After a little while, we initiated a conference chat room and started the discussion. Everyone seemed as excited as I was. Soon, we meet in the terrace near our cubicles [Our team is the only lucky ones to sit right next to the terrace]. I thought about a highway theme something like roads, trucks, and shops etc. but it didn't sound very catchy. Since there was an explicit note in the mail asking everyone to be ethnic wears, any freakish idea didn't suit the dress code. Meanwhile, the ethnic dress code rule was removed since people wanted to wear dresses emphasizing their themes. Then we came up with an idea of restaurant. I was totally for the theme. But many felt collecting stuffs for a resto will be difficult. Then there was an idea about festivals. But I somehow felt it was repetitive. Since the following day was Christmas holiday, we thought we will squeeze our brains then.
The day after Christmas, we planned to meet at 4. But I was not able to make it since I had an important call. So when I was back, Harsha explained me the theme. It was very good indeed, out of box as I wished. Following day also I missed the meeting. Then, again, Harsha told me my job. I was supposed to write a story to outline the theme and prepare few charts to highlight the theme. So after a few googling, editing, cutting and pasting, I came up with few funny pics.
Here goes our theme as on 31st Dec:
First lemme explain the location. My wing is just next to the coffee room. The pathway has grouping of four cubicles and 3 such groupings. At the other end or the exit is near the windows with a single cubicle on either side.
As you enter the cubicles from the entrance near the coffee room, first there is a message on the right saying “All this is for fun. Characters and Setup is purely hypothetical”. To the left, there is a write-up, the story. Since, its quite long everyone tried to snik in. Deepthi and I had to make sure everyone read the story before they enter. The story is:
Once upon a time there were two brilliant employees their names were Sanjay and Ghajini. Sanjay was graduated from IIT Madras and IIM Bangalore. He was working with Lehman Sisters for the past 4 years. Ghajini has done his MS from MIT and after switching a lot of jobs, he finally joined Copperman Sacs. They lived in a luxurious villa with extravagant bonus from their companies.
When they were touring around the world, a dragon called recession crawled in slowly. It whacked the mortgage companies with its tail and burnt the lenders and home builders. They didn't realize that they were holding on to a thin string. The dragon soon blew the fire burning their strings, leading to the fall of Lehman Sisters and Copperman Sacs.
The string wouldn’t resist and everyone lost the jobs. But Sanjay and Ghajini didn't lose hope. They fought hard to catch another string. But the dragon was very powerful; it hit the stock market leading to a global recession.
After a long struggle, poor Sanjay and Ghajini had to survive the recession. Finally, they made up their mind and took a new road to hold on in the recession.
In the pathway there was a sign:
There were also a lot of boards hanging down.
And the next cubicle was something like this:
First, was a tea stall named “Lehman Sisters Tea Stall”. Seema was dressed in an old saree with her hair pulled up in a knot very similar to the real tea stall lady. She tossed the dosa in the pan which was on an iron stool every time people came along. [FYI: the dosa was ready made.] Then, it was Venkat as Chootu, tea stall boy. He had his tracks rolled up to the kneel and a towel tied around his waist above the old t-shirt. Chootu asked everyone who came along for tea and served them. Harsha, the tea master, was in an old dhothi/lungi , a dirty t-shirt and a towel knotted on the head. Harsha told everyone that he has lost the job and passed on his resume as anyone came in. He also acted pouring tea from the tea pan to the tea glasses. [FYI: the tea was from the vending machine ;)]. There were a few newspapers and magazines hanging from the thread. The tea stall also had all its essentials like the movie posters, biscuit bottles (which is also robbed from the coffee room) etc…
Moving on was a Pan shop “Copperman Sacs Pan Mahal”. Sukhveer had tilted down a drawer to make him a comfortable seat. He sat on the seat with a handkerchief tied to his head. All brands of pan was hanging from the thread above: gutka, manikchand, masala pan and cigars. [FYI: we rented them from a real pan shop. So we had sure no one ate the pan. The cigar was just the empty packets.] There was also a thread for lighting the cigar. The pan shop had an offer “Shoot a ballon from any of our competitive cubicles and get a pan free!!!” We made every effort to spoil the other’s decoration ;). Then there was a PCO, STD, ISD Booth with a phone which we unplugged from Manjoy’s cubicle [He was on vacation].
Then comes our big stunt: A big board hanging above Amit and Nagaraj who where in CA T-shirt which said:
Meanwhile, Santhosh in a getup of mad with wrongly buttoned shirt and CD all over him, gave away his resumes asking people to refer him in CA.
OOPS!!! I forgot to mention Ranitha, the new girl to the team. She did a great work behind the screen.
The teams snap:
Three Cheers to all of US!!!
