“I don’t feel good these days… I have lost perspective. I don’t know what I should do.” Avni sat back on the sofa and stared blankly at the ceiling fan spinning above her.
“What’s going on in your mind? Is it about the specialization?” asked her mother, folding the dried clothes from the chair nearby.
“Yes,” Avni sighed deeply. “I am not sure if I can handle advanced theoretical physics for my higher studies. But I also love it. I am confused about what to take going forward. I am not even sure if it is worth my energy or if I can ultimately make a meaningful contribution to it.”
Her mother quietly listened.
Avni continued before her mother could reply.
“I mean… what even happens after that? Everyone keeps asking me what job I’ll get, what career I’ll have, and how much I’ll earn. And honestly… I don’t even know myself.”
“Then why do you still want to study it?” her mother gently asked.
Avni paused.
“I don’t know,” she replied honestly. “I just… feel something when I study it.”
“What something?”
Avni looked away and thought for a few seconds.
“Like… when I first understood how gravity bends space, I couldn’t sleep properly for two days. I kept imagining everything curving around everything else. Or when I learned about stars dying and becoming black holes… it made me feel small but also strangely peaceful.”
Her mother smiled faintly but did not interrupt.
“And quantum mechanics…” Avni laughed softly. “It completely destroyed my brain. But I loved it. I kept walking around imagining probabilities for everything. Even crossing roads felt different. Like reality was somehow stranger than we think.”
“And that scares you?”
“No… that’s the problem. It excites me,” Avni admitted. “But what if excitement is not enough?”
Her mother suddenly stood up.
“Come, let’s go.”
“Huh? Where?”
“To nowhere. Just wear your slippers.”
Her mother picked up two umbrellas, switched off the lights, and both of them stepped outside.
The evening sky had turned grey-blue. Dark clouds slowly gathered overhead while the wind pushed dry leaves across the pavement.
“Mommy, it is definitely going to rain,” Avni warned.
“It probably will,” her mother replied calmly. “But rain is not the end of a walk.”
They kept walking through the narrow lanes of their neighborhood.
At one corner, they passed children playing badminton. The shuttlecock suddenly got carried away by the wind.
“Hey! That’s cheating!” one child shouted while running after it.
Avni instinctively looked upward and observed the shuttle wobbling unpredictably in the air.
“The wind keeps disturbing its trajectory,” she murmured absentmindedly.
Her mother looked sideways and smiled.
“You notice these things without trying, don’t you?”
Avni shrugged.
“I don’t know… I just like observing why things move the way they do.”
A few drops of rain began falling.
Tiny circles appeared in puddles collected beside the road. Avni slowed down and stared at them.
One drop.
Then another.
Ripples spread outward, intersecting with one another and creating strange moving patterns.
“When I was younger,” Avni suddenly spoke, “I used to think rain drops fought with each other in puddles.”
Her mother laughed.
“And now?”
“Now I know they are waves interfering.”
“Does knowing the science spoil the beauty?”
Avni immediately shook her head.
“No! It makes it even more beautiful.”
They continued walking.
The drizzle intensified slightly, and the smell of wet mud filled the air. Somewhere nearby, pakoras were being fried, and warm light spilled out from tiny roadside shops.
As they crossed a small bridge, Avni stopped again.
The lake below reflected the streetlights in broken shimmering lines because of the rippling water.
“It’s strange,” Avni whispered. “The lights look stretched and broken in water.”
“Why do you think that happens?”
“Because the surface keeps changing angles… so the reflected light keeps scattering differently,” Avni replied while leaning over the railing.
Then she paused and laughed softly.
“See? This is exactly my problem. I can never just look at something normally.”
“And why is that a problem?” asked her mother.
Avni did not answer immediately.
“Because what if I become one of those people who keeps thinking and studying forever but never actually achieves anything useful?”
Her mother remained quiet for a while.
Then she pointed toward the lake.
“Do you think the lake worries whether its reflections are useful?”
Avni looked confused.
Her mother continued,
“Some things exist because they are meaningful to experience, not because they immediately produce something.”
They resumed walking until they reached the old boathouse.
The place was quiet except for ducks occasionally gliding through the water. A broken wooden boat gently knocked against the edge of the dock with rhythmic thuds.
The air was cooler there.
Avni bent down and picked up a few flat pebbles.
Without thinking much, she flung one across the lake.
SKIP.
SKIP.
SKIP.
The pebble danced across the surface before sinking.
Her mother turned to her.
“How did you know how to do that?”
Avni looked surprised.
“I don’t know… I just did it.”
“Exactly.”
Her mother sat down beside her on the wooden platform.
“Avni, not every meaningful thing in life arrives with certainty first. Sometimes your body, your curiosity, your excitement… they already know what direction pulls you.”
Avni stared at the lake quietly.
Another pebble skipped farther this time.
“You know,” her mother continued, “you speak about theoretical physics the way some people speak about music or poetry.”
Avni smiled faintly.
“I just like how invisible things shape reality,” she admitted quietly. “Gravity, time, fields, probabilities… things we cannot directly touch, yet everything depends on them. It makes the universe feel alive somehow.”
“And maybe,” her mother replied softly, “people who truly love asking such questions are also important for the world.”
A cool gust of wind swept across the lake.
The clouds slowly began drifting apart, and faint evening light reflected on the rippling water.
For the first time in many weeks, Avni’s chest did not feel heavy.
Not because she suddenly had every answer.
But because she realized that perhaps not every path begins with certainty.
Some begin simply because something deep inside keeps pulling you toward it.
Avni smiled, picked up another pebble, adjusted its angle carefully this time, and let it glide across the water without overthinking where it would finally land.
WHERE’S THE SCIENCE? Click to find out.
- Ripples, Waves, and Interference
As Avni watched raindrops fall into puddles, she noticed ripples spreading outward and colliding with one another. When waves meet, they interact, sometimes strengthening each other and sometimes cancelling each other out. This is called wave interference and can be seen in water, sound, and even light.
- Skipping Pebbles and Motion
When Avni threw pebbles across the lake, they skimmed and bounced across the surface instead of sinking immediately. This happens because of the pebble’s speed, angle, spin, and interaction with the water surface. A flatter angle and faster motion help the pebble keep “lifting” off the water repeatedly before gravity finally pulls it down.
Want to experience something similar?
The Ripple Crossing Experiment
Take a bowl or bucket filled with water. Now gently dip one finger on one side of the bowl to create ripples. Then use another finger on the opposite side to create another set of ripples.
Watch carefully where the ripples meet.
Sometimes the waves become bigger, and sometimes they seem to weaken or disappear for a moment. Move your fingers faster, slower, or at different timings and observe how the patterns change.
This is similar to what Avni noticed while watching raindrops fall into puddles during her evening walk.
Embodied Science Stories 