Witty Scribble

One of the daily chores assigned to me by wife is 'watering the plants'. Quite fond of plants, I have happily taken up the task and do it religiously, every morning. My mom too has a penchant for gardening. We even had a 'kitchen garden' at our home in Agra, boasting of vegetables such as Cauliflower, Spinach, Radish, Beans, Tomato. I along with my younger brothers, Kushagra & Mayank, were given the onus of watering our organically produced veggies & at times, scare away the monkeys from destroying or rather savouring our prized cultivation. Prized it was, as to every guest who came to our house, it was sort of mandatory to showcase them our vegetable garden. The green chutni made from home grown coriander really had a distinct flavour and aroma, much to our delight and guests envy 😋. Good old days. I'm getting nostalgic! Cutting back to the present day, on a pleasant and cool morning in Bangalore, I was watering the two beans climbers, which are clos...

It was a hot Hyderabad summer day and we ran out of cold water in the fridge. My wife, in an attempt to get water cooled rapidly, kept a water bottle in the freezer section. And then we forgot. She opened the freezer next day and this is what she found. Broken bottle Yes, that is a real picture clicked from my cellphone camera. Excuse for the not so impressive background of the picture. My wife was clearly disappointed with the condition of the bottle (she chose these bottles to match the color theme of rest of the kitchen stuff, and now her set of 6 bottles was short of one) but I was a little amused. It was a moment for me to travel back in time. I had a video playing in my head. It was of the science lecture in school, 6 th or 7 th standard perhaps, where my science teacher was teaching about the properties of water. So why did the bottle break actually? Usually, any substance reduces in volume when cooled and the density increases. Water follows the same tr...

' Having rice with hands adds a unique taste to the food ' says my aunt. Though I don’t really second the opinion, majority of the Indians definitely will buy it. It’s a part of our Indian culture, something which is not considered to be uncouth or gross. Sometimes I feel, how had we been eating, without the cutlery that we have at our disposal today. Eating with finesse or 'Fine Dining' would really be a recently coined term. But, when did the cutlery come in to our lives? When did the likes of Spoon, Knives and Forks were first used?  The origin of Knives, Spoons : Shells, Animal tusks and horns, as historians predict, were used as spoons to gulp in any liquid. Predominantly, knives, made out of stones were used for eating (& not spoon shaped different items). Stone, later gave way to bronze and finally to iron in around 1000 B.C. During the same period, different variety of pottery like Bone China, Fine China and Porcelain was gaining shape and acceptance ...

Well, if you have not recognized the line in the title, it is from a famous song from an even more famous movie by Mr. Anurag Kashyap “Gangs of Wasseypur”. The line translates to “They ask me, whether I like weather.” Just to let you know, this post is not about movies or the music, but to know something that might help you to answer the above question, if someone happens to ask you the same: Whether you like weather. Let us talk about few instruments that are used to measure the weather parameters. You will find one, more, or all of these in a weather station. Thermometer : This is a simple one, we all know, used for measuring the temperature. However, the thermometers used for measuring atmosphere temperature is slightly different from the one we use at home to measure body temperature. These thermometers capable of recording maximum and minimum temperature. Barometer : Used to measure atmospheric pressure. Measurement of atmospheric pressure and its deviation is extr...

Sachin Tendulkar.  Hearing the name, the thing that comes to mind is 'GOD of Cricket'.  Roger Federer . Tennis/Wimbledon is where you are transported to.  Lionel Messi . A guy dribbling the football, making fool of the best of defenders.  Pankaj Advani . A genius, with a cue stick in hand, standing next to a Pool table. Or is it a Snooker table? No, it's a Billiards table. Ahh.. Let's find out.  Pool, Billiards and Snooker look almost the same on the face of it. A pair of sticks, a group of balls and a plush, exquisite green table. Collectively, they refer to a class of games known as  Cue sports . Cue sports, invented around 15th century, were invented as the indoor versions of the outdoor games such as Golf, Croquet, Trucco. These outdoor games were prominent among the elite, the royalty and no surprise, even the Cue sports were the favourite time pass for the  rich . What are Cue Sports? Cue sports, also called Billiard sports, are...

Merry Christmas. And since it is Christmas week, we are going to talk about the most popular and most loved Christmas tradition. Yup, you guessed it right, it is the Santa Claus. Ho! Ho! Ho! Santa, as all of us know, comes to visit us on the Christmas Eve, climbing down the chimney with gifts for the kids who have been good throughout the year and the ones who have been naughty get coal from him (I believed this throughout my childhood and probably still carry a part of it in me today as well J .) Let us dive into the history to see how the tradition started and evolved through time. A Santa Figure Who was Santa Claus? Santa, as we know him today, is significantly inspired by Saint Nicholas , a Greek bishop from 4 th century. He had a habit of secretly gifting the things of use to the needy and this turned in to the gift giving tradition of Santa. However, the appearance of Santa as white bearded man, wearing red fur was adopted from the illustration for Santa in ...

Long ago in the dense forest lived a rabbit. Quite fast and agile, the rabbit challenges a Tortoise for a race...... This is too common a tale not to be a part of anyone's childhood bedtime stories. At the end, was a life long advice from the story.... Slow and steady wins the race. As we grew up (90s kids specifically), bedtime stories gave way to addictive video games. Ninja Turtles was one of them. The turtles had to fight the likes of powerful 'Shredder' to save the city and win the game...   Well this article isn't about stories or games or lessons learnt etc. I suppose you must have guessed it. Yes, it is about the difference between Tortoise and Turtles.  What is the difference between a Tortoise and a Turtle? For the very first difference, Tortoise dwell on land while Turtles mostly live in water. This can be easily correlated with the story of Rabbit and Tortoise. Since the race was on land, we can infer and also remember that Tortoise is a la...