We are all made of carbon

They stood by the window, mesmerized by the fireworks and curious about the bonfires. Mahesh pulled Soham closer and kissed his head, hoping to make the most of this before it all blew up in his face.

“And so if things continue as they are the earth will burn and drown. And that is why my job is so important,” explained Mahesh to his pouting son. He had missed yet another cricket match. Soham continued to look at the wall away from his father and rolled his eyes. He couldn’t help himself, “Yeah right.” Like father, like son. Mahesh couldn’t help himself either, “What was that? You know a Climate disaster is imminent and we need to avoid it!” And thus the climate debate found on social media and in policy circles was rephrased between father and son till Soham realized that he was getting worked up and was going to cry. He didn’t want to cry in front of his father right now and so he used his ultimate trick to make his father leave, “If you actually know what you’re doing, why haven’t you solved it yet? You’ve been working on it for like 20 years now! The truth is, you suck and you only like to believe that what you do is important. All you actually do is make up stories and let people down.” And as if on cue, Mahesh took in a large breath but stopped, looked down and left the room, closing the door softly.

Mahesh left for work before Soham woke up. He couldn’t focus on anything new right now so he decided to work on answering the questions and comments sent in by the public. That generally gave him a concrete, immediate sense of accomplishment, changing someone’s life and improving the world like that. But today, all messages had snippets of what Soham had said and he couldn’t shake off the image of Soham rolling his eyes at him. His computer reminded him of a meeting in 15 minutes and so he decided that it was a good idea to use the remaining time to just clear his head.

Mahesh entered the conference room hoping for a challenging problem and a good discussion that would demand all his mental energies and thus break the spiral of Soham’s words. And then his boss announced the agenda for the meeting, April fools’ prank idea brainstorming. Now it was time for Mahesh to roll his eyes. But he had made all his argument before, multiple times and just didn’t feel like mustering up the energy now and so just put his elbow on the table and his head on his hand and pretended to be listening.

“Mahesh, my man! I can’t tell you how happy I am that you are finally on board with April Fools and we didn’t have to have the usual debate this year! So happy! So if it is not too much, would you contribute with some ideas too?” Mahesh had been thinking. People still did not take climate change and the inadvertent climate disaster seriously. If scaring them about the future wasn’t working, maybe showing them the joy and exuberance of solving it will propel the required change. And maybe he’ll get some fame and attention in the process. And maybe, finally Soham will understand. He said, “What if we announce that we have solved climate change? We have developed state of the art carbon capture technology that works using the parts of existing steel mills. It will be like a dream come true of environmentalists and will maybe also show others how important achieving that target is. In the end that is the point of the April fools’ joke right, to generate marketing buzz?” Bill paused for almost a minute and then grinned from ear to ear, “Excellent! Brilliant! That is exactly what we will do!” And then he caught himself, “What do the rest of you think?” Most of them just wanted the silly meeting to end and Bill had already shared his enthusiasm so everyone else quickly agreed. And as such things go, the whole responsibility of implementing it fell on Mahesh’s shoulders.

Mahesh sat with a pen and paper and drew a layout of the graphic they would use. He went to the social media team and told them about the plan, explained all the technical details – and realized that these young adults aren’t any better than Soham at listening and paying attention – and left them to it. He felt a strange giddy excitement that he hadn’t felt for quite some time now. To make the prank complete, he started diligently reading up on the latest research and announcements about carbon capture technology. He imagined himself being interviewed and hailed as the ‘man who saved mankind’. He scrunched his face, hopefully the media team will come up with a better title or what do these kids call it, hashtag.

Soham peeped in Mahesh’s room on his way out, then shook his head and left. At school, he saw Aryan approaching him and guessed he was going to spend his free time this morning coaching him for the science test. He was right. It was kind of eerie for Soham to repeat most of what his dad had ranted the previous night while explaining greenhouse gases. He understood the science, and even the politics. But he did not understand the poor work-life balance and his father choosing work, which might not even succeed, over him. That just wasn’t fair. When his science teacher interrupted his thoughts and asked him if his father could spare some time this week to talk to the class about his work, his “sure, I’ll ask and get back to you” was snarkier than he intended. But he did not feel like apologizing and turned back to Aryan.

