BRAToSPHERE

Tag: fun

  • Sunday Evenings

    Sitting in my 10th floor balcony, sipping on hot green tulsi tea. This is the perfect way to spend a Sunday evening. Add some interesting company to this, and there is nothing in this world that could beat this experience. (Working on this bit, to solve the imbroglio forever!)

    View from the balcony

    Even alone, the Sunday evening has much to offer. It is the solitude rather that is therapeutic. The perfect time to reflect on the week gone, and to plan the week ahead.

    I know of many people who loathe at Sunday evenings. The very mention of the Sunday evening gives a very depressing feel to many. I was one if them not very long ago. I used to hate the advent of the Sunday evening. Probably it had something to do with he inevitable Monday morning, or maybe it was due to the fact that it marks the end of a perfect weekend.

    I have now come to appreciate and like Sunday evening, it gives me the perfect relaxed time that I look forward to all week. No, before you ask,Saturday evenings do not compare as more often than not there are obligations and chores to attend to. Saturday is used to fix the functional part of the week to come. Sunday evenings on the other hand, fix the inner mind pepping it for the week ahead.

    There was a time, not so long ago again, when Saturday night implies party night. No matter what, and where, Saturday night would immediately conjure the internal mood to get ready for night full of fun, frolic and a lot of liquids.

    With a heavy head, and a tired body, I would wake up to a packet of maggi for my starved tummy. Wrapping up the weekend, I would attend to chores for the week to come. I guess this is the reason for the hatred to the Sunday evening – fun over, back to work feeling.

    That now seems like a bygone era.

    Now a days, my weekends have been in hibernation mode, spending time in solitude with myself.

    Sunday evenings especially.

    So, how do you spend your Sunday evenings?

  • Off to New York?? – Part II

    Till now, in Anaisha’a journey to NY, we have seen her getting prepared to be off. What happens next?

    It is 4 in the morning, and the cab guy has arrived. Karan, Aniasha’s FRIEND, and she get ready to start for the airport now.

    They hug tightly, and after a real long kiss and a smooch which could not get any wilder,  karan took the bags in his hands.

    “Ah! I so wish I could lift her rather”, Karan thinks within himself.

    Peskina, is also there in her cab. Ready to go.

    They dump it all in the rear of the car, and sit comfortably holding each others hand, in the overtly built Qualis. A quails was necessary to hold that entire luggage.

    She takes comforts resting her head on his chest, and they talk again about the long gap of three months. They have been talking only about this single topic all evening and night now.

    They reach the airport at 5, and it seems like it is just 5 minutes back that they had started from their homes. Yes, the airport, which is a good 30 KM from the city, seems near now.

    After getting the entire luggage on the trolley, and a parting hug and a kiss without giving a hoot to PDA, and the curious looking gaping early morning travelers, they part.

    Karan probably thanks that it is time, and he can now rest to sleep finally after the long sleepless night. He gets back into the same cab immediately and is off home.

    Anaisha, trying to hide her moist eyes from Peskina, who by now is standing next to her in the entrance queue, holds her trolley. She gets her entire house( which has been packed in those huge bags) screened at the x-ray counters.

    She proudly hands over her british airways ticket to the ticket counter lady, and gets herself a boarding pass with BRITISH airways prominently written on it, besides her name. She is proud. Those moisty eyes were now confusing – sad, happy or just sleepy?

    She then heads to the immigration counter, proudly still holding the boarding pass, and thinking of the nice days ahead in New York. She then hands over the immigration form to the officer there, along with her American passport.

    Anaisha was born in America, and lived a considerable part of her younger days in the US, thus the American passport. She has a dual citizenship.

    After looking at her passport, the officer there very calmly tells her,

    “Ma’am. You can go to the “some” office today, and come back tomorrow for the flight”, and carries on with his work.

    Anaisha with a confused look, “You are not serious right?”

    “NO, Ma’am. I am very serious”, he replies with a firm tone this time looking straight into her eyes.

