That is the number of movies Chennai-based Saravana Kumar has watched since 2005, when he was 19 years old
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We’ve heard about addictions of various kinds, but this one is off the tangent. Saravana Kumar, who has practically been bitten by the movie bug, sometimes spends a whole weekend in a theatre. “I eat breakfast, lunch and dinner as well at the screens. Some places fortunately have great restaurants as well,” he laughs, and adds, “I only book seats in the middle row of the theatre — in the ‘C’ or ‘D’ rows. The movie experience is awesome from these seats. When you book in the top most rows, the sound is too loud and in the middle rows, the image looms large in front of the eyes.”
What started off as a hobby for Saravana, along with his college friend Prakash has now become a necessary hobby. “I started counting in 2004 with the movie Van Helsing. The number of movies I watched last year was 153 and this year I have reached 149 already,” he shares.
A visual designer for over seven years now, he mostly watches English and Tamil movies, though now he has extended it to Hindi, Malayalam and the recent entrant being Telugu. “I save Thursdays for Telugu movies as they come with subtitles. No matter what, I ensure that I watch five movies a week. Even if I have something else planned for the weekend, I try to finish off watching that week’s quota in advance,” he quips.
Despite being married, with a full-time job and living with his parents, Saravana says there have been days when they haven’t seen him. “They expect me to spend sometime at home, but they understand that I am at peace when I am watching movies. They do lecture me often about my health,” he laughs.
An anti-piracy agent, he said he has never even downloaded a song. “This is my passion and I do not like to dilute it. I have dedicated an Excel sheet to keep a track of the movies, so that I can remember. Previously, I used to collect tickets and store them, after that I started saving the online ticketing history and now I save it from the app directly,” he recalls.
Apart from watching movies, he loves travelling which comes out of his hobby again. “I wanted to go to Rio de Janeiro after watching the movie Rio. I want to touch 10,000 movies soon. I miss some movies, as they are on just for a week,” he says.
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( Source : deccan chronicle )
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