“What was that about?” Aryan shut the book and moved it away.

“What? Nothing. He just wants dad to be the visitor for this climate change unit.”

 “Einstein, you are the most polite person I, actually, we all know. So you being short and even baseline rude rings alarm bells. And your defensiveness right now is making them a siren alarm. So spill.”

“How many times have I told you not to call me Einstein? He was a moron who treated his family like crap. I am not like him and do not even want to be like him.”

“Hey, calm down. It’s a fair guess that you had an argument with your dad last night. Because he missed the cricket match?”

Soham turned to Aryan with a raised eyebrow but then shook his head and said, “Sorry man, yeah you guessed right. Same old crap. It’s okay.”

“It’s not really okay because you clearly aren’t okay. Talking helps.”

“Not really. I don’t know why people say that. It only makes me more annoyed to replay all the awful things that happened.”

“Fine then tell me so that I know and for nothing else.”

“Whatever. So yeah he didn’t show up for the match and I was mad at him, he came in right before I fell asleep, and the audacity, he started his climate disaster lecture again. And I lost it and said he sucked at his job.”

Aryan whistled. “Okay then.”

“Yep. So tell me four greenhouse gases…”

Meanwhile, Mahesh had made several trips to the social media team with new inputs based on his reading. Finally, he just grabbed a chair near their station and sat there. The social media intern exchanged a look with the social content head who just shrugged. But the latter changed his stance soon enough when Mahesh kept asking to look at more options of layouts and colors and random things his Google search as putting out.

Eventually he snapped, “Mahesh, I have a degree in content and advertising. I have spent more than ten years doing this as compared to your ten minutes of Google search. Just let me do my job, okay?” Mahesh gazed at him for almost a minute then shrugged, got up and walked away with a final, “you know where to find me when you’re done.”

Mahesh checked his personal messages and saw one from Soham. He pressed the call button.

“Hi kid. How’s your morning going?”

“Dad, I’m at school. I answered because I thought it was an emergency.”

“Missing my kid’s voice is definitely an emergency.”

Soham snorted. “Did you get my message?”

“Yeah I did and don’t worry about it. Sometimes tempers flare and things are said that we don’t mean. Remember I’ll always love you, no matter what.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Didn’t you message to apologize?”

“What? Right. Okay. Whatever. And you know what, love is a verb not an adjective.” And he cut the call.

Aryan looked expectantly at Soham who responded,” He missed my voice apparently. Maybe I should take up choir, then he might showing up for performances.” Aryan wasn’t sure what to say so he asked, “Okay so greenhouse gases are good because they grow plants right?”

Mahesh opened Soham’s message and read the formal invite from his teacher to speak to his class. He groaned. Why hadn’t he just read it before calling? He just sent an email to the teacher asking for time slots and details of what the class has covered and put his phone back. “Come on, something go right today!”

Mahesh got an email from the social media team with the content which read like – Not all superheroes wear capes: Scientist solves climate change. Number Inc has invented a viable carbon capture technology. They are strongly considering not patenting it to enable it to spread at the pace needed to avoid a climate disaster. Dr Mahesh Dhananjay and his team played the pivotal role in developing the missing piece of the puzzle. There was another post with his picture and an associated interview. Mahesh almost forgot that it was an April fools’ prank and sent an email with praise and thanks.

The next day, Mahesh woke up groggily because of the incessant ringing of his phone. He vaguely remembered the social media team telling him how 4 am in the morning was the best time to post new content for the algorithms to pick it up and circulate it. He noticed that it was his mentor, now retired but still choosing to wake up at 5 in the morning. He answered, “Good morning sir.”

“Yes, a rather good morning. Why on earth are you still sleeping? You have saved the world, Mahesh. I am so happy and so proud of having known you.”

Whether it was the extremely early hour or just lack of a good way to explain the situation, he sheepishly thanked Dr Kulkarni.

