The lowlifes of the cinema hall

Last Sunday was a flurry of activity:
1. I spent the morning playing with my best friend's two year old cousin. She is adorable and one of the few kids who condescend to come to me without any designs of spitting on my face and/or pulling my hair out. So you can imagine what a pleasant morning it was.

2. The whole group was invited to a friend's place for lunch where her father plied us with biriyani and sprite till we were groaning almost as much as the table was. Since this came just a day after a massive cooking marathon at home where my friends and I made mounds of fried food with cheese, fear for our arteries and our triglycerides was running high. Still, it was hard not to stay cheerful after exceptionally good biriyani, especially when we were catching the matinee show of the latest Harry Potter movie.

3. At the Cinema, my grumbling Harry Potterly impaired elder brother committed a horrible faux pas by cheering for Voldemort when he was introduced without quite knowing who he was. My brother was the ONLY one in the theatre who let out a whoop and I could see his crimson face even though it was dark and he was sitting three seats away. His defence: "How the hell am I supposed to know that he is the villain? People were screaming for everyone so I thought I would scream for him too!" Nice one. Did you really miss the villainy face and the snake-like nostrils? Still, he redeemed himself by feeling very much for Dobby.

4. Somehow we had place in our stomachs for some scrumpilitious cream donuts. Don't ask me how. My friend floats this theory that dessert always has a special compartment in our stomachs. God help us.

5. I almost threw my handbag at a bunch of depraved, disgusting excuses for human beings who made suggestive comments and catcalls when the scene in which Bellatrix Lestrange is torturing Hermione at the Malfoys' Manor came.

I don't have words enough to describe how angry I still am. There was a father in the row before us who cringed in embarrassment when his kid asked him why they were catcalling. In fact ,there were several mothers and fathers along with people my age who were acutely embarrassed by it but except for our own group of five nobody attempted to do anything about it. My brother, for all his affability can be pretty menacing and I suppose he threatened to hand them over to the cops in front of the theatre.

What bothers me is the fact that someone can do something like that in the first place! Even though the later installments of Harry Potter are decidedly more mature it is essentially (in my humble opinion) a lovable, fantasy story that started out by delighting millions of school kids. I should know; I was one of those. I just grew with Harry, that's all. What would make someone let out highly suggestive comments in a movie hall that had more kids than adults? And for Harry Potter of all things?

Is nothing safe from being turned into something suggestive just because a bunch of (please fill in an adjective that is bad enough, I can't think of any at the moment) see it fit to do so? This episode leaves me pondering the following points:

1. What goes on the minds of these sociopaths? In this particular case, they, none of them seemed to be of uneducated backgrounds. Which makes the lines between the educated and the "uneducated" even more blurry. Education in these times, reasserts itself only as the means of getting a job and such, as Suvro Sir has frequently mentioned over at his blog. It does not nececcarily have to mean that the mind and soul develop equally with good sense and good intentions. The question of being cultured does not seem to arise (and by culture, I do not mean culture pertaining to geographical divides but rather that which every human being with all his faculties intact should possess).
2. Why do most people choose to ignore such incidents and their perpetrators?
3. This is a genuine, recurring doubt and I would be grateful to anyone who clears it up for me: Is the occurance of such instances more prevalent in India? Sex has always been "the big elephant in the room" in our country; is lack of proper health education and a lack of communication between parents and children a cause?

Since I know next to nothing about how things are elsewhere in the world, the above mentioned point is a doubt and a doubt only, I am not passing any half-formed judgements. But whatever it is, I just feel so angry and saddended by what happened; this is definitely not the first time I am coming across such things but something about an episode like this happening in a cinema hall full of wide-eyed kids clutching fake wands and wearing wizard hats just breaks my heart. I wish these lowlifes would go to hell and stay there.