Sunday, June 28, 2009

The stories we say

All of us use them, some of us make them and better still some of us live off them and still more hilarious some of us live with them. This post isn’t a moral science class. I stopped being judgmental a long time ago.

I have to tell you that I myself have used some of these to get out of tricky situations. Here are some of my all time favorites.

When I was doing my MBA in this really nice college in Bangalore-We had to submit an assignment on Financial Management. It was a very simple assignment & my gang used to be the first to do any assignment and then circulate it for others to do. But this time, even we were lazy and had not got our assignment done. I could give you a number of excuses, but none of them would get us out of the situation of not submitting the assignment on time. It was one of our class mates Birthdays and she was throwing a lunch party for majority of the class. Even at the party we couldn’t really enjoy Cz we were thinking of the assignment. This is when we came up with such a dramatic plan .We called up our prof and invited him to the party and generally sweet talked him.Well he couldn’t just turn up for the party on such a last minute invite,But we made him feel real guilty abt it.Infact we kept telling him we wouldn’t cut the cake till he came.He made the unfortunate mistake of saying he would still give her a gift she wanted.You can guess what we all asked for “ Sir please postpone the submission date for the assignment”-The date did get postponed-hhehehehhehehe

A guy forgetting a birthday or a date-Major crime. But this story is the best. My best friend used to go out of station to his home town every year when it was my Birthday, I used to get so upset that I used to cry and be mad about it. He called me from home and told me not to worry, He be back-This is when he made the mistake of telling me he had started a journal or a diary or something like that about the great times he had with my family and our life in Bangalore. Well he did come back after his visit home and I was expecting to see the journal. Unfortunately I never got to look at it. I kept asking him what happened.He told me such a tall story of him actually writing his journal in the Kalada bus( a bus which all malu’s are familiar with when they travel from Bangalore to Cochin) and he falling asleep and when he gets up, The journal is missing.-Wow aren’t you all smiling and wondering who on earth would have possibly stolen his journal. Do you suppose they thought it was the missing map to the treasures of the world- Guys give the tallest of tales.

Please share all of your views on this, Im all ears. Another thing –If any of you travelling in the Kalada bus happen to find this journal. Do tell me

Being Possesive

Im just wondering are women more possessive than men,Or does the situation dictate the extent of possessiveness or alternatively is their another dimension a combination of the gender of the individual involved and the situation they are currently in.Im not sure so I ask all my readers to tell me what they think.I happen to have a lot of very nice guy friends and perhaps some of them view me as a tom boy,some think Im a hot chick(Well its an open forum,If you don’t think so,Post your view),some think Im quiet a kid,All of them though use one word to describe me,I have no hassles and am very easy to get along with.

I always thought that the relations we all had among ourselves would remain the way we were.Over the course of time some of my friends have had gal friends,Hmmm Im not sure I approved of all of them, Though I guess I it just was the way things were bound to be.You know when guys are falling in love because suddenly they seem to ask your opinion on what women think,what women feel and what women want.In the past,they would laugh about such things,But now my valuable insight would be most appreciated.At times like these I wondered-Should I give them the truth or tell them something totally wrong so that I don’t loose my friends to these “Other women”.Hmmmm I know I am demonstrating a case of women being possessive. Well I gave them the correct answer. These got me wondering do guys like having possessive female friends and do women like having possessive male friends. I got my answer soon.

These are the scenarios

1.A guy friend,meets a new male friend,starts hanging out with that new friend-I didn’t bother.I asked to be introduced to the new friend,Just to casually get to know the new person.
2.A guy friend ,meets a new gal friend, starts hanging out with the new “gal”-Escuse me,I better be introduced,I have to do a thorough evaluation is she worth knowing my friend,Is she his type,Is she good enough for him.I wondered what did I hope the result of my evaluation would be,Did I want her to be a total mis-match and tell my friend she wasn’t really that nice and let her go fly a kite.Or hmmm did I want her to be perfect for him and tell him that she was the gal he should end up with-But doing this would mean he would essentially start spending more time with her and I would be loosing my friend to “Another women”

Recently a person who I regard as my brother got married, You know what I have the peace of knowing he is with someone who I know will take care of him,Be with him and understand him completely and I am happy for them so much. I also do wonder, Would any of my guy friends really be possessive of me.

Friday, June 26, 2009

All in the name of making a movie

They say a movie is supposed to have a good story line,A plot which would have drama,suspense,a few song and dance sequence (I'm Indian,Thats how we do it here) and may be a good message for the audience,But what we discovered is-There is more drama making a movie than the actual Movie.
I happen to have been so lucky to have worked in an amazing company in Bangalore.The company decided to open a competition to all its employees to make a corporate movie.The prize money 1 Lakh( I know,Do I sense a little J out there) and better still the company would have movie making workshops in Manipal County Resort.
So well,It all got organised,Employees who were participating in this competition had movie making workshops organised in batches at this place.Now our chance finally came.Let me intoduce you to the main characters of the story-Arjun,Vinod,Sujim, a lady coleague (Who Im not sure would like to be named),My twin sister Mischelle( who was the coordinator of this whole exercise) and me.We had other participants from other teams and the workshop facilitator and her friend-But this blog isnt about them.

