Jerkin-effect – the outside cold-inside warm effect that results out of wearing only a jerkin in the rain. The legs usually get drenched, and give a feeling of "exciting" chillness and the trunk remains comfortably warm.
If I remember right, Senthil told me about it about a week ago. But he wasn't sure where it was being screened. "It might be playing at KG Big Cinemas," he supposed.
Now, I am not particularly an MJ fan. In fact, I'm not sure I've even heard a lot of his songs other than perhaps Beat It, The Earth Song and They Don't Care About Us. It hadn't been long since his sad demise, and I was surprised beyond measure on learning of the kind of a fan following he had. With all due respect to the 'King of Pop', I hadn't the slightest clue MJ was him. And now that he was no more, I felt this urge to get to know him better. Or at least to get to know why he was what he was considered to be.
When I first heard of 'This Is It', with its Michael Jackson poster et all, I couldn't imagine what it was. I mean, it certainly couldn't be a "movie" starring him – he was no more. And yet the posters proudly claimed 'Michael Jackson's This Is It'. It took me a little google-ing to find out it was a something of an MJ documentary. However that didn't take me any closer to guessing what it really was and more so why it was such a craze. But I didn't seem to have done much about it, and I let it be.
With all those unanswered questions in mind and not knowing what to expect, I readily agreed to Senthil's proposition of watching it this Tuesday that passed. But thanks to a little confusion about the show timings, we didn't get to watch it. We decided on watching it the next day. So, faithfully as we had decided to, Senthil and I got in touch and confirmed our plans of watching it on Wednesday. 'I'll drop in to your place by 9," he suggested. Vinodh was to join us too.
It was drizzling a "beautiful" drizzle then when Senthil and Vinodh arrived at my place by 9ish, and we left for the theatre within a few minutes. An old-theatre styled building, no air conditioning, tickets in the Balcony priced at Rs 30, a mistimed audio system and located in an otherwise prime but then deserted Bashyakarulu Street in RS Puram; Maruthi isn't the best of theatres in Coimbatore. There weren't more than 25 people in a theatre that could accommodate well over 500 – all classes put together.
This Is It started on a brilliant note. Not more than 2 minutes into the documentary, it's intent – 'For the fans..' – and a text introduction later, I was choked and my eyes were almost in tears. But then on, the rest of it was MJ practising/performing his songs for the concert(s). Blame it on either me not having been a big fan or the theatre itself, 30 minutes into This Is It and I was looking at my watch. But then Senthil kept giving me snippets about MJs life and things the 2 hours or so passed. It was time to hit the road and head home.
Walking out the theatre, we realised that while we were inside, the drizzle had turned into a mighty downpour. We could see the water logged roads from the theatre's windows. But it wasn't pouring as heavily then. We had brought our jerkins along, so I suggested we hit the road in the rain. RS Puram is about 7-8 kilometres from Peelamedu. I was expecting a scintillating ride back home in the rain. On my way back, I tried hard to like the movie, but I failed in the attempt. I tried enjoying the rain and what most would call a "sexy ride" back home, I failed again. Despite stretching my hands out wide on a moving bike, looking up at the sky and letting the rain drops poke me in the face till it hurt, breathing the rain in through my nose and other similar desperate attempts at trying to enjoy the rain, I simply couldn't.
Instead of getting back home excited from the "sexy ride", I got back home half drenched.
I couldn't help wonder whether something was fundamentally wrong with me, or whether all ideas of getting drenched in the rain are indeed sadly boring; or whether it took an especially smitten heart of a new-fangled lover boy/girl to "enjoy" the rain. Whatever the reason, I couldn't wait to change into snug, dry clothes and log onto facebook to do some stalking. ;-)
The jerkin effect can get almost anybody to feel like wanting to pee. Me no exception. It's amazing, the thoughts one can think in those few seconds. ;-)
Cheers.
P.S. Alpha, this is perhaps my first post that I am writing when I'm not angry. Although, if you can cut through the prose, you might just get a glimpse of the pang of a miserable actuality. And don't bother asking me what this means. J
