Induced Insomnia

It was around eleven at night and the bus was getting uncomfortably jumpy as the driver wound his way through the quagmire we called a road. Things seemed pretty usual when the queer chap in front of me pushed his seat back so low he could see right into my nostrils. Being cooped up in what passed of as a seat with hardly any leg space was the least of my problems, and all hope failed when the idiot box, (courtesy GB Shaw) turned itself on for a nighmarishly long session of offensive, pungent performances of action and drama with extreme tomfoolery for comic relief that was a commercial flick a.k.a masala movie. Life has one of the most curious ways of shoving dirt on your face, and obeying this rule, it happened to be a Vijay film. Now, I have no idea what the name of the film was(it doesn't matter anyway, I mean they're all the same in the first place), but I do know that it was one of the worst three hours of my life. Let me put it this way, I would prefer being hit on the nose by a speeding truck than watch this catastrophe of a film any day. Since the luxurious extravagance of choice wasn't on the table for me to take, I had to endure, and I have this nice habit of mine. When I'm in a pickle, I start to go along for the ride. That was mistake number two, mistake number one being born into a world with commercial flicks in it. So, I could have just dozed off in an uncomfortable stupor, but no, I had to see the film, such were the vagaries of the human mind, it can be betrayingly suicidal. It was the protagonist's introduction, a really agonising entrance of a remotely humanoid primate into the scene with a schizophrenic mob crying his disappointingly common name out loud. He then got around to beat bunch of no good thugs, who though armed to the teeth, saw fit to just prance around the hero in a menacing yet comical fashion. The hero, on the other hand, just armed with his bare fists, flies around defying all laws of physics our scientists painstakingly discovered and pieced together. He punches thin air surrounding our menacing thugs and yet they magically get hurt and fly backwards with an expression that reminds you of something unpleasant stuck beneath your nose. Once he was done beating them up, it was time for some song and dance, with over the top visuals of the hero doing nothing but shake his leg to intolerably painful noise dubbed music. He now has another bunch of schizophrenic morons surrounding him, this time, they don't jump around threateningly, but adopt a more monkey see monkey do approach, doing exactly what the hero does, only twice as hilariously. By now, the hero finished his dance sequence and a hideously unattractive woman, ugly as sin, her clothing or lack of thereof showing extreme penury, walks in with all eyes upon her. She happens, contradictory to our first impressions, to be an extremely rich man's spoilt daughter whose profession is conveniently and sufficiently arbitrary. All we know is that he also has political connections, which would come in handy in hiring more goondas to beat the hero up later in the film. She's then offended by a passerby for looking at her for longer than usual in a funny way. The hero comes to her rescue and beats the poor bloke up for the crime of seeing that repulsive woman. Seeing this act of chivalry, she inexplicably falls in love with him and they get transported to exotic locations where they dance and make a fool of themselves. This moroseness, while standalone would be a shining beacon for mediaeval torture, wasn't quite enough apparently and the director feels the audience haven't got the taste of real pain yet, and another character, completely unrelated to the non-existent plot pops up unleashing horror in the name of humour. The music didn't help either and then, suddenly, as proof that goodness still exists in the world, everything stops, including the bus, in a derelict location with cheap restaurants and shabby stalls playing worse music. The bus waited there for a good fifteen minutes, the passengers all got recharged to see the next half of the film. By then, the road got even worse, at any point of time, only one of the wheels on our bus touched the ground, the rest were precariously swaying in mid-air, groping for something solid to grip on to. Joe-Onlooker would have been pretty amused seeing a bus gallop, if only he sat inside the damn thing, he would know the agony of rattling bones and bad cinema. With not so smooth drops and sky high G-forces acting on the body, I began to feel nauseated, not wholly independent of the hero's dressing sense for the song sequences. I mean, who wouldn't feel queasy after seeing the hero in green trousers and purple shades? By then, the wonders of sleep overwhelmed me and I gradually closed my sore eyes for a much needed snooze. But thing's never are so simple in life and we don't always have a happily ever after. We then hit a traffic jam, a fact that I knew because of the buss' uncomfortable stillness and the putrid smell of half burnt diesel. We waited for another hour in this hellhole, apparently the stretch of road was being mended, something that's been going on for quite sometime now (God knows when it'll be done) and slowly we start inching forwards. The passengers started losing patience by then, and I started losing faith in all that was good in the world. Finally we came out of the jam and I started feeling drowsy again. Even before I could close my eyes, the bus came to a screeching halt. We all had to get down, we had arrived in Chennai, and I did that without an ounce of sleep. With eyes all puffy and red, a sleep deprived version of me got down, furious and irritable, to face an all new day.