Something you would try to fulfill unmindful of the risks and ridicule you will have to go through. That is the definition I will give for the word ‘passion’.
We Indians have a tendency to do what we see others doing. If it is fashion, it will be straight out of what an Italian or French did. If it is films then we take it from Hollywood. We have got music directors who lift from African and East Asian music. Our students don’t have the capability to think beyond MS or MBA or MBBS. We always had a tendency to look up to someone for inspiration. We end up doing things we are not at all passionate about.
I woke up one Thursday morning having decided to bunk office. As a matter of fact I have the tendency to bunk daily, but sadly I am not the CEO.
I glanced through the supplement of the daily. This news entirely hit me below the belt. CD/DVD sale in Beemapally is stopped.
As for the introduction to Beemapally, it is a Chori bazaar of Kerala. You get all kinds of pirated goods. But it has become famous for its pirated movies. You get the prints better than orginal ones and that too as soon as the movie is released. Because of the love to their motherland they have stopped selling Malayalam pirated ones or at least they claim to have stopped. The funny thing is cinema piracy in Beemapally got a shot in the arm when the CD rentals in Kerala was stopped. From then on even the common people started their purchases from Beemapally, until then BP was considered a ware house from where only big purchases were made. You would find films of all languages, of all nature, good ones, bad ones.
I got introduced to this place right after my college days. We friends had got hooked to Cinema. There was our friend Jabri who used to download and collect the DVDs after taking the top 100, top 250 list from IMDB. I too wanted to start my collection. That is exactly what I found in BP. There were rows and rows of classics from all over the world and that too at a low price. Who cared about the morality or legality anyways!!
BP had a famous mosque where a religious festival was done annually. The locality was ruled by the mosque and hence these mosque gave the traders the protection. The BP was a law unto itself.
But all these moral police, corporate houses in film industry, film producer cum stars were after BP traders because they were eating into their profits. These powerful guys were waiting to pounce on them at the slightest of excuses.
No one bothers to question these power houses because ‘anyone can buy anything using money’. Money became the king when it purchased our consciences. The purchase was done through news paper, TV, internet in other words ‘THE MEDIA’. People with money controls most of our media and hence most of our minds.
So when I read the news about the closure of DVD sales and the lame excuse given I was pretty much sure that these power houses had flexed their muscles. The papers claimed the reason as funding for terrorism, communal violence ...
I and my friend set out in the afternoon to find out if what we read in the papers were true and praying fervently that it is not. But sadly the cinema paradise was deserted and quiet as if all the angels had left. We could only see a couple of lost souls like us there.
We went ahead and asked the shop keepers we know if they will ever restart the sales. But all we got was negative responses and sometimes even unfriendly ones.
So I reconciled myself with stopping my DVD collection. But as the famous saying goes ‘the story had not ended’. One morning I was on the elevator going to my office on the top most floor. It was raining outside- sign of pleasant things to come. This fat angel called Arun smiled at me. I usually see him on the elevator but had not bothered to talk. I recalled seeing him once in BP. The elevator started its journey up. He worked two floors below mine for a different company. For a company we had a big shot manager in the elevator getting down in my floor.
He asked me ‘Did you know that they are conducting a secret sale for the unsold DVDs in BP?’
I was quite surprised. We stopped the elevator in Arun’s floor for about two or three minutes and he gave me the phone number of the contact person. I still remember the fuming face of the manager in the elevator. But I didn’t give a shit. I called the contact person, Ashraf, immediately. He was a sort of nice guy. He laid down some conditions. Since it is a secret purchase I will have to call him before setting out and after reaching there. They would take me in an auto to the secret place where the transfer is made. i said okay though with a tinge of fear. I have not done anything brave or anything illegal. I have not come into contact with any anti social guys. What if anything goes wrong?
But Ashraf went on extending the purchase daily. He would asked me to call in the morning, then afternoons, sometimes he didn’t pick up the phones too. That set the alarm bells ringing. My good friends warned me not to take the risk. So many ‘what ifs??’ came into picture. For the last time I made the call. Ashraf came with two new conditions. I have to make a purchase worth at least a 1000 bucks. I have to name the movies I wanted. I won’t be allowed to pick up and buy. I bargained and made the minimum limit to 700. He gave the address of the place where exchange will take place.
I set out in the evening. It was raining heavily. I had to make a lot of enquiries as very few people seemed to know the place. At last I found out the place to be a deserted, dark street. As I stood there waiting for him, fear crept into me. I was waiting in a place I didn’t know, for a person I hadn’t met with about 700 bucks in my pocket. Sometime later Ashraf came with a packet carefully covered and taped. It resembled a packet of hashish. I could not even check the packet there. He said it had 31 DVDs. How would I know. You cannot make a scene in a seedy place too. With a pounding heart I went home tor open the packet. As promised it had all the 31, with world class directors. I got it for a discounted price too. Now I have the works of people like Kim Ki Duk, Kurasowa, Iranian directors, Italians, Africans… I heaved a sigh of relief.
Looking back I know I did a foolish thing. I don’t know if I will do it again. But I am glad I did that…for something I loved...
