Alas, the swagger generation of this times will never enjoy the charm of buying a movie ticket in black. Like many things of my childhood, cinema ticket Blackers are also almost extinct now. Of course, it is next to impossible to find the apt meaning of the term "Blacker" even in Google (which describes ‘blacker” as the “comparative adjective of black"; such a high-nosed description).
Ask me and any two legged home sapien of Guwahati on the doorstep of forty about Blackers, and eight out of ten will tell you about the nameless memory called BLACKER who turned our dream of watching celluloid stories to reality by making cinema tickets available ( of course at exorbitant prices) when the legitimate ticket counters crushed our hopes.
Yes, I am talking about the time when watching a movie in a theatre was nothing short of a celebration, and laced with uncertainties, which dissipated only when we held those much sought after balcony tickets in our hands. Often, you would dress up and go to the movie hall, hoping to catch the latest Bollywood flick, only to have the 'Housefull' poster stare back at you once you got to the ticket counter. At such mournful moments, a shady looking man, his eyes twinkling with mischief and barely-moving mumbling "thirty for ten" under his breath in the local language, would come to your rescue.
Blackers were plentiful around cinema halls especially on Fridays. These not-so-legitimate characters were an integral part of the movie culture of our times. We could love them or hate them, but their existence was an inseparable entity of the times when movie telecast on television was not yet an epidemic.
These days, Blackers are non-existent. They are no longer found loitering around with the typical Blacker Look in the premises of modernized cineplexes and multiscreen theatres. With online and tele bookings, people don't even need to step out of their houses to buy tickets. Pressed for time and with busier career goals, people are awry taking a chance and landing up to watch movies without tickets. They prefer to reserve seats days prior to the release date. At the same time the prices of tickets have also gone up over the years. While earlier one would still pay Rs. 250 in black for a Rs. 100 ticket, now when multiplexes themselves price their tickets at Rs. 350, there is no possibility left to hike up prices further.
Tightened security in modern multiplexes is another reason for the demolition of Blackers. I am sure almost all Guwahatian between the age of 35 to 45 will remember the imposing policeman of Apsara Cinema Hall with the big moustache who was famously known as Ravaan. He was a terror for the Blackers, the one force to reckon with. Years later, when I was a house surgeon in the Department of CTVS in Gauhati Medical College and Hospital, Ravaan was admitted as a patient and I got to know him by his actual name. But now, unlike traditional halls where the Blackers operated creating a smokescreen from the likes of Ravaan, and could vanish into the crowded street if cops raided, it would be impossible to disappear from the fourth of fifth floor of an air conditioned multiplex manned by dozens of security personnel.
The craze for the “first day first show “ ticket was momentous then. With time and with the advent of alternative forms of entertainment , the lure and magic of movies seem to have lost the shine which glared our eyes in those not - so - ancient - days. And with time, the seasoned Blackers of our days fizzled out as the business of ticket blacking almost disappeared like the dinosaurs.
Sitting on the high-priced recliner row of a posh multiplex the other day with the predictable popcorn paper-bucket in my hands , I wondered about the Blackers. Most of them must have changed preofession. But are they extinct? I feel they do exist in new avatars. My mind went back to an incident about a month back when the internet was down and I had to wait in a queue to buy the movie ticket. Though I had nearly forgotten about the business of selling tickets in black, standing behind this man in the queue at the ticket counter brought back college - days- memories of haggling over tickets of Kuch Kuch Hota Hain! This guy wearing a pair of Levis jeans managed to buy an entire row of tickets to the Alia Bhatt's latest release and walked away coolly casting a glorious look at me and with the same mischievous look I know so well. Or did I imagine it????
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