The Flight Of Love

Being in love is the best feeling in the world. You know the best part about being in love is this feeling to just share it with the rest of the world. And there is no love like teenage love or is there?

 It was those times when going to the movies was a big affair. It was a thing that was planned in advance and well frankly there were very few cinema halls and if the movie was good there could be a good chance that you could be returning after looking at the Houseful Board. Now my parents weren’t exactly what you could call movie buffs. In fact they were far from it. So as a child I don’t remember going to the movies a lot, well at least not as much as some of my other friends who went for almost all the movies that were released. We only went to watch those movies that were really popular hits.

But everybody around me was going ga-ga about these two movies that had recently come out. ‘Hum aapke Hain kaun’ and ‘Karan /Arjun’. My friends Supreet told me how he was going with his family to Jalandhar to watch the movies the next weekend. And Bonnie had already watched hum aapke hain kaun with his family. They were my two closest friends from out of school and we would hang out together as long as we were allowed to venture out. So once the weekend was over Supreet too had come back from watching the ‘hum aapke hain kaun’. And now both of them talked about the same movie. I really was clueless in the whole talk and felt really out of place. These were my closest friends and I couldn’t relate to a word they said. I was feeling alienated already. As an air force kid, we were used to feeling alienated every now and then as we would be air forced into a new environment with our fathers gettin posted every couple of years or so. Making new friends took time, forgetting old ones even longer. Heart would rarely mend itself. 

But this was a whole new ball game altogether. Supreet and Bonnie had been friends before my father had got posted here. And it had taken a few months, before I was sharing the same level of friendship with them both, as they shared with each other. But now with this movie, the dynamics had changed. There was only one thing to be done. 

Now I had never been a child who demanded a lot of things. In fact, I can count on fingers the things that I had asked for. So I suppose it must have come as a surprise to my parents when I went up to them and told them.

“When are we going to watch Hum aapke hain kaun,”, I had asked in the casual way that it was expected everybody had to watch the movie, because everybody was watching the movie. The songs were already super hit.

“We can go, I heard its good”, my father added. He was somebody who loved watching movies more than my mother.

“Do we have to? You see”, my mother added in a rhetoric manner more disinterested than anything else.

“This weekend we can”, my father said he finished his dinner. He was always a fast eater.

“And karan arjun also”, I added excitedly hoping that we could watch the movie. 

“Now we are not going to watch all the movies. I am watching you are not eating the vegetables”, said mom with an intent.

As a child, I believed making sure you are eating vegetables was the top agenda for any mother. All my friends were forced to eat vegetables by their mothers. Sometimes my mother would complain to my father that I ain’t finishing my vegetables and depending upon his mood that day he would either scold me or just say “listen to what you mom says”.I believe he or any fathers out there were not concerned much about whether you are eating vegetables, but would comment on it to please the mothers or to get them off their back.

Today was not that day, as I quickly ate the vegetables because I wanted a double victory. My friends had only seen the one movie and if I could watch the other one before them I would be prepared for any scenario. So it was not so much my interest watching the movie but more of a preemptive action.

“So we are going to watch the two movies?”, I asked innocently finishing my vegetables. Avoiding my mother's gaze and looking at my father for some support.

“We will see, first finish your dinner”, said my mother with a reproachful look.

“Yeah, let's watch one first”, said my father who walked out of the room. He was heading to the tv room and the discussion was over as far he was concerned. 

I’d would always be the last one to get up from the dinner table, as I ate slowly and talked a lot. My mother would always be kind enough to give me company. She would then clear the table and sometimes I’d help her out. We would have our own little talks, and today's topic was how children shouldn’t watch so many movies. She recounted how as a child they had only seen a handful of movies. Once when the school took them and once this happened and.. My attention had trailed off as it would often do to another world. I imagined how I would like my school to take to movies.

That weekend we went to Jalandhar to watch “hum aapke hain kaun”. It was like watching a dream. And Madhuri Dixit looked no less than a fairy princess to me in that movie. Her frilly dresses and songs like the title track had me travel beyond time and space. I saw myself in the movie holding her hand under the table instead of Salman khan, and dancing to the tunes of those songs. It was an amazing experience. And when we came out of the cinema hall after watching the Matinee show. It was like waking up from a dream and walking into the dreariness of a dull life. It took me a while to get my eyesight to get used to the sunlight outside and longer for my mind to come out of the movie. My heart never made it out of the movie. People had fallen in love. I was flying in love.

I was in love. I was in love with cinema. I knew it there and then that I wanted to be an actor. I want to be a Hero. My heart was bursting with this joyous realization. And I wanted to share this with the whole world. But I was shy about sharing this with anyone. It was my closest kept secret. I was scared, my mother would disapprove of it and that the rest of the people would make fun of me. It would take me twenty years or so to start working in this field. And I’m still, with this love that has kept me flying through thick and thin. The love of my life. We couldn’t watch karan Arjun though because of house full.

The next day I was excited to meet my friends to be a part of this conversation. Supreet and Bonnie lived in bungalows that stood opposite to each other across the street. We lived in the bungalow in the adjoining. Though the distance measure hardly 100 mtrs, it felt much longer.

I took out my bicycle and raced in the evening at 5. That was the time we met as the sun would be less harsh and the time we would be allowed to go out. Supreet was already waiting to greet me and Bonnie joined after I did. 

I told them excitedly, I saw ”Hum aapke hain kaun” over the weekend, with the hope of being on the same page in the conversation.

They told me they saw ‘Karan Arjun’ over the weekend. And it was back to same dynamics, I was the new guy without a clue what the talk was all about.