A post to honor the rich and varied contributions shared by readers this week.

I’ve received many forwards, videos, books, articles, and suggestions on how I can keep myself occupied and entertained this week. Some of you even managed to send mails. Much better than the usual emojis and monosyllabic messages that you fob off as meaningful communication. Thank you. Thank you.

Before I share some of your fabulous stuff, the numerous forwards on how to keep oneself entertained at home begs the question: Are you people actually working from home?

That said, read on and enrich your life. I embedded videos in the post for your convenience. The video screens might look a bit too big, though. I’ll resolve this backend issue in future posts. Thanks for bearing with this glitch.

‘Catch the Chicken’ video game. You need quick thinking and agile reflexes for this one. A chicken runs super fast across your screen making cute clucking noises. Click to ‘catch’ and freeze it inside the chicken outline. The winning chicken catcher gets a virtual pat on the back.

PDF books. I received several PDF books. One was more than 1,000 pages long. Not sure if this is legal an’ all but thanks anyway. An important discovery I’ve made is that a book’s title is key to determining if it will become a best seller or not. Compare ‘The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari‘ to ‘A Textbook of Geography’ (not even italicizing this one.) The former—a best seller. The latter—hated by the few who were forced to read it and burnt.

Men, grow a sexy stubble. All these years, I thought it was easy for men to get a beard stubble. Grow one by being a slob, drinking beer or breaking up, right? Wrong. Read this article on How to Grow a Perfect Beard Stubble. There’s even something on ‘Learn your optimal length’. Whew. Ladies, this article has a picture of Don Draper of Mad Men fame—with a sexy stubble. FYI, the guy who played Draper is single now, in case you are interested. Get him while he’s still isolated at home, girls! He has been honored with this post’s cover photo.

Brain Yoga: Punishment for disobeying the lockdown in India. Imagine the top guy attempting to lock down a country of 1.3 billion with folded hands, the highest form of appeal in India. Now imagine you are a policeman. Your top guy orders you to ensure that the hordes stay indoors. So you fold your hands and appeal. And you punish the disobedient ones by making them do ‘brain yoga’. This entails holding your left ear with your right hand and your right ear with your left hand. Now, squat all the way down with your arms crossed. Repeat this 50 times. Or perish.

Solve the Riddles*. *ONLY FRUITS CAN* *BE FOUNDr in EACH* *SENTENCE* For example, what is the hidden fruit name in ‘He is an extremely cheesy guy‘? I felt so proud when I got this one right. I’ve received several other word games and will share details later. By the way, the title is exactly as it appeared in the forward.

Stayin’ Inside (parody of ‘Stayin Alive’ in Saturday Night Fever). People, John Travolta actually stands within 10 feet of other humans in the original video (below!) Ah, the good old days… And don’t miss his high heels. Yes, men used to wear them, folks. Do try his steps from 2:14 to 2:31 in the video. If you’re a man, wear high-heeled shoes while dancing.

Lions on Russia’s streets to enforce the lockdown. Seems authentic, doesn’t it? Many things seem authentic in these strange times. Like countries locking down for a virus (this is my recurring nightmare. What’s yours?) Perhaps we’re more anxious than we’d like to admit because we’re facing an invisible threat and our survival is at stake. So pause and think. Would Putin really do this to his people? Okay, okay. We’ll discuss that later. For now, let me just confirm that this piece is fake news.