Dumb Charades

There are some days when happiness and dissatisfaction occupy you at the same time. Those days give you a strange feeling of restlesslness. Today was one such day. Work at office usually keeps me busy. Yet I make it a point to make myself a part of any fun events that my company has to offer me. So today when we had the women’s day celebration, I was there in time. My teammates’ have an interesting coolness quotient- they find it cool to boycott just anything which does not fit into their regular idea of a day at work. So, I went alone. All others had come in gangs. I felt awkward about being in a fun event all alone. But I didn’t regret it, it was not the first time either.

There was only one girl in the whole crowd who I really knew- Richa. Infact, I had come to know of her when I did anchoring for the talent council two months back. (Goes to say that almost anybody I can meet at fun events in my office would only be known to me through another fun event). The first event was the musical chair. I braved 3 rounds. But unluckily, I was in the back of one of the smartest girls in the group- Richa. When it came to her vs me, I came out in the fourth round. My musical chair continued for a while, as the audience chairs had been taken for the game.

Then was time for dumb charades. Dumb charades is one game that really excites me. I was zealous and asked “what kind of dumb charades?”. The organizers told “Hindi movies”. Isn’t that enough to turn me off? By that time, Richa herself invited me to their team. (I was a little surprised given that we don’t really know each other that much, but when it comes to silly guts that many girls surprisingly don’t possess, I am usually remembered- and I guess the anchoring would have given her that notion). But I told them that I don’t know to either guess or act Hindi movies. (Hey you, I can understand and even talk hindi that can make a native hindi speaker hang, but Hindi movies- no, not really).
Some argument from me and a couple of others persuaded the organizers to allow English and kannada as well (not that I know many English movies, but with years of childhood practice, atleast I can enact them). But now, I didn’t have a team. Finally I found a couple of more girls who wanted to play- one Hindi and one Kannada. My persuasion worked and they settled for English. I am usually popular in the acting side of dumb charades and so I chose that and I excitedly taught my newfound team umpteen number of symbols. Finally we got to play. The first round was easiest- “face off” was the movie and we got it in 6 seconds (ofcourse, we were the fastest). The second round was hangover. I showed “hang”. I managed to show “empty”, but they could not guess “over”. I finally showed them “6 balls in Cricket” and 6 balls make an “over”. We got it in 51 seconds. In the third round, we were supposed to find the movie and sing a song from it. I vetoed it out saying we can’t sing songs from English movies. The song idea was dropped. Next time, they tried making it tougher “Me, myself and Irene”. I even managed the fourth word with a combination of “eye” and “ring”. By this time, the organizer shook hands with me and said my acting was great. The participants asked us to come to the centre of the stage so that they could all see us. (That’s some shameless boasting, but you gotta admit sometimes I can manage good work too!)

They gave “Sherlock Holmes” and I acted it with “Home” and “Lock” and my wise team cracked it. Next, they wanted to make it so tough that they asked suggestions from audience. One girl suggested “Love at the time of cholera”. Now imagine doing this in two minutes, an unknown movie with 6 words and how do you ever act cholera!. My team could find “love and the time of fever-call” (I tried to explain them that it is a fever which starts with “chol” and it ended up like this. Infact, we managed this despite wasting some time asking for a notebook to write down the words they found- the name was too long for them to remember!). We could not make the last word, but this round was only for the three finalists and all three teams had not found their answers. So we survived.

Then came the spoilsport. In the form of cake and samosa. All of us had them and my teammate overdid it with two samosas. She came back from the break pretty late and by that time I had protested to the organizers not to give such long names.
Other two participants had cracked the final round in 23 and 24 seconds. I was given “fifty first dates” for the final round. Wouldn’t that be a cakewalk? Infact out of all the movies I enacted, this is the only movie I had seen and one of my all time favorites).

I tried to show “fifty” with five in one hand and in my other hand, I joined my thumb and index finger to show “0”. The audience had found the answer by then. My team came up with a brilliant “O-5”. I gave up and tried the second word. This should be easy. I had given the specific example to my teammate earlier that if I show “1”, guess “first” etc. I showed “1” finger, my teammates came up with “one”, “oneself” etc. I persisted asking them to tell something like “1” and my teammate came up with “2”. (How brilliant, if I wanted to show “2”, wouldn’t I have simply shown two fingers!!). The two samosas were really doing the talking now. I tried to indicate coming “first” in a running race. They came up with “run” etc. I switched to the third word “dates”. I had told them earlier that if I show the watch, try guessing date, time, etc. It didn’t work, and I could not successfully show them a calendar too. They guessed “five point someone” and I finally gave up. The stars of the show ‘gave up’, because the cakes and samosas had overtaken them!

The organizers felt so “sorry” for us that they managed making up a third prize on the spot with chocolates. The winners and runners-up took home some crockery sets. (Incidentally, the winners had cracked the first few rounds almost at the verge of time-out). It was difficult for me not to scold my teammate who later said her favorite movie was “50 first dates”. But you can’t really scold a stranger, can you!. But her own friends saved me the trouble by scolding her themselves. I was glad when we came so close and really sad when we lost in such a silly way. But if I think about it more, I didn’t have teammates in the first place. What if I never found them, even if I did, what would have happened if they could not guess, lets say “face off” or “hangover”. That’s how the optimistic side of me consoled the “It’s an unfair world” side of me!

On an indirectly relevant note, one thing really bothers me. Why is it that a lot of us find it cool to simply boycott participating in competitions, meetings etc. I did that grave mistake in my childhood and missed so much fun. I do it even now at times. Sometimes, it’s due to peer pressure. For example, putting a project call on mute and gossiping on our own. I think it’s part of our culture. I am just wondering whether people from other countries grow up with the same attitude??!