Watching a movie, in Mumbai

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We were watching the Tony Jaa film at InOrbit's movie hall. Can u imagine this? Many college kids were there and I was feeling happy that perhaps they are getting to become fit, love Muay Thai and like clean action films where a highly paid actress does not have to strip to make the movie sell...
No, but it seems the kids were there not for Tony Jaa ... and I could never figure out what they were really there for, since they kept jabbering throughout. And during the most beautiful moment of the film, rather evocative and technically splendid too, where Jaa jumps over the elephants -- some girls actually went out to buy popcorn!!! Mumbai children can be so frustrating that way, as company. I find that they are the most chilled out of the lot of kids (Generalisations are so passe, but I resort to them at such moments :) Chennai kids are introverted and shy, Delhi kids posturing and confident, but our Mumbai kids are the most casual and chilled out- rather gadget savvy. But I must say that they are rather illiterate in a lot of ways that is bothering, if you are a mother with a kid that age. You worry what sort of peer pressure some of these nitwits have!!! Hookah, I know for a fact. Sly smoking, sly drinking, sly heavy-petting (all of which common to all metros) but in terms of general lack of awareness,where you really feel that as an adult you cannot have much in common with this set, I think Mumbai kids rank highest!
I remember once going for Shakepeare in Love (I saw it thrice on the big screen, I was so smitten by it) and the kids laughed at all the wrong moments and did not seem to feel the poesy of the film. At the comic moments they were all serious so that the only voice cackling in the entire theatre hall was one voice -- mine!! I remember sitting with some bio students and they were blattering about something at the ankles and mispronouncing it so uproariously, that I could not help butting and telling them that it was Achilles Heels. The girls immediately awarded me with`You Clever Woman' look and looked so astonished and wanted to know how they knew what they were talking about... That sort of lack of awareness...

I can see something of that sort of orientation when they reject films like Akshay Kumar's Chandni Chowk or Tasveer 8 by ten. In the first one, the guy's heart was all over the film. I loved it, if only for that. The latter specially was a fantastic film, done with a lot of finesse (normally I am not a Nagesh Kukunoor fan since some of his films don't speak to me) but in this one he has bridged the gap between his docu-mode to Bollywood tamasha rather seamlessly -- yet the kids rejected it -- My daughter was amazed how her friends trashed it while she loved it..

You wonder, seeing that your tastes vary so much, whether in certain things you can call yourself a true Mumbaikar:) There is something so casual about criticism amongst Mumbaikars that you won't find in any other city -- a casualty that bothers on the moronic at times...