‘Baahubali 2’ and the Embarrassment of Crying at the Movies

I wept at Bahubali 2’s first day first show. Are you man enough to sniffle at the cinemas? This one’s for you.

I wrangle a FDFS ticket for Baahubali 2 and plonk myself into my prized seat. I sit unblinking and goosebump-y till after the interval, when Amarendra Bahubali is exiled, and is welcomed by the people. The song 'Jai Jaikara..' begins.

The exiled king gives away all of his food to the street urchins. And the women, young and old, gather round him, teary eyed, and feed him a morsel each with their own hands. Er... I sob without restraint, and it sounds like Nana Patekar’s laugh.

I realise I'm bawling only after I hear what sounds like a suction cup getting unstuck with a semi-loud 'plock'. I turn to see that I'm being stared at by the love birds (more like love 'hairy bovines') who I managed to disturb.

I hurriedly wipe my face on my sleeve, wondering at the 'depth' of their love; how can they keep their eyes off the screen?! And why in hell am I the one who is embarrassed?

Coming Out...

I have a history of getting weepy at the cinemas. As a teen, I was reticent and prone to silent spells, which came in the middle of my sullenly quiet moments that would often intersect with my don't-talk-to-me-I-don't-exist-go-away time. Humans in general put me off at the time. I believed I was a different species, but didn't know which. For one, no other vertebrate, reptile or crustacean had a yellow-red-purple pimple on the nose.

The only place I felt at home was at the movies, or watching one on a TV or a CRT monitor or a laptop. Now that you know, let's continue.

A Laptop and Headphones in a Closed Room

December 2002. I am nineteen. I’m in my room (shared with a twin. That's a story for another time). Yellow/grey Sony headphones (borrowed from the Walkman) firmly in my ears. Trusty 10-year-old third-hand laptop on my lap. It was a Toshiba. It was unkillable.

The door is shut. I look around to make sure I am alone, and click on 'resume playing movie...'

Ice Age. The baby takes his first steps as a biped towards Manny the mammoth. As he’s about to fall, Manny wraps his trunk around him. The baby hugs the trunk. Manny closes his eyes in an upwelling of fatherly love. A solitary tear trickles down, as he decides to adopt the child of the human who killed his family.

By this time, I’m sobbing copiously. The side effect of my attempts at keeping the decibel levels in check is that I’m leaking from nose and mouth as well.

Just as I take a deep, resounding sniffle to clear out the fluids and phlegm, the door knob clicks. Before the door could open, I use my twin brother's bed-sheet to wipe my face in one sweeping motion and continue to stare intently at the screen.

My mother peeps in suspicious (as per usual), trying hard not to show it (as per usual), asks me to set the table and slo-mo'es in reverse out and beyond the door, without breaking eye contact.

That was one of many close calls.

I speak four languages (English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu) and understand three more (Malayalam, Marathi and Kannada) and watch movies in all of them, plus the subtitled 'world' cinema that features foreign tongues.

This is not my attempt at a mid-article curriculum vitae. The point I’m trying to make is that I’ve cried at movies in all languages.

• Lord of The Rings - Part 1 (when Boromir is killed by the orcs)
• Part 3 (when Aragorn says 'For Frodo' and runs towards the infinite army),
• Kappalottiya Thamizhan (Tamil)
• Do Ankhen Barah Haath (Hindi)
• Jagadeka Veerudu Athiloka Sundari (Telugu)
• Kaliyattam (Malayalam)
• Lady Vengeance (Korean)
• Tampopo (Japanese)

The list goes on...

The Final Welcome

But where I crossed the line was when I felt the tears well up in a movie that was undoubtedly a spineless load of putrid two-day-old dal heated and placed in a silver bowl, garnished with raw garlic. The movie was called Welcome. It was an Akshay Kumar-starrer and was supposedly a laugh riot. For reasons unbeknownst to me, I got caught in the characters of the movie. I guffawed right on cue. And then...

In the climax scene, a heavily made-up and dentured Feroze Khan says; “Rajiv, burai kitni bhi badi ho, achchai ke saamne chhoti lagti hai.”

And right there, I was reminded of an old uncle's retelling of Jason and the Argonauts (1963), and of how Jason conquered insurmountable evil with courage and goodness.

So, as I watched Welcome, nostalgia, 60s-style puppetry and the 'moral' coalesced right at my thorax, and I gulped down a sob and sniffled a tear.

This was in 2007. I had gone with family friends, who are probably still scarred by the experience. I have been going to the movies alone ever since.