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The forgotten beauty of Video Rental Stores and Movie Nights

Musings

It's Thursday night in Al Satwa, Dubai and you don't want to do anything better than curling up on your setee with a BluRay disc playing the movie that came out 2 years ago and with a bowl of crisps and some cold orange juice to wash it down with. Thursday night signalled the start of the weekend.

How simpler were those days? You either caught the hottest movies at the theater during it's run time or sailed the high seas to get a pirated copy from Torrent sites, or just sat there patiently, waiting for it's disk to hit the neighbourhood video store. 

It was ecstasy to catch a Mohanlal movie just waiting there on the shelf, just waiting there to be picked up. 

At this time, I would like to recount an incident back from 2006 - 2007, when renting out a CD happened once in a blue moon. It's a cool weekend night, when we're all cooped up in front of the TV to see which movie Acha had brought home. Mind you that it's a unofficial CD, with just the name of the movie written in blue marker pen

**Drumrolls please** we ended up watching Thanmathra that night 

That's the beauty of it. With internet being a scarce commodity for our family back then, you would seek others' opinion on the movie, preferably 5 reviews at least (and that's if they have watched the movie). Acha and amma weren't film buffs and would be all ears if it's a Mohanlal movie and would pick it without looking at the movie's plot, and call it an occasional avenue for entertainment.

Ammachi passed away after suffering from Alzhimier's 16 years after this incident, so I treat this as a subtle foreshadowing of how things were supposed to happen.

Video Rental Stores - The Ritual and Checklist

Hindustani Music? SP Balasubramanyam's hits? Metal music or the movie that you missed watching at the theaters three years ago, you had it all at the local video store. Rafa Video, Deira and Al Mansoor, Hamriya.

Visiting the store was a ritual in itself and we had a few checklists to clear for this:
  • No movies with adult content
  • Everyone should be free and make themselves available at home for watching the movie
  • The CD should'nt cost more than 2 dirhams for rental per day, or if it's available for sale outright, not more than 10 dirhams
  • Mohanlal movies were provided top priority - watched crap films like Rock 'n Roll and Alexander the Great due to this. Angel John and Chandrolsavam later turned out to be entertaining attempts for me, at a time when I couldn't comprehend what Chirrakal Sreehari was talking about.
Browsing the racks would be hardest, whilst knowing that the shopkeeper only stocks Malayalam movies on 3 rows. Trying ever so hard to find something that skipped people's attention, something stacked so far away from eyesight, taking the CD from within it's cover to check if there has been a mistaken placement. Oh, those moments!

We also brought cassettes from these shops - namely Al Rafa and Mansoor Videos, and it seems that we often purchased tapes collections like 'Hits of Yesudas' or 'Hits of M.G Sreekumar', rather than movie-specific soundtracks. It was a throwback to the soundtracks that used to make us go 'wow' during a bygone era

I have vivid memories of being strapped into the backseat of our old Camry car, while being driven to places such as church, relatives' homes and other places, with hit tracks like "Manimizhi Poovu", "Kando Kando" from Mahasamudram, "Kadukittu Varuthoru" from Hallo and "Muttathe Mulle Chollu" from Mayavi playing over the speakers.

The old but faded stereo system, in all it's glory!

Re-routing back to our topic, the CD would be picked up after much consultation and deliberation, since the outcome of the pick being a good one or a downright bad one would weigh heavily on our minds before we make our next visit to the store.

As a kid, let's be honest - the story didn't matter. Just the frames and understandable comedy bits that were strewn like bread crumbs for us needy children!

Later, when East Coast and Saina started distributing pocket sized CD's and made them available in department stores like Lulu, it started becoming a regular in our shopping cart. It eventually became a thing of the past.

Just like that, we never knew that we were making memories with each movie night. Each accidental CD pick, each comedy scene, every squirm during an intimate scene and each visit to the video store quietly weaving itself into our story

Amen's CD

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