Now the fun begins-We had long interactive workshops about directing,writing a script and all the things required for making the short 3 minute movie.One of the activities was doing a mime and hoping the other participants could guess what we were depicting, I think our team, Took dumb charades to the next level and did an enactment so unique I’m surprised everyone present didn’t throw our team out for making them laugh so much. Well our crazy team which was 5 members decided to do a still mime of the Phrase” Rising star, Eradicating darkness ”Now let me give you a small description on what we all look like.Vinod and Sujim are the tall guys,Arjun tall and thin,myself Petite is the best description, The other lady, thin and tall.

Well this is what we did, All the readers of this blog, Please make your imagination run wild and only then you will be able to visualize this.We had a chart paper which we used as a prop.The chart paper was rolled like a cone,That was supposed to be a torch. When the time came to do the mime, this is what we looked like. Imagine the lady sprawled on the floor, getting up in slow motion with the chart paper in her hand and passing the chart paper to Vinod who is crouched on his legs and then gets up like he is the statue of liberty (I know you are all wondering how come the statue of liberty is male-please feel free to post all your comments on this).I was adjacent to Vinod and Im holding my hand entangled together which I dramatically open up,Sujim is adjacent to me standing tall and Arjun is lying flat on the floor.His legs are touching Sujim’s feet(He was supposed to be Sujim’s shadow).Im sure all of you are confused so let me give you a step by step account of what was happening.The lady sprawled reaching out for the chart paper and passing to Vinod and Vinod rising slowly when he got the chart paper-supposedly the torch was denoting “Rising Star”.Me being adjacent to Vinod opening up my arms was supposed to be showing the effect of light setting U free,Sujim near me with Arjun at his feet were the most hilarious site,Cz as soon as I set my arms free,It was Arjun cue to roll away(He was the shadow which disappeared when the light came)-Their part denoted Eliminating darkness.

If you were able to visualize this,I am sure you are bursting out laughing,When we presented our mime,We had to do it 3 times and it got worse as we kept doing it,Cz by then the laughter had set in and even we as the presenters were cracking up.

At the end of that Saturday we were told to go back to our rooms and come up with the script for our movie.Now our group as crazy as we are decided well we have to come up with a whole script for the movie,But let us chill for some time before we start preparing.The guys decide to go for a swim and the rest of us were relaxing in our rooms.The lady who was in our team,My real sympathies for her bcz she was not as insane as the rest of us and she just happened to get assigned to our group.Any way after dinner all of us assemble in the guys room and decide its time we got serious and come up with a script.Its already 9 in the night by then and we still are joking around.Mischelle too tired with all the madness is lying on one of the beds looking at us make a fool our selves.The lady in one corner of the room wondering how come she got stuck with such people,Myself and the other 3 guys just relaxing and staring at the blank chart paper in front of us where we are supposed to pen our thoughts and come up with a script.Vinod and Arjun passing time sipping a drink(Vodka-Fuel to be precise) trying to come up with a name for our production house and a script. For some reason Arjun was lying on the ground wth his legs on the bed and it is exactly at that point inspiration set in for all of us.We came up with a beautiful script about our company and what it represented for every employee.I know you are wondering why I mentioned the position Arjun was lying in,But honestly there has to be some co-relation b/w him lying like that and the script of the movie, If he shifted position or lay straight or even got up, The whole group just stopped thinking. Poor Arjun I don’t think we let him go for a loo break also.By 1 the next day morning we had our script and we also had some wicked ideas on presenting our concept for the next day.

Sunday morning while the other teams were nervous and doing last minute preparation, Our team had now formed a name for the production house “FUEL” in recognition to the drink the guys were having and we came up with a tag line”IGNITING THE FIRE IN YOU”(Yeah ,all of you out there who had some naughty thoughts, good for you, My blog is meant exactly for that).Any way back to my blog on the movie making experience-Our team presented our movie story and we did it in total style.All major production houses have a mascot ,I think Tristar has the horse, Columbia has the lady holding a star.Well Fuel needed a mascot and for some reason I got nominated to be the mascot, Imagine when we introduce the Production house, I was supposedly the gal on a half moon in the clouds and then we introduce the name- FUEL-IGNITING THE FIRE IN YOU.Trust me after that moment,we were on a roll.That evening when we left the resort we had earned more than a movie making experience,We had earned much more than the hope of earning the prize of 1 Lakh.We had earned the ability to laugh at our selves and still feel happy about it.
Today 2 years later when I think of that experience- I have a naughty smile, a twinkle in my eye and priceless memories about a movie making experience