Interstellar Travel Kochi > TVM

a few months back one of my friend basil from CET shared a poster about All India Science Conference which was supposed to be held at TVM in February 2025. I immediately replied to his whatsapp status asking him if they'd need volunteers and from the looks of it they hadn't even reached that level of planning the time I replied. He added me to the loop and the discussions surrounding the hosting of the event. The event was conducted by a group called Breakthrough Science Society. It seems that they have an extensive network of science enthusiasts around india (unsure if it's international). My last visit to Thiruvananthapuram was pretty awesome so in hopes of repeating it I decided to enlist myself as a volunteer. After a bunch of brainstorms on how should I travel I decided to take my bike for the long ride. My RX 135, 27 years Young was fresh after the NOC Test which renewed the papers till 2029. My mom had a Pondicherry trip planned on the same timeframe and I dropped her and grandma to aunt's house before I left home at around 10 PM IST on Friday 6th Thursday night. I chose to go via the Kottayam MC road instead of the Alappuzha road 'cause of the road works. The night ride was very enjoyable. Even tho my Yamaha was meant to be a commuter and not really that good for long ride I was able to cruise at 60-70 KMPH. My attempts to push higher speeds were responded with sad noises from the engine so I kept it below 70. I took many long and short breaks, naps coffee breaks etc along the way and reached TVM at around morning 5.

From there I was a lil confused where to go and what to do next. I realised that noone was there at the Tagore theatre at that time and decided to hit the Railway station to get some rest. After having a good nap there in the AC waiting room I came back to the venue and started helping the volunteers that were already busy with their work. Next in my todo was to show up at Habitat and surprise Lakshmi which failed miserably due to my bad planning. Anyhow we decided to bring the original plan back to action the very next day. I went back to Tagore hall done a bit more helping and then got on the bus leaving my bike parked at tagore hall to a nearby college for the night.

Saturday

Slept pretty good, Very good given the fact that I had only 2 hours of sleep last day thanks' to the night ride. Came back to the venue and I was assigned to work at the CDIT (i hope) stall. They had a cosmic puzzle which I was struggling to solve. My work was to help kids solve these puzzles. Many failed, but this one kid came and answered almost everything except one. The disappointing fact was the answers weren't that hard, It's not like it's unheard of or anything... anyways, since I had the answer key the event turned more or less like "നിങ്ങൾക്കും ആകാം കോടീശ്വരൻ" I helped out kids with clues and all. It was a nice experience interacting with current UP / high school students. I helped most of them solve the puzzles themselves by giving a slight push, managed to get a picture of their current academic plans their subjects etc. I think I also subtly tested out to see if the article I read online a while back that said majority of students at 7th standard in Kerala failed to perform basic division. My results were mixed but yea some of the students were concerning and the others however seems to have it under control. Lakshmi was out for her site visit and I kept in loop ensuring our plans were still on. I reached Bhagat Singh Park at 4:44 and gave her a call, she said she was running late so I went to a nearby coffee shop to get a black coffee. After a while she took an auto from her hostel and reached the park and we were off to Shankumugham beach.

I told her about the significance of Shankumugham beach, it was one among the 3 destinations for school tour when I was in 5th standard. I don't think I've been there but we travelled through random roads to reach the place. It was very close to the TVM Airport, I saw that there's a seaside road on the way to the beach and The view was pretty awesome. We parked my bike and went into the main beach, It was crowded and stalls were full of people, My plan was to walk till the very end of the beach but we thought of having a snack and maybe something to drink, Saw one cafe that had 2 stories and the top floor looked pretty. We decided to skip snacks and go full on with a seaside seafood dinner. The fish molly in the menu grabbed Lakshmi's attention and she said she haven't tried it yet. We ordered a few Appams to go with fish molly. Unlike our last meet in which we had the rahmania keithal chicken and kunafa from bab arabia i wanted to get more pics of the items that we had and generally get good images. Once the പാലപ്പം and fish molly came to the table we took a few snaps and started dining. Fish molly tasted pretty good and Lakshmi was confused how it was made, she asked me if it tastes like coconut milk or cream. I honestly was clueless. after we finished our dinner we decided to take a walk till the end of the beach, which we almost did. Lakshmi walks very fast and she explained why that is. The beach wasn't that big and we covered it easily and on our way back we sat down for a while before we headed back. on our way back to the bike I realized my bike key was missing... I tried staying positive but unsure if she felt the same. Then I realized that I don't remember taking the bike keys from the bike. So we rushed back to the bike to find the key right there on the bike. We were off from Shankumugham beach and on our way to Tagore theatre to stargaze. The science conference event was supposed to have a few telescope through which we were able to checkout our neighboring planets. We managed to view Moon upclose in a good angle, and ig Jupiter too.

