Channeling my inner Bruce Banner

I am not much of a movie buff but on the occasions that I have been to the cinema here in India it has always been enjoyable. In fact more enjoyable than home. And this is why…

• It's way cheaper… We saw Slumdog Millionaire for $1 when it came out. On average a ticket is about $5. which is a lot cheaper than the $17 tickets back home
• The seats are better… They all recline quite substantially
• They have intermission… I don't mind a mid movie break
• If you go to an English moving on a weekday morning you may have the whole cinema to yourself, or at the most 5 other people in there with you
• Sometimes the ushers come around and offer to make purchases from the candy bar for you

But today I saw the bad side of Indian cinemas...

I had a free ticket to see The Avengers. Not something I was particularly interested in seeing but hey, it's free and it's air-conditioned.
So I rock up to the ticket booth with my voucher and it is packed! What is going on? It's 10:40am on a Wednesday morning, why aren't these people at work. So I line up and as per usual there are people feeling that it is their right to march up to the front of the line and get served first… blood is starting to fizz ever so slightly but I am up for a relaxing morning so I let it go.

I get my ticket and get thoroughly searched for cameras and weapons… Is there any point trying to pirate a 3D movie?

The cinema is 70% full… a little unusual for a weekday morning. I get to my seat, all is good in the world.
A few advertisements.
A few previews.
Pre-movie 'switch off your phone and don't talk during the show' announcement is made.
Movie starts, talking does not stop.
Phones start ringing, people start answering… in their loud talking on a mobile phone voice.
What the!
The two guys in front of me are having a discussion. One of them makes a call… Who makes a call in a cinema! He has his conversation, hangs up and then turns back to the guy next to him with the details of his call. I begin to wonder if I am in a cinema with 200 people playing hooky from work? My blood starts to boil… I am identifying with Bruce Banner trying to contain my rage. 

My switch was about to flip, I was so so close to grabbing the guys phone and chucking it down the isle while screaming obscenities at him.
Intermission came and went with many cranky texts to Ray about why my morning sucked.
It was no better during the second half of the movie. I concluded I could not single out the annoying people in front of me with my rage as half the cinema was on their phone or chatting with people around them. I was not happy, lucky I wasn't paying for the experience.

So this whole thing got me thinking… Do people here think the rules apply to everyone else but them? Or, do they disregard the rules because there is so little recourse for breaking them? Or, perhaps it's a case of 'if you can't beat them, join them'

Sometimes I don't think this place is good for me… it just makes me mad.

Skanky Money

Something you learn very quickly on arriving in India is not to accept dirty, stained or ripped rupees, because once you have them, they are virtually impossible to get rid of. I have never come across a country that is so obsessed with crisp clean money and such a disdain for dirty bills.

It seems that the people of India believe that the value of cash is multidimensional; you have to take into account the number written on the bill as well as the condition… sometimes a rumpled old 20 rupee note is not actually worth 20 rupees when you consider the trouble to get rid of it.

I have become pretty good at scanning the cash that is handed to me and rejecting any of questionable quality, but Ray, not so much. And this means, that most of the time, it becomes my job to get these dirty buggers back into circulation.
So how do you get rid of them-

• Invest in a roll of invisible scotch tape… it will pay for itself.
• Repeat the karma and palm it off on someone else...à la Chicago bank roll- hidden amongst clean notes
• Give it to someone who wants your money no matter how dodgy the condition. I find this works well in cafes after you have eaten and you insist.. 'this is the only money I have'.
• Hand it over at a toll plaza or a parking garage and sit there until they open the boom gate; it doesn't take long before the people behind you are going off their na-na forcing acceptance.

Interestingly, I heard about an enterprising man sitting in a marketplace with a pile of dirty bills and a pile of crisp clean notes. He was changing old ripped and dirty currency for new clean notes and charging people for the service…entrepreneurial indeed. On average he would give people 70% of the notes face value.

Here is a thought… in a culture dense with social hierarchy, where rank is pervasive; I wonder if those of a higher rank can use their position to palm off their undesirable notes to those of lesser social stature.

Now, the official position of the Indian government is that money is money and that you should be able to trade your damaged notes at any bank, however, in reality, this is not the case. I have heard of people receiving dodgy notes from ATMs and upon taking them inside the branch they are refused an exchange as the ATM is serviced by another branch on the other side of the city.

It must be entertaining watching Indians traveling abroad refusing to accept damaged notes of other countries. I can just imagine the confusion of the other party.
Yes, the clean rupees fetish is just that; it is not a clean US dollar or Australian dollar fetish. In Australia damaged notes, where large chunks of the note are missing, are handed from person to person without incident until they find themselves at a bank and are removed from circulation.

Oh, and if you want to know where all the crisp new rupee notes come from, it seems to be from the ATM at the American embassy ;)