Tales of Ipsa

Category: people

  • The naptini

    The naptini

    Within a day or two of our homecoming she would be at the door, looking as she always did. Unchanging and constant, holiday after holiday. Grey-haired, tall and straight-backed, with a dark weather-beaten face, paan-stained teeth, and intelligent, shrewd eyes.

  • Celebrating the Fool

    Celebrating the Fool

    For humankind lives not by bread alone, but by moments of shared fun and laughter. This was the fool’s life and his livelihood. His skills were manifold—acrobatic, juggling, wordplay, mimicry, magic, music and dance—he was the Jack-of-all-comical-trades!

  • Dangerous creatures—megafauna to microbes

    Our prehistoric ancestors were brave. Small bands of them stepped out of their caves into the wilderness to hunt, armed with only wooden spears, clubs, and roughly sharpened stones. They hunted no ordinary creatures—they stalked megafauna—menacing monsters several times their size and several hundred times their weight. Dangerous beasts which could kill with a sideways…

  • 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…

  • My Two Maids

    My Two Maids

    Its ten minutes past seven, and I’ve glanced at the kitchen clock for the twentieth time. The doorbell chimes. The relief is unimaginable. For the doorbell announces the arrival of the first of my two maids.    The maid in the kitchen Manisha is the senior of my two maids, and the kitchen is her…