 am.

We started as expected. Right after our classes, we went to Kazipet, the nearest railway station. The train too was right on time and we managed to catch it easily. The journey was comfortable except that we had to keep standing all the time since there was no vacant seat. The train reached the destination timely and as soon as we got down we met our first trouble. While walking through the platform, a ticket inspector stopped us and took us to his office. I don’t know if he judged it by our speed of walking but he was right; we had no journey tickets. After acting stupid and making lame excuses for some time, we had to surrender. We paid Rs 100 per head under the table and bid farewell to the inspector.

Barely discouraged by the event, we quickly caught an auto-rickshaw and reached IMAX by 6:30. Ani rushed to the ticket window while I paid the autowala. There we met our second problem of the day. The lady in front of Ani bought the last ticket for the 10 pm show while the 7:30 show had already been sold out. We were not as stupid as you might be thinking right now; we had earlier tried to book the ticket on phone but they turned us down saying they don’t do it on credit, hence the risk. Now we were left with two options; either to buy tickets for next day morning show or look for another theatre. As we did not want to spend money for the night stay, we chose the latter.

With crushed dreams of watching The Matrix Revolutions on the big IMAX screen, we reached another theatre screening the movie. It was still around 7 pm. But again thanks to our destiny, the next show would start only at 10 o’ clock. That would mean that we’d reach college back only by 5:30 in the morning. Puffed up with our love for cinema (and to avoid embarrassment of returning without watching the movie) we went ahead and bought the tickets. While we were standing outside the theatre thinking how to while away the time, something pleasant happened. A car entered the premise and a scantily dressed beautiful young lady, with her face shining bright, stepped out of it. It’s amazing how our nervous system can quickly divert its attention. For the next few minutes, we forgot all the day’s events and just stared lustfully at her till she went away.

With enough time to get bored, we decided to go to Paradise restaurant and have the so called ‘best biryani of Hyderabad’. But the Murphy’s laws followed us there too. There was a long queue at the restaurant and we waited for an hour, standing, till we got a seat. Luckily the food was great and we ate like a bunch of slumdogs (lexicography courtesy Danny Boyle).  

It was the happiest moment of the day as we caught our seats inside the theatre and we kept ourselves fully engrossed for the next 130 minutes of the movie, except the small naps that Lincoln took while watching it. I and Ani were self proclaimed movie critics within our group of friends in college and the movie would definitely invite a lot of critical discussion of how disappointing it was. But as was the call of the moment, we pretended it was nice to keep each other’s morals high. With everything gone as wrong as possible, it was the time to get back to college and have a long sleep.

Though destiny rarely plays games with commoners like us, it plays well whenever it does. As we reached the railway station, we found out that no train was scheduled for Kazipet till the morning. With Lincoln already dozing off in the auto-rickshaw, we reached bus stand at around 1:30 am hoping to catch a bus. But there was no bus either till 3:30 am. We had no option but to sleep on the small benches, lying on each other, for two cold long hours.

We reached college by 7 in the morning, had breakfast in the mess and went straight to bed for a much deserved sleep. We never told anyone about the great excursion we had on that fateful day and would always recall it as a perfect itinerary.