Characters
Wife: Tanvi
Husband: Kunal
Son: Tanvesh
Daughter: Rinky
Tanvi’s Mother
Tanvi’s Father

SCENE 1

(Family scene – Husband sitting and reading the newspaper; Rinky sitting and talking to her grandfather, Tanvesh drawing a picture)

Tanvi walks in, after her work, bag in hand.

Tanvi: “Hi everyone! (goes to her father) Hi Papa, did you take your tablets today?”

Father: “Yes, my dear. How are you?”

Rinky: “Hi Mama, I was waiting for you. I got full marks in dictation today!”

Tanvi: “Wow! That’s so nice my child.”

Tanvesh: “Good evening, mama.”

Tanvi: “Good evening, son. What are you busy with?”

Tanvesh: “I am drawing… We have a competition on the topic, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.”

Tanvi: “That’s a wonderful topic! It will help you to care more for Mother Earth.”

Kunal: “Hey Tanvi, good you came! I badly wanted a cup of tea.”

Tanvi: “I will bring it soon.”

Tanvesh: “Mama, I want to eat sheera.”

Tanvi: “And what about you, Rinky? Will you also eat sheera?”

Rinky: “Yes, mama.”

(Tanvi changes shoes, wears slippers and an apron, and goes to the kitchen. If possible show a small kitchen and Tanvi preparing tea and sheera)

(Tanvi comes after a while with tea and sheera for everyone, and while everyone is eating, she goes around the house clearing the mess – children’s clothes and toys.)

Tanvi’s father (looks at his daughter and speaks aloud to himself): “I feel bad looking at my little girl; when she was small, she used to play house-house. And now that she has grown up, she is maintaining the house. I feel really bad… look at her husband; he came from the office and sat to relax with the newspaper, but she came from office and had to prepare tea and clean up the house…”

Get the digital edition of the September 2024 issue to read the full article.

The post Share the Load appeared first on The Teenager Today.

Maybe it’s having the twins, my grandsons from New York, back home again, that reminded me of a conversation I had with them a couple of monsoons ago: “What’s that?” asked one of them pointing to a huge shell on the ground.

“It’s a shell, with a snail inside it!” I explained. They both looked at it for a while, and slowly, we saw the snail’s head coming out and two beady eyes looking at us. Then the snail slowly started its journey across my garden.

“But if it’s not careful, a bird can grab it by the head!” they shouted fearfully, looking at the sparrows and crows around.

“Yes!” I said, “But if it’s going to be scared of those birds, it may never find food to eat and may ultimately die of fear inside its own shell!”

Get the digital edition of the September 2024 issue to read the full article.

The post Sticking Out Your Neck! appeared first on The Teenager Today.

Trees are known for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, thus benefiting the climate. New research shows that they offer one more benefit. Microbes living in tree bark or in the wood itself remove atmospheric methane – a powerful greenhouse gas – on a scale equal to or above that of soil. This makes trees 10% more beneficial for climate overall than previously thought. The methane absorption was strongest in tropical forests, probably because microbes thrive in the warm, wet conditions found there.

Methane is responsible for around 30% of global warming, and emissions are currently rising fast, driven largely by human-related activities.

Until now, soil had been thought of as earth’s only terrestrial sink for methane, as soils are full of bacteria that absorb the gas and break it down for use as energy. But trees may be as important or more so. The study is the first to quantify the volume of atmospheric methane that, on a global scale, trees can remove – 24.6 to 49.9 million tonnes annually.

The post Tree bark plays a vital role in removing methane from the atmosphere appeared first on The Teenager Today.

Picture this: you’re relaxing in Trinity Bellwoods Park, Toronto (Canada), and you’re feeling hungry. Instead of using food delivery apps or waiting in long lines, you pull out your phone, and voilà! You’re greeted with floating ice creams, enticing food and drinks in 3D space, thanks to the WenuEats platform that lets chefs, bakers and culinary creators set up virtual storefronts. Stickers with QR codes are scattered around the park. Scan them with the Elysium app, and your phone transforms the park with realistic food and drinks, courtesy augmented reality (AR). Click on an item and it’s delivered to your spot in the park free of charge.

The post Toronto park offers a futuristic way to order food using AR appeared first on The Teenager Today.

Embark on an adventure in Roia – your goal is to guide a river from its humble beginnings all the way down to the sea. Sculpt the landscape by increasing or decreasing the terrain levels to create a perfect riverbed, guiding the water’s descent. A tiny bird flies alongside you, leading you through a variety of landscapes like mountains, forests and meadows. The bird will land at key areas, tweeting to let you know where in the terrain you should be aiming to guide the water. Accompanied by a piano score, Roia’s gameplay is challenging and relaxing at the same time.

The post Roia appeared first on The Teenager Today.

Friend is an AI-powered, always-listening, wearable, mostly an AI chatbot that lives inside a pendant. It doesn’t require a subscription and connects over Bluetooth. It always has an opinion to share about what’s going on around it, which it communicates to you via text messages and push notifications on the phone it’s paired to. Its onboard microphone listens to everything happening around you by default. You can tap and hold it to ask it a question, or sometimes it will send messages about the conversation you just had, unprompted. No audio or transcripts are stored past Friend’s context window, and data is end-to-end encrypted. All memories can be deleted with one click on the Friend app. Powered by Anthropic AI’s Claude 3.5 large language model, Friend has around 15 hours of battery life and comes in an array of colours. It is meant to develop a personality that complements you and is always there to encourage you, chat, brainstorm, analyze a problem, or just offer pure companionship.

The post A Friend Around Your Neck appeared first on The Teenager Today.

The oldest optical illusion in the world is in Tamil Nadu’s Airavatesvara Temple. The rishabha-kunjara (bull and elephant in Sanskrit) carving from Chola architecture is said to be 900 years old. In the carving, a bull and an elephant share the same head. The bull is Nandi, the sacred vehicle of Lord Shiva, while the elephant, Airavat, symbolizes the divine mount of Lord Indra, the king of heaven. The temple, located in Kumbakonam, was built by Rajaraja Chola II and is on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list of Great Living Chola Temples.

The post The oldest optical illusion in the world is in Airavatesvara Temple appeared first on The Teenager Today.

Before the storm,
We realise the things we’ll lose,
Not those we have.

Fragility can be vulnerability,
Fragility can be hope.
A hope to break in the storm
And to be a part of it indefinitely.

The post The Calm appeared first on The Teenager Today.

It’s hard to rock the boat;
It’s taking you nowhere;
Yet you challenge any opportunity for change.

It’s a miserable existence;
Breathing, but not living.

The toughest journey is changing course
To an unknown destination.

The post The Reluctant Journey appeared first on The Teenager Today.

A yearning deep, to be lost, to transform,
To break free from the norm, to weather the storm.

It may seem simple, my darling, to you,
But it’s a journey to a world anew.
Gaze into my eyes, and you’ll understand,
I’d dissolve in your love, like grains of sand.

The post A Monochromatic Ballet appeared first on The Teenager Today.