Watching a movie with a face mask on

There is finally good news in these depressing pandemic times, that India has opened up movie theatres, and now I have to learn how to eat popcorn with my mask on.

The cinema theatres are allowed to run with 100 per cent seat occupancy, meaning that it is similar to airlines that have stopped keeping a seat empty in the row where you and your wife are sitting.

I love going to the cinema in India where it is a social event and the whole audience enjoys what’s going on the screen, unlike my present boring, sad, and lonely way to pass an evening by binge-watching on OTT, Over the Top streaming media service.

My wife and I are extreme couch potatoes and after dinner whenever we drove down to the multiplex in the nearby mall, we would buy a bucket of popcorn, waffles, a humongous glass of sugary soda pop, and start eating and slurping the cola even before the lights went out.

We never tried this, but in Dubai there is a Gold Class in cinemas where the theatre seats are like Business Class plane seats that you can slide back, and a foot rest slides up. You don’t have to stand in line at the eatery stand but can place an order for popcorn and a guy comes up to you in the dark, tripping over people’s feet while balancing the tray full of goodies.

When we returned to India, we went to a movie that was running for the last 25 years or so, and the audience seemed like they never went home even after all these years. When the villainous and very racist dad refused to give his daughter in hand in marriage to the poor and crying suitor, people in the audience started whistling and angrily shouting, “Goli maro sale ko”, (shoot him ... the dad, not the hero).

The authorities have announced SOPs for the safety of the audience. Sops are not something of low value you offer to the loser to keep him quiet, but is an acronym for standard operating procedure.

This is a set of step-by-step instructions compiled by an organisation to help workers carry out routine operations. SOPs aim to achieve efficiency, quality output and uniformity of performance, while reducing miscommunication and failure to comply with industry regulations (This is from my online research on Google).

My wife and I were advised to keep six feet away from other cinema goers, sanitise our hands and wear masks all the time, even when crying or laughing at the events in the movie. Spitting was strictly prohibited. My wife then opened her purse and handed me a huge plastic bottle of hand sanitiser.

In the theatre, when the person in the seat next to me, leaned to my side and accidentally touched shoulders I started getting a panic attack. Who knows how many Coronavirus people are carrying around on them!

My friend who is into stress management had advised me to take a deep breath, count to five, and release the breath, whenever I got stressed. When I did that, my nose which had dried up due to the air conditioning, let out an irritating whistle.

Then the tall woman in front, with her hair stacked up, took a call from her friend on her noisy phone. “I am in a movie, Shireen. Then silence, as she listened to her friend. When did she know about this? You and I knew this would happen months ago.”

Suddenly, this was getting far more interesting than the movie on the screen and I didn’t mind the strange woman’s loud voice in the darkened theatre.

Mahmood Saberi is a storyteller and blogger based in Bengaluru, India. Twitter: @mahmood_saberi