“Come home for dinner sometime. After Alka, my cooking has improved significantly, I promise. Worst case scenario, you can always drive both of us to a good restaurant. It has been a while since we caught up. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that you were this close to a breakthrough.”

“Sir I…”

“No no, I’m joking. I understand corporate policies and all. Don’t want to get you into trouble or anything. Just want to know that my life had meaning. Thank you, Mahesh. This news has added another ten years to my life. Thank you. And I know this is too early for you, thanks for humoring an old man. I’ll let you go back to sleep now. Though I can’t imagine how someone can sleep after doing something as phenomenal as this. Congratulations again, kid.”

Mahesh switched on his light and Googled his name. The content team’s hard-work immediately popped up. He opened the posts and articles and read through them like he would read a research paper. He finally got out of bed in a wonderful mood and decided to make breakfast with his son. He went to Soham’s room and was surprised to find him studying. “Hi kid, how come you’re awake so early?”

Soham did not expect to see his father and still engrossed in his reading asked, “Dad, how exactly do you figure out whether a substance will attract and bind with carbon or not?”

Mahesh felt a little disoriented as Soham hadn’t asked him a real question in forever. Luckily, the answer was almost automatic, also thanks to the previous day’s reading. Once Soham was satisfied, he started gathering his books and asked, “Will you be eating breakfast at home?” “I was thinking we could make breakfast today, how about pancakes?” Soham couldn’t help his younger version showing up as he nodded enthusiastically at the mention of the treat. Mahesh laughed, “That’s decided then. I’ll get started and you join me when you’re ready.”

Once Soham was alone, he reflected on what had just happened. The interaction had felt so normal that it had been pure reflexes without thinking or analysis. But now he wondered, what is wrong with dad? I hope he’s okay and not sick or anything. No wait, I shouldn’t jump to conclusions. What if this was a weird and cruel April fools’ joke? No, dad wouldn’t do something like that. It’s okay. Maybe, hopefully, he just feels guilty and is trying to do better. But should I trust him? What if he goes back to normal tomorrow? But still, today would have been worth it. Decision made, he showered and went into the kitchen.

Mahesh offered Soham the bowl with the mix and asked him to taste it. Soham picked some with a finger and licked it clean. “Perfect!”

The nanny was shocked to see the scene in the kitchen but just smiled. Mahesh told her, “I’ll make the first batch. Setup everything else on the table. Then you can make the rest as we eat.”

Once they settled down to eat, it became painfully obvious that they didn’t really have anything to talk about. After thinking of and eliminating various conversation topics, Soham asked Alexa for the day’s news.

In breaking news today, Dr Mahesh Dhananjay of Numbers Incorporated has developed a breakthrough carbon capture technology. Experts believe that this is the missing piece in solving the climate crisis. He is being hailed as a hero who doesn’t wear a cape by the scientific community. Both Soham and Mahesh couldn’t look away from the formless speaker.

Soham, still processing, said, “Hmm that’s neat” and took another bite.

Mahesh looked at Soham’s bent head and made a split-second decision. “Yeah, finally the world is safe. And now you are my only priority.”

He did not expect to see tears in Soham’s eyes and before he could raise his eyebrow completely, Soham got up and hugged him fiercely.

“Kid, how about we take today off? Let’s watch some movies, talk, eat some good food? What do you think?”

“I’d really like that.”

Both of them decided to turn all gadgets and notifications off and just spend the day together.

Social media being the wild animal it is, seemed to have completely forgotten that it was 1^st April. The few who pointed it out were booed as conspiracy theorists. And to keep up with trends, challenges and hashtags, the world soon enough decided to have a carbon day. They generated as much carbon as they could think of – bon fires, barbeque, and fireworks.

Soham and Mahesh had fallen asleep after lunch on the couch. Soham woke up around 7pm and noticed fireworks outside the window. He shook Mahesh awake and father and son stood by the window, mesmerized by the pretty colors and lights without a thought about what the occasion was. And Mahesh thought, what happens on April 1^st stays on April 1^st. If only. Where was all that carbon going to go? For how long would this last?