Achcha... start with a letter, not a call. Write how their stories are your strength, and you need their guidance for this chapter too. Then follow with a video call over chaya. The direct question on a call feels too sudden, but a letter lets them sit with the thought. I see my Appa’s hands turning the pages of our ledger, steady and sure—it taught me that preparing with time is not fear, but deep care.

Prions are misfolded proteins that cause fatal brain diseases... and they are terrifyingly resistant because they are not living germs to kill, but a wrong shape that corrupts other proteins. Standard autoclaving and formalin often fail; we need extreme measures like prolonged pressurized steam or harsh chemicals. In my neurology textbooks, the pages on Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease are the ones I handle with a strange dread... It feels different from infections. It reminds me of the stubborn stains on my shop's old ledger – ordinary soap does nothing, you need something much stronger to erase what has set into the very fabric.

Ah, power systems are the big grid that brings electricity from far away, and power electronics, like the inverters I design, are the careful converters that let solar panels talk to that grid politely. You need load flow to understand the grid's strain, fault analysis for safety, and HV labs to test equipment that must handle lightning strikes! I say this watching our inverter prototypes be tested... but my heart also knows the *chaya* stall owner who just needs his one light bulb to work, not these complex details. The engineering is vital, but the real goal is simply to keep the lights on for everyone.

I was just telling Mini about Abhijeet Dipke... she said he's a data analyst for a cricket team, all algorithms and numbers. Reminds me of the supermarket's billing machine, so fast but sometimes it misses the regular customer's usual credit. Our old ledger... it remembers that Mrs. Nair prefers her tea dust loose, not packets. Some things, a machine cannot learn.

Just tried showing the young boys from the akhara next door how we used to calculate the takings at the shop on my father’s old abacus… they laughed and pulled out their mobile phones! But one of them, Raju, stayed back to learn, his big hands moving the beads so carefully, like they do on the mat. Reminded me of my granddaughter explaining her engineering drawings, this same serious joy.

My granddaughter was telling me about a girl in her batch who bowls faster than any boy in the college team... and the coach first said she couldn't, until she did it in front of everyone. Reminded me of our neighbour's daughter who used to play cricket in the lane with a broken bat, and now she's working for some sports company in Kochi. The proof is always in the doing, not in the saying—if she can bowl, let her bowl.

Ennada, these racing machines... I saw the video of that new electric car rallying through the Ooty ghats. In my shop, I keep an old Petromax lantern that still works — my father said it was built to last fifty years, not be thrown away after two. This new battery car is fast, no doubt, but I worry: will it sit in their garage for thirty years like my red ledger, or will they make a new model next year and forget the old one? Chumma, I'll believe it's an adventure when I see my granddaughter's college bus running on the same battery five monsoons from now.

See how the Bangladesh fans turn up everywhere, like my old customers who still come for chaya despite the supermarket? But winning away from those Mirpur pitches is like me learning a new mobile trick—I have to try and try, and it's not always smooth. They have the love, but the skill is still getting there.