The unkept mazaar promise

A Tamil boy falls in love with a North Indian girl. Nothing new in the story, but a beautiful portrayal of the lovebirds by the dashing Kamal Haasan and a stunning Rati Agnihotri and enthralling songs against the backdrop of picturesque Goa, made the movie, Ek Duje ke Liye, a super-duper hit.

It was 1981, the era of single-screen theatres and procuring a ticket to watch the blockbuster was a herculean task. But the four of us, barely 13, were supercharged to watch the movie, and after exhaustive discussions, a plan to sneak out of the boarding school was put in place.

One of my friends, who belonged to Jalandhar, wrote a lengthy letter to his elder brother, urging him to buy four tickets for the last show of the chosen day, in advance. He was instructed to wait outside the cinema at 9 pm. Those were the days of inland letters and there was no way to confirm whether the letter had been received. But we stuck with our plan.

The last head count of the day usually took place at 8 pm, and we were to catch the last bus that left Kapurthala for Jalandhar at 8.30 pm. Excitement had marred our hunger and we could manage to gulp down only a few scoops of rice, while the other students were merrily enjoying their dinner.

As expected, his brother met us at the gates of the theatre and we were ushered into the hall. Three hours of wholesome entertainment was over in the blink of an eye. When the movie ended, it was well past midnight. With no conveyance available, we decided to march on foot to our school. We trudged for three hours on an empty stomach to cover a distance of 20 km.

As we approached the campus, hungry and exhausted, the fear of being caught gripped us. A surprise head count, or a confidant spilling the beans, could have earned us rustication. Thoughts of being nabbed red-handed turned us pale, and we decided to pray and pledge an offering of Rs 10 at the mazaar of Ali Shah, adjacent to the boundary wall of the school, to go scot-free.

We stealthily reached our dormitories at 3.30 am and somehow managed to report at the PT ground at 6 am to avoid suspicion. But the sleepy-eyed foursome could not deceive our sharp-eyed Headmaster. Our sleep-deprived brain and dead-tired limbs could not withstand his sustained interrogation for long, and we blurted out the story of our escapade. He let us off with a harsh reprimand, and the next day, a circular declaring a change in the timings for the last head count to 9.30 pm was pasted on the notice board.

Regarding the promised offering at the mazaar, we were able to convince ourselves that God is merciful towards children, and in any case, whatever we offered at the shrine would ultimately be pocketed by the corpulent caretaker. So, we decided against parting with the precious Rs 10 note.