Witty Scribble

As we close the year end and welcome the new year with all the joy and zeal, let us know a bit about the first thing that changes with the year: The Calendar . In this age of technology and gadgets, many people still use the traditional wall calendar or other printed forms. It is arguably the most efficient tool in Indian household to track the absence of milkman or the maid. As we near the year end, I thought it will be apt time to talk about our friend on the wall, the Calendar. Oh! don’t worry, I am not going tell you about leap years and century years and stuff, I know you know that already (although you may find one of our older posts about leap second a little interesting). So right before we change the calendars, let us talk about how calendar has changed over time. Based on whether the calendar represents the cycle for sun or moon, it can be a Solar Calendar or Lunar Calendar. However, most of the early calendars were lunisolar, considering both lunar and solar p

'Where words fail music speaks'. A famous quote, from a renowned author 'Hans Christian Andersen', is undoubtedly true. Music/Sound transcends the language-barrier to work as a common medium to elicit happy, melancholy, annoying, devotional, calm, energetic etc. feelings. Though oldest musical instrument is contested, the records definitely ascertain the fact that music is much old than we generally think it to be. The contested slice of history is w.r.t. two finds in recent times. One is called the " Divje Babe Flute ", discovered in Slovenia and estimated to be 43,000-67,000 years old. The other is the pair of flutes found in Germany and estimated to be around 40,000 years old. These flutes, made of Mammoth's ivory and Swan's bone, are generally accepted as the oldest musical instruments. Divje Babe Flute (Source: Wikimedia) So much on the musical instruments history. Let's come to the present, in the world where Hip hop/Rap &

I raised my hand as high as I could, sitting in the third row of benches in my class, hoping that our chemistry teacher will notice me and ask me for the answer which I believed I had calculated correctly before rest of the class. I strategically chose third row of benches throughout my student life as I believed that third row students got just the right attention from the teachers and were at lower risk of being asked to produce the homework and classwork assignments that teachers could show to the rest of the class as examples of good or bad work. “27.9”, I said, beaming with confidence when Pandey Sir nodded at me after seeing me raising my hand. Waiting for my appreciation from him, I never anticipated the kind of mockery I was going to become in next minute. Pandey Sir being one of the strictest teacher, yet a fun-loving person who would not miss any opportunity to crack a joke, asked me back, “27.9 Kilometers or 27.9 metre per second square?”. The whole class burst int

Billions of years ago, life on Earth started in a primordial soup. With the single celled organism, life eventually sprang up in water. Later, it evolved into creatures living on land, until we, the most intelligent (though I believe as most complex) found our mojo & began to rule the planet (& hence destroy it). Well this blog doesn’t speak about our wrong doings on the Mother Earth but is on an interesting thought put forward by one of our own kind. Since the origin of Life can be traced to a single organism, it is pretty much self-evident that all of us are somehow related to one another. But how close are we actually? In the sense, if you have to reach to another unknown person somewhere at the opposite side of planet, will you be able to reach out to her/him? If yes, how many threads have to be cut to reach the person holding the fleece?  Continue reading to know more.. Six degrees of separation The Idea- Six degrees of separation There have been many ideas/s

“Uncle, why is this ‘Anaar’ giving red and green color light, why not some other color?”, asked Aadi, my friend Vijay’s 5-year old, who is a bundle of joy and child curiosity. We were celebrating Diwali in our society in Hyderabad as we could not go to our respective hometowns this Diwali. Someone in near vicinity was lighting up an “Anaar”, the flower pot or the fountain cracker, which was emitting stars of red and green color that fascinated Aadi. Firecrackers are age old tradition across the world. For many, firecrackers are an integral part of Diwali celebration. Let us know a bit more about firecrackers, their history and try to find answer to Aadi’s question. Firecrackers and their history: Firecrackers originated in China around 200BC, initial versions of firecrackers were made of a special type of bamboo which will explode on prolonged heating producing a ‘bang’ sound. Firecrackers in Chinese are referred as “ baozhu ”, literally meaning exploding bamboo. Aft

"I am looking for a good perfume bhai", said Kushagra, my younger brother. "Perfume? But why..since when have you started buying these stuff?", I queried him. "Since the day I have started cycling & any-which-ways the sweltering Faridabad heat demands one." "Ok..Which deo are you looking for?"  "Not Deo bhai, but perfume. Technically speaking Eau de Perfume. You really don’t know much about these na. Maybe you can write your next blog on the difference between Eau de Perfume, Eau de Toilette etc." said Kushagra correcting me. So here it is. My next blog on the sweet topic of fragrance. How is a Deodorant different from Perfume? While both Deodorant and Perfume create good aroma around, there is a major difference in the application, function and composition of the two. So to start with, let us understand the reason of generation of bad smell. The reason we emit a foul smell is attributed to the doings of bacter