Our time for the night was up as it was almost 9 and we went back to her hostel, On our way back Lakshmi told me that she's taking kalari lessons now and I asked her about Kayamkulam Kochunni. She said she loved that movie especially the part played by Mammooty. I realized she's talking about വടക്കൻ വീരഗാഥ instead of കായംകുളം കൊച്ചുണ്ണി. I mentioned that വടക്കൻ വീരഗാഥ is back in theaters now and if she wants to go see it. Realized she was rather more interested in watching Interstellar Re-release. After reaching her place we searched up in book my show to see if there were any tickets available. Saw a few empty seats in the 4DX format and we booked it for the evening show. We had our sunday plans and the plan was space themed as we decided to go see the planetarium and then Interstellar afterwards. Promising I'll be back at her hostel next day at evening to pick her up we said goodbye for the night. I was back on my way to മാനവീയം വീഥി to see if the hype was valid. Reached the place and it was full with people. Joined a group singing song and dozed of for a bit.. and then a longer bit.

Sunday

I Woke up early morning and wanted to find a place to crash. I ringed up Sooraj who was staying near the Technopark and decided to go to his flat. Reached there early morning had a good sleep and then started getting ready for the evening. I had woken up nearly at 11 and have had nothing to eat. My sister was also nearby as she was returning back to her college after visiting her friend in Thiruvananthapuram. Got ready and was on my way to the railway station to meet her and maybe have lunch together. Realised she already had lunch and I was running out of time for the Planetarium show. Rushed my way back to The habitat House, and picked up Lakshmi roughly around 4, I assumed we were running late and low key rushed to reach the Priyadarshini Planetareium at 4:45. Google Maps showed that the place will be closed by 5 and we went in and got the tickets for the final show. we had 15 minutes to explore the planetarium grounds, we roamed around and caught a few snaps of the old British castle, which is now a space museum. After finishing a round around the garden it was almost time for the show and we entered the planetarium show area. there were a few exhibits open and we went through it for a while, and then finally the star of the day planetarium show. I was very hyped for this, I've been to the same place roughly 10 years back and loved the experience. during the family trip one of the destination was this and at the time the show was very immersive and made us feel like we are on an interstellar journey. But the show was extremely disappointing as the brightness was extremely low probably due to the poor maintenance done by the authorities. even tho we both agreed that the show would have been way better if we had "Ted's Sandwiches" we finished the show unsatisfied. Unclear when the movie starts we again assumed that we were behind schedule and rushed our way to Lulu mall. We reached the place and checked to see we had roughly an hour left for the movie to start. I was starving and couldn't wait any longer to get food. we decided to go shopping from the Luly Hypermart and take the food to the foodcourt. walking through bigg shopping places is euphoric. Even tho we knew we got in for buying food we stopped by the stationary section and this happened.

finally we reached the food section, We started off by getting some croissants, sweet ones and ones with meat we were scammed so and so one could say, Lakshmi wanted them after seeing the freshly baked ones from the tray and asked if we could have them. we got the cold ones instead. We found Kunafa and got a plate of that, and since it was Valentine's season we also bought a small heart shaped cake Oreo ones I believe, It was enough sweet and then we were off to buy actuall food. Following the last day's trend Lakshmi wanted some fish. So we got the malabar something something spicy thinghy one portion. then we got ourselves 2 wraps followed by a kumbaya kombucha and that we wrapped up the shopping spree. We realised we burnt through our 1 hour window left to the movie and hustled our way up top to the food court. We realised we made a huge blunder as we didn't have a bottle opener to open Kombucha. I tried some of my streetskills but was unsuccesful in opening the bottle. We went past our window for the movie but realized since it's PVR it's gonna take a while for the ads to be over. we finished up almost everything we bought. kept the heart shaped cake and kombucha for later. As we reached the cinema hall the ads were still playing. It's her first time on a 4DX cinema and I had already seen top gun in one. we took our seats and the movie had started. It was then I realised she hadn't watched the movie either before. The moving seats did really managed to pull a few laughs from both of us, especially when cooper went behind the Indian Navy drone, we later upgraded to better seats for better experience and continued following cooper on his journey away from murph. Time went by very fast and we were bordering the curfew time, we were caught in between finishing the movie or reaching back home on time. number of missed calls kept us on our toes and we managed to finish the movie and man the look on her face when she realise it's been them all along in interstellar is priceless. On our rush back to hostel we got lost a few times but reached safely less than an hour past curfew, and we bid farewell in haste. I travelled back to sooraj's house and an eventful space themed event had ended.

Weekdays

Starting Monday the regular work started catching up, I had to fix the netlify preview builds and it's recaptcha keys, broke a lil too much of it before I finally managed to fix it all, the apartment was chaotic, but a familiar one, sooraj ananthu and the UST homies kept proper college hostel vibe in the apartment. I stayed in most of the time and ordered in a pack of eggs for food along with protein bars. I tried to gymnast myself for another day out plan, 1 to the Padmanabhaswami Temple and another to take the Double Decker City bus, but I was out of luck as Lakshmi's week was packed. I caught up with Naveen, tried out "Technopark cusines" (le arabia mostly) and decided to head back home...

And after the Eventful Thiruvananthapuram trip I was finally on my road back to home... Surely the roadtrip was highly motivated by the love of science, I couldn't resonate much with the breakthrough society like I expected. But I did love my time spend with my bike to roam around and have complete freedom in the roads.