Popcorn!

For children, cinema halls are more about popcorn than about the movie! You cannot skip the ritual. You get the popcorn before the movie or make a dash for it during the intermission. Today’s multiplexes are well stocked. There’s regular popcorn, popcorn laced with butter and for the ones with a sweet-tooth, popcorn garnished with caramel! The vendor scoops fresh popcorn from the glass-bin and hands over an enormous carton heaped to the brim with popcorn.

Popcorn is truly weightless. You would expect a carton of this size to carry enormous weight and require all your strength.  The anti-climax catches you by total surprise! You feel as though you are the giant Kumbhakarna. You can carry an entire mountain of popcorn and even blow the entire edifice away through a few forceful breaths from your nostrils! Many a hapless child has clutched the carton with hard hands, only to find the popcorn pop up…and out! It is simply too light to handle!

When your 6-year-old daughter volunteers to handle the popcorn, you allow her to carry and walk beside. Off and on, you pick up popcorn bits from the heaped top and munch. Your 6-year-old is worried, “Appa! Don’t eat all the popcorn! What will we eat then?” Popcorn makes you philosophical and you cannot resist some tidbits of wisdom, “You know, this whole world is a giant popcorn! It looks huge and frightening, but like popcorn, it has no weight, no substantiality. It cannot touch You, the real You! Remember this always!” Your 6-year-old looks at you, all confused, blinks a few times, but keeps walking!

Movie halls are dimly lit. The terrain is anything but flat- you must navigate through shallow steps, petite seats, and cramped aisles. The combination is deadly, especially when you carry popcorn that extends over the eye-level. As they say, there is many a slip between the cup and the lip. Several popcorn cartons never make it beyond the Everest basecamp. One tiny stumble is enough.  By the time you pick yourself up, popcorn has toppled and scattered, like tiny, white blossoms, all over the basecamp turf!

The rest of the movie-gang is ravenously hungry- waiting for the popcorn in their seats. Elbows and hands, palms and fingers- all dig into it with gusto. “Slow! Slow! There is enough for everyone!” you try reasoning.

There is something irresistible about popcorn. You keep munching and asking for more. The craving is insatiable, like fire fed with ghee. May be, it is the aroma, may be the crunchy texture or perhaps the heady mix of salt-and-pepper. At times, the hunger makes you terribly impatient. You are sitting in a corner, towards the end of the row, languishing at Ganga-Sagar. The popcorn carton is now at the other end, at Gangotri. How many hands must it pass through and how much content will survive by the time the river reaches you?  It bugs you. “Next time, I am going to buy a full popcorn, all for myself!” you take a firm resolve!

Cliffhanger movie plots with sudden shocks are a total no-no! All it takes is one startled jerk of the hand- the popcorn goes for a toss! Serious movies and popcorn don’t go together too. If you are seated beside a group of popcorn gluttons, all you hear is the incessant crunching and munching. The more you focus on the movie dialogues, the more popcorn you hear. You clench your teeth in anger, but the popcorn chomping isn’t going to stop anytime soon!

A watershed moment in my High School life revolved around popcorn. The teacher was absent for the day. In the newfound freedom, boys went on a rampage- toppling chairs, climbing over desks, and ransacking the entire classroom. Boys will after all…be boys! One of the students had a bright idea. With the ceiling fan running at full blast- he flung a packet of popcorn at the fan. The ceiling fan sliced through the packet and soon, it was raining popcorn! Students ran helter-skelter, their mouths held up, in a bid to catch the popcorn raindrops. The commotion was total.

The principal rushed from his office. His expression said it all. His lower jaw dropped as he surveyed the aftermath- a riot-hit classroom littered with popcorn shrapnel!

What followed next, is left to the reader’s imagination! Yes, there was punishment, there was “imposition”, there was lot more.

From then on, popcorn was banned in school.