KOCHI: In the film ‘The Mountains of the Cannibal God’, there is a disturbing scene where a python swallows a live monkey. Soon after the scene was shown, a 35-year old man in the audience at Sridhar theatre started shivering.
Within moments his body became stiff. The people around rushed out and informed ticket usher M V Sebastian.
“When I arrived, the man had become unconscious,” says Sebastian.
With the help of another usher Xavier, they carried the man to the lobby.
The police were informed and he was rushed to the general hospital. “Unfortunately he was declared dead on arrival,” says Sebastian. “When the doctors inspected his wallet they found a medical prescription for a heart ailment.” His family was soon informed. By a strange coincidence, the man’s father-in-law was being treated for an illness in the same hospital.
“Suddenly the mother-in-law came into the room, hugged the body, burst into tears, and said, ‘This is my son Varghese!’” says Sebastian.
In his 27 years as an usher this was the only death that Sebastian encountered on the job.
But he has had mixed experiences while dealing with patrons.
“Nowadays young people behave badly,” he says. “If they don’t like a film they take their frustrations out of me. They make comments like, ‘This was a bad film’. I am just an usher. They seem to think that I am responsible if a film is good or bad.” Says Ramachandra Pai, another usher, “They may be educated but they lack manners. They chew Pan Parag and then spit it all over the place.” Theatre manager V R Ramkumar says the audience there usually comprises the local North Indians, those from the Naval Base, construction workers as well as locals.
“There are also a lot of teenagers who come to see Hindi films.” Of course, in a state where drinking is the number one entertainment, drunks are a major problem too. Usually the ticket seller will not issue the ticket if he notices t h a t the man is in an inebriated condition.
“If he somehow manages to enter the hall, and creates a disturbance, I have no qualms in calling the security or the police,” says Sebastian.
Ramachandra says that drinking is high during festivals like Onam, Easter and Christmas.
On a hot afternoon between the noon and the matinee shows Sebastian sits and reads a magazine in the manager’s room. Ramachandra is sitting in the lobby while Varghese is having lunch in the canteen. Sebastian says, “We come in half an hour before the noon show starts and stay till the night show concludes.” In the course of his career Sebastian has seen over a thousand films and has a fairly accurate idea of whether a film will be a hit or not. “I have an 80 percent accuracy,” he says. But Ramachandra is not so sure. “The audience’ reaction nowadays is unpredictable,” he says. “The film, ‘International’, which was shown recently was a good one, but there was not much of a crowd probably because of the telecast of the matches of the Indian Premier League.” By scrutinising the faces of the people as they come out after the first show, he gets an idea of whether the film will do well or not, he says.
Unlike Sebastian Ramachandra hardly sees a film. “In fact, in my twenty-five years on the job I have never seen a movie from beginning to end,” says Ramachandra. That has also been the case with usher M C Varghese, 44. “The film I liked best was ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ even though I did not see the entire film,” says Varghese. “Whenever the song ‘Jai Ho’ was screened I would watch it.” But n o t many people are happy that Sridhar is showing Hindi films. “Sridhar has been showing English films since 1964,” admits Ramkumar. “We have a dedicated clientele.” But it was only when Sridhar started showing Hindi films a few years ago that the box office receipts started to increase. The last big hit was ‘Ghajini.’ Both young and old liked the film,” says Ramkumar.
But no matter how a film does, the ushers and the manager enjoy their job. Ramkumar tries to analyse the reasons why: “The best part of this job is that you see new people every day. And if you are a film buff like me you can watch movies all the time. That makes the job very interesting.”
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