The alternate view

I read once in a book (విజయానికి ఐదు మెట్లు, by Yandamuri Veerendranath) that sitting in the middle seat of the n/4th row from top gives us the best viewing experience in a movie theater. One of my neighbors once told me his theory that it is best to sit right in the center for Telugu movies and some what around the corner for English movies. I had experience of watching movies in almost empty theaters, choosing the seat that I wanted, dome, IMAX to full packed theaters where I had to sit on the stair cases beside the door (for ప్రేమించుకుందాం రా... in my home town) while the clothes were fully drenched with the sweat. I also had experience of choosing to sit on steps beside the top row leaving the front row seat for the visual spectacular RAVAN. But on the 19th of October, 2014, I had an experience that was different all together.

Sandhya and I hadn't watched a movie together for almost an year in theater, all due to my son Neal (Duggu), few months because of the pregnancy, few months because he is too young to watch a movie. Yesterday, we had decided to break the gap and watch a movie. We know that Duggu would not stay quite and let us watch the movie, but still wanted to try. I remembered watching a movie trailer in which a young kid talks about his very bad day and how his family members realize what he was going through, cursing them to have an equally bad day, etc. I looked up for the movie and it's name turned out to be 'Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day'. Yes, all of that. Showed Sandhya the trailer and she seemed to have liked it. We also called Gopal to check if he and Kanchan wanted to join, and they joined. One another family joined us at the theater and we were all set to watch the movie.

It felt kind of strange to get the stroller into the theater. We placed it around the free space at front of the hall. Carried Duggu in the child seat, and kept it on the seat between Sandhya's and mine. He was quite for some time, took a nap for around 20 minutes. We were able to watch the movie without any disturbance. The kid who played Alexander was cute and doing awesome job. Steve Carell (I remember him as the guy in Date Night and looked up his name after watching the movie) was good too. Duggu then woke up. He wasn't crying or cranky but shouting a little louder :-) Sandhya took the first turn and took him out. On the other side, all the crazy things started happening to this family in the movie. Gopal already said, 'Man, I'm already getting scared ! (to have kids)'. I wanted to check on Sandhya and Duggu, but they came back after a little while. They stayed briefly and had to go out again. I joined them after a bit. That's when I found the alternate view, that is, holding Duggu and watching the movie standing at the ramp (the walk into the theater). It wasn't bad, for it was the first time :-) I watched the scene in which the teenager takes the drivers test, from this exact spot. The driving test lady was amazing :D The start up where Steve goes for the interview was cool. We watched whole rest of the movie from the same view. On our way back home, we told each other that the movie was good and to that we should watch again on Netflix next year.

Thanks Duggu for adding another viewing experience into my list... let's see how long it goes :-)

The scene where the girl performs after having a full dose of cough syrup, from the alternate view.. :-)

Duggu and I..