Mathura, Uttar Pradesh: In a few days, Ashish Sharma will head to New York City’s Times Square to watch a movie. And then, if all goes well, he will follow up by watching 55 more.
He’ll take breaks, of course—10 minutes between movies, to be precise, in which he’ll do jumping jacks to keep himself limber, visit the bathroom, and ferociously stave off the temptation to shut his eyes. Then he’ll settle back in his seat, in a plexiglass cube of a viewing room, and get back to competing with his seven fellow inhabitants for the Popcorn Bowl in the Netflix Movie Watching World Championship.
It’s the movie-watching equivalent of the ultra-marathon. As the passing public looks on, the eight invited contestants have to watch films for 121 consecutive hours, 2-7 October, to claim the Guinness record, $10,000 in cash, and a lifetime subscription from Netflix, the online movie rental service.
Small-town dreams: The desire to find a place for Mathura—where he hails from—in the Guinness Records is what drives Ashish Sharma. Harikrishna Katragadda / Mint
For Sharma, who typifies the sort of enthusiasm for these world records that is uncannily common in small-town India, this should be a cinch. He is, after all, the Haile Gebrselassie of movie watching, having set the record of 120 hours 23 minutes only this June. But in New York, there will be a unique linguistic problem— perhaps the equivalent of tying long-distance running champion Gebrselassie’s shoelaces together.
In a Netflix press release, Sharma is described as the “brash, current Guinness World Record holder”, and is quoted as saying: “I am the one who is going to win and India will retain this world record. I will put the fire in the heart of my competitors.”
But a week before the contest, Sharma is less eager to predict such cardiac arson for his rivals. Only recently did he discover that every film in the Netflix challenge will be in English—a language that he understands and reads only with great distress.
“I pointed this out to them, saying that if I didn’t understand the movies, how would I stay awake? My interest won’t even last for three hours!” he says plaintively. He requested a few Hindi movies to leaven the mix, or at least a simultaneous translator; both requests were turned down. “If it really is all English movies, I doubt I’ll last the full five days.”
Record setter
Sharma, a lithe 31-year-old with the earnest sincerity of a schoolboy, emerged from a similar five-day ordeal in June as if he was returning from a spa. At the K.D. Dental College Auditorium in Mathura, Sharma set his world record, beating by three hours a German woman named Claudia Wavra.