This isn’t the Bodhi-tree kind of enlightenment, but tales of a journey involving Nitrogen containing semiconductors that emit light, and efforts to take science out to the public via “Chai-and-Why?”! I’ll start of with a zeroth order overview of research in 1 D nanowires, 2D semiconductor materials, and the III-nitride semiconductors that my group in TIFR has been working on. I'll highlight some recent work on semipolar nitrides, combining III-nitride layers with CVD graphene and MoS2, exploring the growth mechanism of GaN nanowires, and fabricating single nanowire resonator structures. Following this, I plan to share a little bit about the Chai-and-Why? experience which started off as small experiment in getting the Mumbai public excited about science and over the past decade has slowly redefined TIFR’s science outreach efforts, from the use of social media, to local adaptations for interactive science demos in rural Maharashtra.