    “You should get this passport stamped at “some” office, but you have not got it done, and without it you are not allowed to board ma’am.”

    He takes her boarding pass, which she has been holding so carefully till now, and scribbles there in bold words – OFF LOADED!.

    She just could not bear that sight. More than anything, I guess the fact that her good looking boarding pass getting smeared was troubling her the most. She was nearly into tears, when the Airline ground staff come to her rescue.

    “We are sorry. You can come back tomorrow ma’am”.

    Her colleagues, 6 in number, all bid her bye and get off from her sight with their equally huge hand bags. Anaisha is there at the airport, all there, alone.

    Flashes of the previous night come across her mind.

    “I so wish I don’t need to go!”, she tells Karan hugging him

    “No Baby. This is your chance. You should”

    “NO. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to be away from you”, She hugs him tighter.

    Little did she know, or desired, that God was listening to her then, and was in a Dabbang mood to be granting her verbal wish.

    It is 8:30 AM, and she has been at the airport for a good 3 hours now, and there is no jugaad that seems to be possible. No other option, but just to get back home, and see what can be done in that “some” office.

    She calls Karan.

    He does not answer. She tries again, he still does not answer the call. After a couple more tries, to the extent, that the telecom authorities might actually consider levying charges on missed calls, she stops calling.

    “He must be sleeping”, the caring girl in her tells herself.

    She waits for an hour there at the airport, hoping for some divine intervention. Nothing happens. Not even the expected call from Karan.

    She, without an option, takes a cab, and heads back to the city.

    All her dreams and thought of the good times ahead are dead for the near future. All that she is left with is her british Airways boarding pass with huge scribbling on it – OFFLOADED!

  • Off to New York?? – Part I

    This story is about a friend and a rather funny incident that happened to her.

    Anaisha. Just a week back she was full of excitement, confusion and in a complete dilemma. She was shifting jobs, and was confused if she should actually take it up. The previous job in a start up was going good, but too taxing, and here she had an offer from an established consultancy. It seemed like a no brainer, but well there were issues. Not too interesting, and so we leave out the details here.

    Well, the most important part, she was flying down to the US for three months for some training by this established consultancy ( let’s call it EstaCon). She was all excited. Anybody would. She was flying down to the US!!

    She was supposed to be flying on 23rd january sunday, and was getting all prepared for it. I remember meeting her on the Thursday before that, and she had just completed a wild wild shopping spree that evening. She had more than 5 bags in her hand, and Ahen, who unfortunately accompanied her to shopping, was carrying another two. She had bought like everything possible, and I had to continuously remind her that she was flying to new York, and not kazhakasthan, and everything would be available there. For gods sake, I am sure RICE of all things would sure be available there!

    We had dinner together that night. Actually it was less of eating, and more of she telling me about all her shopping, and trust me, it took the entire evening to complete the list. I have no clue how we managed to get all that stuff on my Activa driving back home, dropping her on the way. It helped that both of us are not bestowed upon very generously on the body.

    Anaisha’s flight was scheduled at 8 AM on sunday morning, in british airways. Saturday night, she was at her friends place, all night. One of her colleagues ( lets call her peskina) called her at about 9PM asking her if she would join her on the way to the airport next morning.

    “NO, My boyfriend is coming to drop me”, Anaisha replies back in complete haughtiness and with full on attitude.

    “Oh! But can we three not go together?”, Peskina asks desperately.

    “Damn, the cab would get paid for by the company. Why does she just not take a separate one?”, Anaisha anguishes.

    “Oh! No, We got to spend some time together”, with a i-can’t-get-more-on-the face- look Anaisha replies.

    “OKAY. Can you atleast follow my cab on the way to the airport. I am scared of travelling alone you see!”

    YES I SEE.

    “Sure”, and Anaisha hangs up.

    “She wasted precious three minutes sweet heart”, she hugs her guy Karan.

    All night, karan and Anaisha are awake, talking senti stuff about the long gap that they would have to be separate from each other. Anaisha had just, six months back, shifted base to Bangalore to be with him full time, and here she was off seven seas away for a complete three months.