We Indians have a tendency to do what we see others doing. If it is fashion, it will be straight out of what an Italian or French did. If it is films then we take it from Hollywood. We have got music directors who lift from African and East Asian music. Our students don’t have the capability to think beyond MS or MBA or MBBS. We always had a tendency to look up to someone for inspiration. We end up doing things we are not at all passionate about.
I woke up one Thursday morning having decided to bunk office. As a matter of fact I have the tendency to bunk daily, but sadly I am not the CEO.
I glanced through the supplement of the daily. This news entirely hit me below the belt. CD/DVD sale in Beemapally is stopped.
As for the introduction to Beemapally, it is a Chori bazaar of Kerala. You get all kinds of pirated goods. But it has become famous for its pirated movies. You get the prints better than orginal ones and that too as soon as the movie is released. Because of the love to their motherland they have stopped selling Malayalam pirated ones or at least they claim to have stopped. The funny thing is cinema piracy in Beemapally got a shot in the arm when the CD rentals in Kerala was stopped. From then on even the common people started their purchases from Beemapally, until then BP was considered a ware house from where only big purchases were made. You would find films of all languages, of all nature, good ones, bad ones.
I got introduced to this place right after my college days. We friends had got hooked to Cinema. There was our friend Jabri who used to download and collect the DVDs after taking the top 100, top 250 list from IMDB. I too wanted to start my collection. That is exactly what I found in BP. There were rows and rows of classics from all over the world and that too at a low price. Who cared about the morality or legality anyways!!
BP had a famous mosque where a religious festival was done annually. The locality was ruled by the mosque and hence these mosque gave the traders the protection. The BP was a law unto itself.
But all these moral police, corporate houses in film industry, film producer cum stars were after BP traders because they were eating into their profits. These powerful guys were waiting to pounce on them at the slightest of excuses.
No one bothers to question these power houses because ‘anyone can buy anything using money’. Money became the king when it purchased our consciences. The purchase was done through news paper, TV, internet in other words ‘THE MEDIA’. People with money controls most of our media and hence most of our minds.
So when I read the news about the closure of DVD sales and the lame excuse given I was pretty much sure that these power houses had flexed their muscles. The papers claimed the reason as funding for terrorism, communal violence ...
I and my friend set out in the afternoon to find out if what we read in the papers were true and praying fervently that it is not. But sadly the cinema paradise was deserted and quiet as if all the angels had left. We could only see a couple of lost souls like us there.
We went ahead and asked the shop keepers we know if they will ever restart the sales. But all we got was negative responses and sometimes even unfriendly ones.
So I reconciled myself with stopping my DVD collection. But as the famous saying goes ‘the story had not ended’. One morning I was on the elevator going to my office on the top most floor. It was raining outside- sign of pleasant things to come. This fat angel called Arun smiled at me. I usually see him on the elevator but had not bothered to talk. I recalled seeing him once in BP. The elevator started its journey up. He worked two floors below mine for a different company. For a company we had a big shot manager in the elevator getting down in my floor.
He asked me ‘Did you know that they are conducting a secret sale for the unsold DVDs in BP?’
I was quite surprised. We stopped the elevator in Arun’s floor for about two or three minutes and he gave me the phone number of the contact person. I still remember the fuming face of the manager in the elevator. But I didn’t give a shit. I called the contact person, Ashraf, immediately. He was a sort of nice guy. He laid down some conditions. Since it is a secret purchase I will have to call him before setting out and after reaching there. They would take me in an auto to the secret place where the transfer is made. i said okay though with a tinge of fear. I have not done anything brave or anything illegal. I have not come into contact with any anti social guys. What if anything goes wrong?
But Ashraf went on extending the purchase daily. He would asked me to call in the morning, then afternoons, sometimes he didn’t pick up the phones too. That set the alarm bells ringing. My good friends warned me not to take the risk. So many ‘what ifs??’ came into picture. For the last time I made the call. Ashraf came with two new conditions. I have to make a purchase worth at least a 1000 bucks. I have to name the movies I wanted. I won’t be allowed to pick up and buy. I bargained and made the minimum limit to 700. He gave the address of the place where exchange will take place.
I set out in the evening. It was raining heavily. I had to make a lot of enquiries as very few people seemed to know the place. At last I found out the place to be a deserted, dark street. As I stood there waiting for him, fear crept into me. I was waiting in a place I didn’t know, for a person I hadn’t met with about 700 bucks in my pocket. Sometime later Ashraf came with a packet carefully covered and taped. It resembled a packet of hashish. I could not even check the packet there. He said it had 31 DVDs. How would I know. You cannot make a scene in a seedy place too. With a pounding heart I went home tor open the packet. As promised it had all the 31, with world class directors. I got it for a discounted price too. Now I have the works of people like Kim Ki Duk, Kurasowa, Iranian directors, Italians, Africans… I heaved a sigh of relief.
Looking back I know I did a foolish thing. I don’t know if I will do it again. But I am glad I did that…for something I loved...
1 comment:
bheemappalli's sudden closure came as a shock...
really, the classics I saw there, I've n't seen anywhere else... not in bangalore or chennai..
Those shops had such big collections enough to satiate the apetite of the biggest film buffs in town..
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