Short films to books: Spend a good time indulging in these fun activities

When your boss tells you to work overtime, you nod enthusiastically with a fake smile on your face while inwardly cursing them

Curated by Arpika Bhosale, Jane Borges, and Christalle Fernandes

Ganesh Chathurthi might be over but that doesn’t mean you have to let go of the mischievous elephant god so soon. Ever thought of embroidering a tiny Bappa to embellish your dining table cloth or perhaps to keep near your ghar ka mandir? Akshu Jain, founder of the sewing community, Knot Your Type, has put together a Shree Ganesh DIY kit that includes an embroidery hoop, sewing needle, and a Ganesha template for you to embroider. The kit comes with a QR code that links to a video tutorial. It’s fairly simple and easy to master: Just follow the instructions and watch your embroidered Ganesha come to life. The best part is that you get to create a Bappa who will stay with you forever.

Telling your boss they’re delulu

When your boss tells you to work overtime, you nod enthusiastically with a fake smile on your face while inwardly cursing them. That’s if you’re a millennial. A Gen Z-er might just say, “Are you delulu?” This writer (you guessed it, the team’s resident Gen Z) had two different colleagues send her digital creator Darshen K’s spoof on Millennials Doing OT v/s Gen Z Doing OT (or overtime). We laughed at the accurate portrayal of the Gen Z employee, who treats jobs and life with the same amount of unbothered sass. The Singapore-based comedian echoed this writer’s ‘shook’ gasp to the T. The influencer, who was a cabin crew member, posted a recent video on weird passengers possibly inspired by real life. But we love his impressions of delulu Gen Zs and their crazy antics the most. 
@darshenk: Instgram

Don’t tell me to calm down

At a time when everyone suffers from some form of anxiety, including us, we thought we’d finally give a try to—Calm, the meditation app of the stars. It is one the most expensive apps in the meditation arena at over Rs 33,000 charged in one go. However, the free content we sampled for the trial period of seven-days was horrendous. There meditation sessions lasted a total of two minutes, doing little to calm our fraught nerves. Most of the content is locked during trial period, and you cannot gauge whether the paid version is worth it or not. We feel other apps have much more variety in the trial period, and more importantly, the price point doesn’t send you into a panic attack. 
Playstore

Excite your mind in a short time

For those who like to watch films but can’t commit to the hours needed to sustain the hobby, Omeleto offers a quickie. The YouTube platform regularly posts short films, most of them horror and psychological thrillers, all under 20 minutes. We recently watched one about a woman obsessed with using a particular filter on social media platforms. “You’ve got to take control of your life,” her internet friend urges when he shares the filter with her. “You’ve only got one.” A common ritual that we all have participated in with our Insta-buddies, right? Well... maybe not. What might seem as an innocuous reality of our digital times quickly turns into a twist when the filter, which is based on augmented reality, starts to feel more sinister than a regular face-altering device as it starts to alter her mind.
Omeleto: Youtube

Truer words never spoken

Joseph Zacharias and Shashi Tharoor

Thanks to this writer’s mother and grandmothers, aphorisms have been part of daily vocabulary in our home. The more familiar one, and best said in Konkani: Foolish is the man who sees a well during daytime, and accidentally falls into it in the night. Parliamentarian and author Shashi Tharoor and free thinker-satirist Joseph Zacharias’ new book The Less You Preach, The More You Learn: Aphorisms for Our Age (Aleph Book Company; Rs 499) is inundated with witty and wise nuggets of wisdom. With over 200 original aphorisms coined by the duo, this book could be a good addition to your bookshelf, as well as a most suitable gift for someone who treasures ideas that provoke, make you ponder and entertain. Our favourite: “The hawk hunts, the crow picks, the vulture waits.”
Available at all leading bookstores

"Exciting news! Mid-day is now on WhatsApp Channels Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!