At 11 p.m. on Thursday night, when most of the city is asleep, I’m strolling the well-lit corridors at Phoenix MarketCity, which has just sprung to life. The crowd is just building up, and in fifteen minutes, it resembles the airport – hordes of people busily waiting for a smooth take-off.
Avinash Sahu, an engineering student, is part of the crowd. Not wanting to miss out, he’d come well in time for the countdown to the midnight launch of the Apple iPhone 6S and 6S plus. He’s restless and cannot wait for the clock to strike twelve. “I’m a huge fan of the iPhone,” he tells me, “I’ve been using their models for many years. This is special.”
It was, for the hundreds of iPhone fans sauntering into the mall, at a time when they could have been asleep or even (going by the times) logging on to a shopping website to get a good deal. “I had booked it just today and the opportunity of being one of the first to experience a new iPhone model drew me here,” he says, looking above my shoulder frequently, at the clock.
He wasn’t alone. There were several other enthusiasts who were in queue to witness the launch at the ‘Currents’ store and take the phone home. Most of them had pre-booked it online. Like Dinesh Gautham Kumar, an architecture student, who was patiently awaiting his turn to get to the store. “It feels like a first-day first-show of a movie, right?” he asks me, “This is my first time at a launch like this and I didn’t expect such a crowd at this time of the day.”
Some of them are waiting to catch a glimpse of Jayam Ravi, the actor who’d launch the phone and hand it over to the first three customers. He arrives on cue, with just two minutes to go, and waves at the animated crowd. “I’m a big iPhone fan, just like all of you,” he announces, much to the glee of everyone.
I manage to wriggle out of the line, replete with youngsters extolling their phones, and bump into a magician displaying his tricks for the audience. Anticipating some boredom leading to the launch perhaps, a line-up of exciting activities – including table magicians, jugglers and street entertainers – has been scheduled to keep the ‘I-waiters’ entertained.
At a corner, a magician is trying to do exactly that. He makes someone clench a sponge ball, and in no time, makes it into two. In a few minutes, he stuns everyone by producing a couple of more sponge balls out of thin air.
Everyone is surprised at how he managed to do that. If only he could do the same trick with an iPhone, they wouldn’t be standing in line at midnight.
