Being Passion Inspired

"Can you narrate your research finding instead of reading out from your mobile?", I quipped. I did this as soon as my mid-teen daughter started reading out the Google search definition of 'cloudburst'. My witty and quick remark did not go down well as it led to an outburst. It was her turn to tell a story in the storytime ritual, which we started during the COVID lockdown. There was a cloudburst the previous day in the hill state of Himachal Pradesh, in India, that had caused a lot of casuality, of both life and property. So, I asked her "to do some research" about cloudburst and "narrate her finding" in the storytime. And, I instructed my son to help her with her reseach. Idea was for all of us to learn something about nature as part of our storytime ritual.  Being a child who follows instructions to the T, she did exactly that. But, she focused more on the "research" part than the "narrate" part of my ask. She, apparently, spe...

"It was the idea of his great grandchildren", said the greiving son who had recently lost his father. I learnt from him that his father lived to 94 years and was active and happy till the end. All guests who came for the condolence prayer meet received a fridge magnet. It had the old man's picture and the following text, "An inheritance is what you leave with people, a legacy is what you leave in them".   It was quite obvious that the old man had left a deep and lasting impact on his family. The impact was felt and I could not stop but admire the creativity of those young minds to design the souvenir. It also made me think what would be the legacy I would be remembered for! 

"That's not possible. Why are you guys wasting your time watching this?", poked my wife who had a religious upbringing. "Ma, just watch. It is fiction and about superheros. Just enjoy the series", said my just turned teen son just as I expected he would! Thanks to the pandemic we had taken up watching webseries on Amazon Prime OTT as a family. The latest in that was "The Flash", a fictional superhero who is portrayed as the fastest man on a parallel Earth". He saves the Capital City from other dangerous meta-humans. Meta-humans are characters with supernatural powers who got created as a result of a, construed, explosion of a particle accelerator (super machine) designed for time travel experiement. My digital native teenage children were absulutely in awe with the possibility and the concept of The Flash. While my son admired the superhero his elder sister liked the script and characters! Both, for a change, teamed up to support the science behin...