The lady sitting next to me, my Aunt, was looking at me and other people at the cinema hall lobby with an amused look on her face. I was no less familiar or no more familiar to her, than the girl sitting next to her on the other side.. only, she trusted me more …

My aunt, I will call her Maalu, was my father’s youngest sibling and the only one alive now, from the set of five. The girl sitting next to her was someone, like us, who had come to see a movie to this multiplex in our city of Ahmedabad.

Thanks to the growing Marathi speaking population and the increasing popularity and outreach of Marathi films, Ahmedabad had started showing Marathi films for a short period.

The films lasted for 3-4 days, sometimes a week, giving us, the Marathi loving public something to feast our eyes on, for those magical 2 hours.

We, my aunt and I, had come to see this Marathi biopic based on a popular Marathi Author, a playwright, a humorist. The fact that I had got my aunt to this film was to bring a smile on her face and maybe a laugh too.

Years back, were the days when entertainment came out from a cassette player (“Tape” as it was called) and limited hours of Television .This great multi-faceted personality, with his humor had managed to leave us (us-cousins, my parents, uncles, aunts… in short, our entire family) in splits and continuous and contagious laughter. We would sometimes hit the rewind button (of the “Tape”) just so that we did not miss the joke when we unabashedly still laughed at the previous one (FOMO of a lesser degree).

Maalu was by now getting used to the surrounding and settling down. Lately she was getting more anxious when she was taken to a new place. She was suffering from dementia and her condition was getting worse day by day. Hence in the new surrounding I was no more or less familiar to her than the girl sitting next to her.  

I was happy and excited that she could now see the movie and for the next 2 hours she would go back in the world of past memories of those characters that this author had so well crafted. Somehow in those 2 hours she would be more connected the world that her mind was in, always. Of the characters and lives whom she still lived and for once she would feel them as present.

I led her to our seats inside the theater and slowly the lights got dim, they started showing the advertisements and I was excited that the movie would start soon.

I caught my aunt’s elbow with excitement and warmly snuggled towards her. She turned towards me, in the darkness of the hall, I saw her, she asked me “Where have we come, and when can we go home?”

“We have come to a movie, Atya”, I said “Wait, let it start, you will really enjoy yourself”. “Naa, I don’t like this place, I want to go Home”, she said and got up to go. Poor thing, she was so afraid and she did not even know where the Exit door was. Totally confused, she just stood there, but did not sit back on the chair.

There was no point sitting I thought and lead her towards the Exit. It was only when I held her hand, I realized how scarred she was, her hand had gone cold and trembling. I hurried and went out of the multiplex. She got a bit better when she saw the daylight outside. She had not let go of my hand, I lead her to a small garden nearby.

She walked towards some children playing there and sat on the bench nearby. She had let go of my hand now. One of the children, the tiniest of the lot was going round and round and laughing loudly and plonked suddenly burst out into a peal of merry laughter. My aunt joined her and matched her squeal in degree of merriment and scale, with tears in her eyes from the loud laughter, her heart had just left her in, she said “That was funny”…

Some children can do magic I thought! And our mind is no less .. the power of the mind to heal and forget past ordeals is great…

I sat there anguished by my helplessness of her condition and mine. Sad that I could not give my aunt a great time, I had owed her from a long time.

 Many years back (even before the “tape” or the TV era) she had taken us (all of us cousins 5-6 in number) for a movie “Mera Naam Joker”, which was longer than the usual 3 hours. She was armed with homemade Batatawadas and kesar bhaath (a sweet Maharashtrian delicacy, made with Rice and Saffron) so that the children have something for their ever hungry stomachs, and that too in a taxi (a sheer luxury at that time). Those were the days when the Hum Do Hamare Do campaign was at its peak. When my aunt turned to pay the taxi wala, he said mockingly, “Be careful none of your children are left behind”…  that was rude of him since none of them were sadly hers…She still had a long painful wait till she had one of her own…

 I wonder whether she could have watched the movie peacefully, what with one or other child wanting the lovely food she was carrying or wanted to use the toilet or might have just gotten bored by the slow pace of the movie and wanted to be lead out for some time.

But this lovely lady, who loved children so much, had so patiently borne this only because she wanted to give us a great experience of a lifetime.  

Strange are the ways of the mind and destiny indeed I thought….The same thing, Maalu  had  enjoyed so tremendously back then, had seemed alien and foreign, making her scared today.

The children whom she had loved then, though, still brought her the same happiness today …

Some children, really can do magic!!