My Dad is a Super Hero !

Generic pic to make you intrested

Every little boy at least once in his life makes this statement, ‘My Daddy is my hero’ most often after the Dad carries him around the park on his shoulders or after helping him defeat the boss in a video game. I too proudly claim my Dad is a hero. He did not play mortal combat with me, he did not dress up as The Joker so that I could pretend to beat him up in my Batman mask, hell he did not even have much of time to shoulder me round the park, as he was busy winning bread to satisfy our wolfish hunger. I consider him my greatest hero for the singular fact that he sowed the seeds of rational thinking in me. He instilled the idea of science in me. He was the one who told me that rain occurs not because God cries seeing naughty kids but due to the condensation of water vapors or thunder is not the sound of Gods battling Asuras but a simple expansion of air like in a balloon popping.  He even stopped me from wondering what twinkle twinkle little star is and it is not a diamond high up in the sky or the spirit of my dead ancestors. He told me they were giant balls of gas. And then to my horror, he told me that the sun is a star.  My jaw dropped. 

Imagine that is me,  a bit darker and a lot fatter

I was too eager to share this new found knowledge with my friends back in my convent school to sound cool. But to my dismay I was made into a fool. ‘You idiot, the sun is a sun and stars are angels in the sky’ Screamed the class leader to a chorus of laughter from his minions. The third grader in me on that day while nursing the injured ego learned never to underestimate the power of stupid people for they are always full of confidence especially in large numbers.

A bit hurt and a lot more confused, I confronted my Dad. ‘You told me sun is a star but everyone else knows that the sun is a sun and stars are angels, because of you now I am an idiot in school.’ Without taking his eyes off the newspaper he told ‘Yes you are an idiot, you should not have tried to showoff ’. Well Duh! What is the point in having something if you can’t flaunt it? Dad’s hero apparition seems to simmer down a bit and I wandered off confused. Weeks went by and the Onam vacation came up; fast forward to new dresses, the sadya, swing, the enlighted roads and the pretty floats on the road and to the final attraction for every vacation is the ritualistic single day visit to Zoo & Sea. In the morning after the usual steam cake soaked in milk, we climbed abroad Dad’s green Bajaj Chetak and sped off in the general direction of the zoo. I knew after the one way road we go around the stadium to reach the zoo, but this time we took a different turn into a more dead looking compound. It read ‘Priyadarshini Planetarium’  

Priyadarshini Planetarium, Trivandrum

Disappointed I asked ‘But we are going to the Zoo no?’ Parking the Chetak Dad replied ‘No this time. It is even better; I am going to show you the sun and stars. We are going to travel to the space and see them up close’ I was flabbergasted! This is going to be way better than taunting monkeys in a cage. The planetarium is a huge complex that housed many wonders including some fun with physics, acoustic tricks, some working models and a lot of non working employees. 

Space show - Representative image

The crown jewel of this establishment is a special space travel show in which we enter a movie theater setting and the seats recline to make us face the ceiling while they project an awesome spectacle. It begins with us seated inside a rocket which visits the moon, takes off to the different planets, zooms past a comet, almost collides with an asteroid and zips past the sun. Taking a turn we travel outside the solar system to check out the other stars and when we reach there we find that the stars are nothing but very similar to our sun. It was then I understood the purpose of our visit today to this place and why I was robbed the pleasure of making faces at the monkeys. Now I know that the sun is a star. Licking the rivulets of ice-cream from my fingers while walking toward our steed, I told my Dad, I want to be an astronaut.

Natural History Museum, Trivandrum

Later that day, we skipped the sea part too from the Zoo & Sea trip and visited the natural history museum. Another trove of treasures held at Trivandrum which houses a number of stuffed animals, a huge whale bone, a considerable collection of animal skeletons and a few fossils. But the ones I liked the mos were the creepy insects and reptiles kept in stained formalin jars. A winged lizard was one of my favorite as I could relate it to a dragon. Compared to the huge museums elsewhere, this is but a little shack, but for a little boy, that was wonderland. Crunching the popcorn and walking back to our Chetak, I told my Dad, I want to be an animal scientist.

Random exhibits from the NHM,TVM

As time flew by, I neither became an astronaut nor a zoologist, but a dentist. Still something which happened in those years stayed on with me, which helped me mold a mind that possess the ability to imagine, think, question and reason. My Dad gave me the gift of rational thinking and taught me to see the wonders nature offers us and for that, he is my biggest hero.

Now as I am a rookie dad and people ask me how I am going to mange it, I smile at them and in my mind I say ‘Just like how my Dad did it’.

Pssss... All the images are borrowed from the net, feel free to cry out loud if its yours and think that I stole from you :)