I wrote this long ago for a friend’s blog, as a guest writer. Here’s the original post.
Given an opportunity to write something for Sumit’s blog, there are many anecdotes that I can share. But there is this one incident that infuriated me more than any other prank or crime in stupidity that Periwal has committed till date. I will write about it and chances are high that this post might never see the light of day (on his blog) but if it does, well, I’ll feel as if a burden has been lifted from upon me!
So, this happened when we were in DCE. I was in the process of becoming a big movie fan and I generally spent my time in watching some of the best films made outside India. One fine day, Sumit ‘recommends’ Shawshank Redemption to me. He says it is a great film and is based on the theme of Prison Break- the protagonist escapes from prison in the end! I went to IMDb and saw that Shawshank is rated among the best five movies of all time and that impressed me. After I finished watching the film I was as angry as how much America might have been when Pearl Harbour was attacked. What Parimal (as we sometimes call him) managed to do was that he deprived me of the joy of watching one of the greatest things ever made in Hollywood. He lay bare in front of me the very essence of Shawshank and if you have seen it, you can understand how much furious I might be during the last half hour of the film, when I actually knew that the hero will break out any time soon!
I have fought with him on many occasions regarding this incident and as you might expect, Sumit vehemently denies having done anything so idiotic! But at times when people discuss Top 5 IMDb films such as Godfather and Pulp Fiction, they sometimes come to Shawshank Redemption. At such times, I recall this incident, abuse Parimal a little and then try to steer the conversation of the group to some other topic! Well, what else can I do?!