Devil's Workshop?

At my place I constantly harp on energy conservation and related issues -"Switch the lights off, Sonny". "Turn down the water flow, my dear maid". "Let's take the bus today for a change", and so on.
My husband is good-humouredly tolerant of all my strictures, but I just got a glimpse of what he thinks of this habit of mine.
This morning he donned helmet to take the two-wheeler to work, and I was surprised…he usually prefers more wheels, a hood on top,... “I am glad you are finally getting around to thinking green…”, I said. To which his reply started thus: “An idealistic mind is a devil's workshop….”

Garlic peeler!

Did you read all the way from America. Are you curious? Here's garlic peeler demystified...a very 'hi-tech' gadget...

A mother's evening out

Merry was I when I got a call from my husband from work about a plan to spend the evening out in the city. Apparently, another new father like him had come in for some nagging from the wife about the grind, bustle and bother of newly blessed motherhood, and together they had decided to treat the moms to a few hours away from baby-related sights, sounds and smells. Having worked actively full time on a non-sedentary, ‘nomadic’ defense job for six years and then finding myself sitting at home changing nappies and sterilizing bottles, such occasions saw me going all gaga with anticipation and euphoria.
Came six of the clock and my baby and I were all decked out and ready. The other merry family, also of papa-mama-baby constitution joined us as planned and we set out for an evening of festivities at a local fair to be followed by dinner at a mouth-watering hole. Babies cooperated very nicely; the fair was user-friendly without being pocket-pinching. At nine of the evening, still floating on a cloud, we came out of the fair to make a beeline to the eatery, when: with a near-audible thud! I landed from the cloud I was in – I just remembered that I had forgotten to turn off the gas – I had set a huge vessel to boil water for babies’ things. What a to-do resulted, only my otherwise calm husband continued to be cool, calm and collected. He called our neighbor, gave him helpful directions to break open a meshed door to the kitchen from the garden, and waited till dear next-door-Samaritan gave a graphic report on the condition of the vessel he found glowing like coal in my ‘work-place’. Well, the faithful follower of Norman Vincent Peale that I am, I took it in my stride towards, well, dinner.

All the way from America...

My mom is on a 6-month first-time visit to the US and Canada. It's getting to the fag end of her sojourn, and she just asked me if any of us would like her to bring back souvenirs / gifts. I growled 'no electronic stuff, no battery-operated toys' for the son (of course, I didn't ask him before I decided), 'books and casual wear ok, if at all', and 'absolutely nothing for us'. Think of others and make a list of suitable stuff, I continued.
Curiosity got the better of us and my husband asked her if she was getting anything for herself....yes, a garlic peeler.

Deft definitions

1. Slippery Soap: A real FMCG!

Ahead of the Times?

At a defense base repair depot I was posted to, there was always a resource-crunch and hi-tech gadgets were rare. Consequently, some project funds allotted could be justifiably used for upgrading facilities like presentation equipment. One of these gizmos that a vendor demonstrated and was subsequently procured was a battery-operated laser pointer, now quite a common utility. A few months later, I found the item featured in "The Times of India" as part of a technological update. That was probably the only instance that my organization was ahead of the Times!

Venetian: Blind they may be, but do they vanish?

Luxuries for office rooms in the defense establishment I was posted to were literally unheard of - even curtains were for the very senior lot. So when word came that blinds had been authorized for windows in officers' rooms, one colleague's enthusiasm was pardonable: he called out to us juniors: "Finally I can have vanishing blinds in my office".

Does time walk, or run, or fly?

My sister was just about done with preparation for some major exams. On a particular Sunday afternoon a couple of weeks before the testing period, she looked at the clock and whined "It's already four. How time flies!" My ever-busy wife, always hard-pressed for time but with her wits ever intact, remarked: "Yes, dear, my request to it to fly during weekdays and slow down to a walk, or better still to stop altogether at weekends, falls on deaf ears!"

Indian lingual delights

As my wife and I worked in the kitchen one day, I happened to mention that a couple of necessary chores had been accomplished. She likened the context to a local idiom in her tongue "hitting two mangoes with one stone (oru kal, rendu manga)". I immediately gave her the equivalent saying in my language, which reads, "killing two birds with one bullet (oru gundu, rendu pakshi)"; at which she nonchalantly remarked: "Oh but we are vegetarians, you know".

When you are starry-eyed...

A colleague was recounting her younger days, when, as a newly-married couple setting up house, she and her husband filled their kitchen shelves with trendy glass and plastic jars. A well-meaning visitor remarked; "Perhaps you should go in for conventional stainless-steel containers; this plastic is slow poison, you know?" To which the young bride remarked, tongue-in-cheek, "Oh, I am in no great hurry".

The right recipe

Over the years ever since I was married, my husband, himself no mean hand in the kitchen, and I have been collecting recipes - from newspapers, old magazines, hearsay - and preserving them in bunches, to occasionally browse or confirm a menu or sometimes even get down to actually trying out some delectable dish. While leafing through them a few days ago, we burst out laughing. There on top of the first pile, knowingly or unknowingly we had included an article titled "Recipe for Weight Loss".