    This is the first part of this journey to new York. The second part would be out soon!

  • BOSS – Add as friend

    I recently saw “THE SOCIAL NETWORK”, and what a movie (the review would soon be up). The movie got me thinking about the phenomena that facebook has become, and how much and integral part it has become in our lives. One of my friend, pursuing her MBA, had recently stated, “ we are in an age, where early morning instead of running for the newspaper, we run to the laptop, to log on to facebook!”. Needless to say, she had said this on facebook.

    This got me into a discussion with a friend, who should we add on FB? This friend had spoken about her occasional cleaning up of the friends list from her profile, and also the way in which she accepts all family and friend requests, just to remove them a couple of days later( they would not come to know unless checked again!). The bigger question is, should a person add his/her boss on facebook?

    There must have been a hazaar people telling you not to add your boss. It would just open a door for the boss to spy on you, and be in complete control of you, even personally! In this post, as always, I would like to estabilish why you should actually befriend your boss on facebook.

    • You get to know your boss on personal level, and can use this effectively in your next appraisal.
    • Learn the norms of the higher level. FB would allow you too peek into the life of your boss, and you would get a fair know how, to behave and the kind of life your boss and other superiors live.
    • Want to get back to your boss? Put up pictures of the party last night, with loadsa alcohol and women drooling around. That 35 year old, self considerate coolness of your boss would all turn green in envy. Show him, You have a life!
    • In case you want to put up a tantrum, but are scared of doing so. Or maybe, If you want to express your displeasure over something, but are unable, try putting it up as your status message, in a very diplomatic way. Well, this assumes that your boss is smart to decipher it.
    • In almost all cases, we want to tell something to our boss (you are a jerk!), but we don’t be able to. FB would be the right place to tell him so.
    • And the best part, the government is with you( the US government!).

    …Facebook — a place where you’re free to share your true feelings about your employer with all your closest Internet friends. And now you can do so with the confidence that the federal government has your back.

    That’s because yesterday the National Labor Relations Board sided with a woman fired from her job after making critical remarks about her boss on Facebook. The woman made the comments during off-work hours from her home computer.

    Federal labor law protects workers against reprisal for talking to colleagues on their own time about employment conditions, including comments critical of bosses. And that right extends to employees regardless of whether they’re part of a union.

    It’s the same as talking at the water cooler. The point is that employees have protection under the law to talk to each other about conditions at work. (Source: Blog )

    Add as friend

  • >Demi God Stars of South india

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    As such it is, there are a pretty many crazy things that happen in india, and there are a lot many takers for entertainment ( read movies). There is something very peculiar with the south indians, and the god level status accorded to the movie stars here.

    The kind of feeling and respect that the south indians have on their stars is mind boggling, and the space movie stars occupy in the minds of people in the south is something truly out of this world.

    Chiranjeevi  is a God like figure in Andhra. So much that people die in the quest to get tickets for his movies. People have been so mesmerized by the actor, that the patronage now extends to his brother, nephew, son( all actors), and father in law( producer). I doubt, if the fan following will not be extended even to his dog, who might feature as the main cast in a forthcoming movie.

    The Late Rajkumar or the late Vishnu Vardhan in Karnataka enjoy a similar status. I was in bangalore last december when Vishnu vardhan expired due to completely natural circumstances. In spite of the complete natural form of death, Bangalore, and the whole of karnataka was brought to stand still for a day to mourn for the actor. We need not dwell about the time when rajkumar was kidnapped by Veerappan.

    Coming now to tamil nadu, and there is only one God here – RajiniKanth. His legend is long lived, and his fan following extends far east even to the funny looking japanese. He is creating waves presently in entire tamil land, with the release of his new movie – Endhiran ( Robot in Hindi). We have been hearing abou crazy stuff people dole out for their stars, and how a song is released before the whole cassette is released to capitalize on the craze.

    Rajini has gone a step further. He has released the trailer of the movie in the theatres before the movie releasing.

    WTF!!