Friday, March 12, 2010

The Jiyala n Hyd Biryani connection…

One of the main time pass activities in Kolhapur where I was sentenced for two years was watching movies. My diary of those days tells me that by the end of the stay I had watched more than a hundred and twenty five movies. We would go as a group to watch any kind of flicks that ranged from naughty ones like Sirocco to classics like Titanic. We also watched a lot of Hindi films too like Dil Se to more nondescript ones like Mere Sapno ki Rani. Super flops like Prithvi and Jhoot Bole Kuwa Kate can also be included in our list.

This will give you an idea how desperately devoid of entertainment our college life was.

One Friday in my final semester, our HR class as usual got over early. Three out of the six who were in class thus decided to go for a movie. We took an auto and landed up this place just beyond the railway station. There were a lot of theatres and cinema halls in Kolhapur and so getting a ticket was not an issue. However there were hardly any options. Jiyala was a movie that had a lot of TV publicity. From the very name we did not seem to like it but still decided to go in.

The movie lived up to our expectations. It was hopeless and the three of us were feeling miserable for having spent our money. On our return to our hostel, we decided to not let anyone know how bad our experience was. In fact we gave raving reviews and thus by evening another set of hostel inmates decided to go for the movie. When they came back they were so dejected that they wanted to blow us originals apart but realised that they had been fooled. To ensure that they were not the only ones fooled they too decided to give a 5 star rating to the movie. As a consequence, by Sunday everyone had seen the movie in the hostel and declared it a hit.

Even today when we meet sometimes we make fun of this Jiyala adventure of ours.

Hyderabadi Biryani too I feel has a similar thing about it.

I think long years ago some disgruntled traveller to Hyderabad must have had to gulp down the 100% substandard and barely edible Biryani at the Paradise hotel and the revenge continues to haunt us.

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