“You guys have started to pick up some interesting topics lately”, commented Shikhar in our college whatsapp group in response to our last blog post on how lizards manage to cling and move on walls. While the post, due to obvious reason of being about lizards, made few of our readers go ‘eww’, Shikhar and few others found it really enlightening. While we were thanking Shikhar for his kind words, he asked a question. “Is the spider’s web really as strong as they show in the spiderman movies?”. Well, I told him, that I will find that out for you. And here I am, fulfilling my promise. Spider webs are a common sight around us. Small webs made by spiders near the corners of walls and ceilings. These webs are multipurpose device created by spiders sometimes to protect their bodies and eggs, but primarily to catch their prey. However, there are few species of spiders who do not built webs at all or catch prey using other methods as well. Spiders (along with few other insects and la

'Is the box heavy? Should I get it down?', asked my brother Kushagra, with a wry smile. Though younger, he was well built while I was the slender, skeletal one. For good reason, I was given a nickname 'Hanger'; t-shirts just hung down on me. Well that was when I was in 5th standard. I wish someone could call me 'Hanger' today. 'Don't try to be a hero. Will give you a choke-slam, then only will you understand my power. Let mom & dad go, we will have the WWF fight and I will show you who is the boss', standing on a stool, I looked down at Kushagra, my eyes sharp gazing into his with raze.  'We will see bro, first you try to get the carton down'.  'Ok. Be quiet. Let me do my work'. Standing on stool, as I pulled the carton from the attic surface, I felt something slithering on my hands. A loud scream followed when I realized that a lizard had jumped out of the carton, onto my hands, and was moving so smoothly towards my

Swapna Burman , a name that was hardly heard of a week ago, is a popular household name now and a name that means national pride, and a story of fighting against circumstances to achieve success. Manjit Singh, Jinson Johnson, Neeraj Chopra, Arpinder Singh are few among many more such champions who have inspiring stories of success despite adverse circumstances. That’s what sports do best, bring out the real-life champions, who not only excel at their discipline of sport but also are great fighter and exhibit exemplary perseverance when conditions and circumstances do not favor them. All they need is a stage to express themselves while the world watches. The 18 th edition of Asian games provided that stage and revealed a new generation of Indian sports-persons, who are the new generation role models. As I write this, the closing ceremony of the Asian games is about to commence, and India for sure will be a proud contingent. Asian games , the quadrennial multi-sport event

'Are you able to see that star-like glowing object coming out from behind the clouds?. That…..is the ISS', Rajarshi's eyes gleamed like a star as well. 'Seriously? That really looks like an another airplane', said I, gazing up in the not so starry Bangalore night. 'Han bhai, that is the ISS. It doesn’t flicker like other plane's light and travels much faster', the gleam in Rajarshi's eyes too wasn't flickering.  Raj (short for Rajarshi) is my ex-roomie and an avid star gazer, a reason for which he is also known as 'Star Uncle' amongst kids in our society. He had summoned all of us to be at terrace exactly at 19:30 hours; as at 19:32, ISS was to pass directly over us. We, quite fascinated by Sandra Bullock's Gravity and later McConaughey's Interstellar, were really excited to witness the ISS, when Raj told that it can be seen from our naked eye. And finally, the vision of the object moving high up in the sky, left us thrilled

“Bro, watched that new Alia Bhatt movie, Raazi? If not, leave everything and watch it now.”, Prakhar said with his signature excited tone when he talks about something he really believes to be good. I strongly believe, he should be in sales and marketing. “No, I haven’t yet. But I think I’ll watch it today evening. It is already on Amazon Prime”, I responded and told myself to watch it ASAP, for two good reasons: One, when Prakhar recommends a movie, it ought to be good and you don’t want to miss it. Two, he was going to ask this again, and if I haven’t watched it before he asks next time, I am doomed. We continued our phone conversation about various other things including future of our blog, WittyScribble(which by the way, rests is our hands as you read this. Please show us some love by liking and sharing our posts 😊 ). I watched the movie later that day. As expected from a movie recommended by Prakhar, I liked it a lot and so did Himanshi(my better half). So, I am going to