Welcome To Swagath

"Welcome to Swagath. Now Showing Dus. Timings ....", goes on a sad male recorded voice when you dial 080-26631086. Are the dumb looking(and dumb in their actions too) Swagath employees witty too? Swagath in Hindi and probably in Kannada too means 'Welcome'. Swagath, located in Jayanagar, is about 4 kilometres from my home and I guess the closest one too. It is one of the few theatres in Bangalore where they screen Hindi films. So, I am not giving you any prizes for guessing that on every weekend there is a long serpentine queue for tickets. Swagath is an old theatre but it has a nice screen and audio system. It is a different matter that some seats are in such a bad state that you might feel that you are on one of those chairs that one rests on for a sun bath. One good thing is that the tickets come cheap. A balcony one costs you 60 bucks(INR,1USD~=44 INR), the first class one 40 bucks and the second class(what imaginative names!) ticket comes for 30 bucks. They have recently increased the prices, but then no one is complaining. After all, in multiplexes a ticket may cost you anything between 150 rupees to 500 rupees. One of the stupid things about Swagath is their ticket booking system. Only the balcony tickets are available for advance booking. And the advance booking counter stays open only in the morning. The first class and second class tickets are available only on current booking(good for us!). And the booking for the second class tickets starts only after the first class tickets are over. To get to the first class booking counter you have to stand in a queue that passes through a cage that is very long and narrow. So if the tickets get over when you are in that queue(and cage), all you can do is look like caged animals as people rush to the second class counter. They have some more arbitrary rules too. For example at a particular movie, they give two tickets for each person in the queue whereas for some other movie they give just one. This ofcourse, is implemented when the queue is very long. Last Saturday, I went to see the movie Dus. When I went to my seat, I found that the guy sitting two seats from me was a compulsive spitter and was using the seat between us, which was unoccupied at that time, as a spittoon. Luckily I found people who were ready to swap seats with me, not knowing the fact that they would be resting their feet on litres of saliva. That was not the only surprise in store for me. Sanjay Dutt, a terrorist himself, was shown heading the anti-terrorist cell in the movie!