Alone in a crowd.

The story goes that one day, a poor woman was left behind by her out-of-town friends who watched a movie she was dying to watch too, without her. Sentimental psychopath that she was, the hurt at not being part of the foursome pricked her and rather than sit around and mope, she decided to do something about it.

Which explains how she ended up at a theatre on a Friday afternoon to watch the same movie. Sans company.

It was a completely new experience for her - she'd only dreamed about doing things like these alone, never actually done them. Having excused herself with some lame explanations from the place she was supposed to be at at the appointed hour, she rushed to the closest mall to buy herself a ticket to the movie. With two hours to kill before the drama started, she decided to do what she did best: eat. So she headed to the steak house in the mall and dug into an... omelette. Rather, an apology for one. From there, she headed to the only bookstore around and bought Lemony Snicket's 'A Series Of Unfortunate Events - Book 2' and perused it to kill some more time before the show began.

Undecided whether to buy popcorn or slush or nachos or Pepsi, she went with the option she was second best at: spending time in the ladies' room. Here, she clicked what she hoped would be one of her many entries into the Tasveer exhibition.

There done, she headed to the screen at which the movie was being played and prayed that the chairs next to her wouldn't be occupied. More so by men. Poor, poor woman, her prayers went unanswered. A bunch of pimply, lanky, college-going students filed into the seats beside her. I can handle this, she thought. They're just kids anyway, I'm way older than them. 20 minutes into the movie, she jumped out of her seat and scooted to the row above where there were plrnty of empty seats with a fabulous view of the screen. Sighing with pleasure, she parked her tush into the seat and watched the movie in solitude - laughing when she wanted to, shifting sides without worrying about disturbing people on either side of her (because there were none!), eyes agog at the slick transformations of the Cybertrons.

As the movie came to an end and the people spilled out, she couldn't suppress the smug smile of satisfaction at having done something so...ridiculously unlike her. It sure beat depending on others to watch a movie with, though. Besides, she enjoyed the alone-ness.

As she got into the auto to head home, she decided she would do this more often.