Movies of Girlfriend Past

In a hilarious and bit disgraceful turn of events, I realised that I had somehow forgotten that I was alive before 2018. I had completely forgotten the fact that I was alive during 2015 (since that was the year in question). Even though I would have to go through my 2015 diary to recall whatever I did during that year, I very clearly remember so many other stuff that happened to me before that year. And a very random thing came to my mind when I was taking the long route- the longer route- home.

Acha used to rent CDs and DVDs from his friend’s video library, Melody (yeah, I realised Raamante CD kada [Raaman’s CD shop] was actually Melody Video Library a couple of years ago; see I told you, I don’t distinctly remember many stuff before 2018). And this shop, run by one of Acha’s closest friends, was, according to 8-12 year old me, very far away (barely 3 kms away, barely) and I was (am) never someone to let go of an opportunity to go on long bike rides. Bike rides with my Acha will forever and always be the best thing ever. Earlier, me and Kichu used to beg Acha to take us on bike rides without even stopping anywhere (well, I did the begging part, my brother was, and will always be, useless in such stuff). So, going to Raaman uncle’s CD shop was a trip that I always looked forward to, but it rarely happened; mostly because, it was his catching-up-with-friend time and he clearly didn’t want me going around picking all the movies with cool covers and asking if we could rent those every two minutes. Once, he agreed to take me and I got all dressed up and waited and waited and waited, and he came back home with the rented movies, having totally forgotten about me. But he made up for it by taking me there the very next day and letting me rent whichever movie I wanted, so there.

And soon, instead of renting movies, Acha started buying them from a store in Beemapally; and that eventually led to us having some gazillions DVDs lying around the house(almost literally, we have three HUGE bags filled with DVDs). Beemapally was, and still is, a place that my parents would never let me go on my own; I haven’t been to that place since like when I was 8 or something. The first, and last, time I went to Beemapally, I got this huge set of colours in a case shaped like a drawing car- that set with sketch pens that was already nearly dried out, crayons that turned dark in a week and water colours that crumbled like cake and all other sorts of stationery that were good for nothing- and I tried to persuade my parents and my uncle and aunt into buying me another doll, but they bought this ridiculous (not really) toy car for my brother which opened and closed its doors on its own.

I tried to find out which shop was the one from which he got the movies, and I did too, but I chickened out when the day for my adventurous KSRTC ride to Beemapally arrived.

Around the time I finished BA, the buying CDs had also more or less stopped, because we didn’t really get much time to sit and watch movies together- and I was sneaking off to the cinemas every other week. And I soon left Trivandrum. But now that I am home, and since I can’t go out as much as I want, we get to watch movies together, and I realised I had missed it. Even though, watching a movie now doesn’t involve a sweet bike ride to Melody, it’s still fun. Movie-watching might have evolved from rentals to cheap DVDs to Telegram, but it’s still fun.