This one goes back to my junior college days in a small town during the late seventies. The draconian regulations of the school had just been superseded by the lax discipline of college life. I had recently joined the Rotaract Club of Nagpur. It’s always the neo converts to a cause who are most fanatically zealous! So Rotaractor Nadeem Sani was the first to arrive for all projects and dumb enough to be saddled with the most inane jobs.
As part of its activity, the Club annually organized a charity film show wherein the proceeds were donated to a school for underprivileged children. During my first year at Rotaract, the charity movie was ‘Close encounters with the Third Kind’. As a zealous guardian of faith, I promptly volunteered to sell an entire booklet of tickets. Selling an English movie ticket amongst college crowd at an inflated price in Nagpur of seventies wasn’t really easy. I had to cajole, beg, request, threaten, call in past favours and pull out my entire repertoire of emotional blackmailing to sell those tickets. Amongst the dubious deals for selling tickets struck was one wherein I was to sit and watch the movie with Miss Specko – the buyer of a premium charity ticket. The general opinion of the class put her as an ideal candidate for a mental asylum but if the Knight Templar could ride halfway across the known world as saviour of Faith, I could definitely risk watching a movie with the girl-off-her-rocker for the cause!
So, on the movie day, I waited outside the Liberty cinema in my best pair of threads. Thankfully, she came on time and we sat down to watch the movie. After the initial period of being on the tenterhooks, I relaxed and concluded that Miss Specko is not going to spring a surprise today and concentrated on the movie. But girls and destiny have this cruel habit of unpredictability. Post intermission, Miss Specko failed to reappear. I waited for a decent amount of time and then went outside to check. She was no where in sight. Little alarm bells started tinkling in my mind. I went to the Rotaract President and whispered my predicament; all the senior members were dragged out to help. One of the girls checked the Ladies Toilet – no sign of her. It was now 30 minutes past intermission and the alarm bells started to clang loudly. There was a barrage of questions, advice, chastising and angry abuses hurled at me. And the pundits of doom started muttering words like abduction, kidnapping and what not. Thousands of very scary ‘what if’ scenarios ran through my mind. My imagination was working overtime with visions of parents, teachers, and policemen as major actors in the next 24 hours. After about an hour of searching, we formed a posse and extended the perimeter of our search to nearby lanes. This again proved futile. By now, I was a nervous wreck and cursing my luck, the girl, Rotaract and the world. The movie ended and the theater disgorged its occupants.
The whole of Rotaract club was mobilized and we had a hurried war Council as regards our next course of action – parents or Police? I died a thousand deaths thinking of the consequences. It was decreed that we contact the girl’s parents first and then take the campaign forward depending upon the situation.
We reached her house and I was expected to inquire about the whereabouts of Miss Specko from her parents. I had my first experience of what it must be like for the infantryman to charge through a minefield towards enemy position, little knowing which bullet has his name on it! I rang the bell and probably broke the world record of holding the breath. It was opened by a sleepy eyed, tousle haired, pyjama clad Miss Specko. She looked at me – I looked at her and we all looked at each other. There was a lot of looking around during that couple of seconds. “How come you are home?” I finally managed to croak. “I was bored during the movie, so I left” she replied angelically.
Years later, a wiser me had a whirlwind courtship in Bombay with my (now) wife, hitting all the high spots of Bombay together. She still wonders as to the reason I never ever took her to the movies during the courtship.
– Nadeem Sani