The first day first show habit continued even when I started teaching at a Jesuit college in Chennai. But I also had a class on Friday afternoons, and that caused many problems and I missed the first show of many hit films.
Should I have been surprised to see a handful of my students at the same matinee show? I don't know who was more embarrassed.
Less than half way through the film, I realised how lousy it was and made a resolution to see a Dev Anand or a Rajesh Khanna or an Amitabh Bachchan film only after it had become a certified hit. I was going to give up the first day, first show craze.
I had also remembered how I had brought black market tickets for Prem Pujari and realised soon into it how lousy it was. Worse, by Monday everyone was talking of it as a flop.
I went to college the next day of seeing Yeh Gulistan Hamara, expecting the students to gossip about my movie adventure. Surely, they had spread the word about it, but that was the least thing that I had to worry about. A note from the principal was waiting for me.
It seems he had sent the peon to the class on Friday to tell me I should stop by the principal's room. A couple of priests had complained to him, I learned later, that I was giving out salacious details of church scandals in the European history class.
But the peon found the class, which had 60 students, empty. The principal sent him to the library, but hardly anyone of my students was there. Many had decided to catch Tamil or Telugu movies around the time I was buying ticket for the Dev film.
"I have never seen anything like this in my entire life," said the principal who was in his mid-50s. I was in my mid-20s. "What kind of a tutor are you?"
I said I was far ahead of my schedule for the course and students rarely bunked my class. He made me promise I will never repeat the act, but as I was leaving his office, he whispered, "What was the film you wanted to see so badly?"
When he heard the name, he sighed and said, "I have forgotten how many times I saw Kala Bazar and CID." And in the same low voice, another confession. "Like so many boys, I too wondered why I could not be handsome like Dev Anand. But now all that does not matter because in God's eyes we are all handsome."
Please post your tributes to Devsaab on Zara Bol
PIX: When Dev Anand visited the Rediff office
PIX: Dev Anand's last public appearances
Watch: Dev Anand's Last Years
How the Dev Anand-Suraiya love affair ended
Exclusive! Irom Sharmila writes: 'We've learnt to forego truth'