Mumbai - An Addiction

I was watching a movie in the Seven-G multiplex in Bandra, better known by the individual screens: Gaiety, Galaxy, etc. The good part of this theater is that the movie tickets are priced at normal middle-class levels. And you don’t feel swindled the way you do when you watch a movie having paid 250 or 300 bucks for a movie at a swanky Fame Adlabs or Inox Cinemas. The pricing strategy of the modern day mutliplexes is a topic that arouses quite a few volcanoes in me as a consumer. I won’t dwell into them right now.

Anyways, so it was the interval and I had come to buy a samosa packet at the snacks counter. And there was this guy in front of me who had just taken one and wanted to know the price of the samosa packet.

“Twenty Rupees,” the snacks-counter guy replied.

“Twenty Rupees!!” The guy in front of me exclaimed with a growl. “You’re looting people here. This is unacceptable.”

Well, he had a point. Rs. 20 for two samosas is on the higher side. But the premium is not as outrageous as the buyer made it out to be.

“What sir. In other multiplexes you get the same samosa for forty rupees.” The seller said in an apologetic tone.

“Woh multiplex hai. Apne aap ko unse compare mat karo.” The buyer said with condescension.

And that logic made me laugh. As if a place that charges atrocious amounts for anything they sell gives them the right to do so just because everything they sell is expensive.

I just took my samosas, glad that they were only 20 bucks, and went back to enjoy my movie.

Labels: movies, multiplex, samosa