Tales of Ipsa

Category: Real Life Anecdotes

  • Household hints

    Household hints

    I was always a sucker for household hints. Or hacks, as they call them now. A shower of crumbling neem leaves in an old tome took me back to the summer afternoons of long ago when it all began. To a battered blue cardboard file bulging with newspaper and magazine clippings which I had discovered…

  • Shades of blue                         

    Shades of blue                         

    Christmas season has ended and Blue Christmas has played many times over as part of the season’s playlist. Its not a particular favourite of mine. On the other hand, we all have our favourite shades of blue—for it is the world’s most popular colour and occurs in 71% of all national flags. We are inhabitants…

  • Tracking every step

    Tracking every step

    The first step is the hardest, they say. It takes a human infant a whole year to quit its quadruped days and attempt that first tottering step under the adoring gaze of its parents. There is no respite thereafter. Life becomes a series of steps and missteps, with a watchful, (and not always adoring) eye…

  • Paired proverbs

    Paired proverbs

    For every pithy proverb in use, there is in another corner of the world (or sometimes in the very same corner) an equally pithy one which states just the opposite. Which puts one in a bit of spin. Which one of these paired proverbs is true? And which is not? Let’s try and decode the…

  • Birds are Us

    Birds are Us

    Early morning. Unhurried and peaceful. A time to sit out in the balcony with my cup of coffee, feel the freshness of the cool breeze and listen to the trill of bird song. As I watch them chatter, squabble, mate, and play, I am struck by their resemblance to humans. They are not just like…

  • Every finger has its day

    Every finger has its day

    Why do we have five fingers? Not three or four, or six or eight? Evolution decided that this was the optimal number for the various tasks we need to perform. It made each one unique— giving each one a different shape and/or a different length. No two fingers are alike. Every finger has its use,…

  • Blow hot blow cold

    Blow hot blow cold

    An Indian summer is here again. As temperatures soar and tempers rise; and the scramble for the AC remote begins, a deeply mystifying question raises its head again. Why are we humans not satisfied at one universal temperature? Why do some like it at a frosty 20 degrees celsius while others like it at a…

  • Good morning!

    Good morning!

    A message doing the rounds of social media is that good morning messages will attract exorbitant taxes. It was circulated widely by many who hoped it was true. Many more were unbelievers, common sense dictating that it was too good to be true. Others rooted for it silently. Some supported it as a patriotic cause,…

  • A jar of face cream

    A jar of face cream

    All I wanted was a jar of face cream. I went down to the local pharmacy downstairs for what I thought would be a five-minute chore. The store had changed hands and had had a makeover. Rows on rows of glass shelves, filled with an endless supply of bottles and jars. Shampoos and conditioners. Body…

  • A mouthful of bitter melon

    A mouthful of bitter melon

    Among my many mouth-watering childhood memories of food lurks one bitter foe. A mouthful of bitter melon, to be precise. Aka the bitter gourd or karela or its cousin-the uchche. It turned up regularly on our lunch platter, being considered a superfood, though the term itself had not been invented then! It all came back…