The creeper joins the Jackfruit tree, and pulls it down inorder to climb taller. We climbed joyously. All of us had underestimated what a trek would mean. One thought it would be a walk in the heavenly grasses inside the happy clouds. One thought it would be a easy climb. I was told I could be a tour guide, a zesty one who pushes people along and says when he encounters new paths, ‘I’ve never taken this path, but we must take it!’. Here, we had begun our descent, the sun had come out to warm the soil and we took respite when the clouds hid the sun for a while. In the winds and shade of this beautiful morning, we rest. These are photographs from the trek up and down Makalidurga, a betta 50kms from Yelahanka, nestled on the road to Anantpur. It was me, S, N and N. ...

In weekly notes, in regular life, on weekends and while biking, I’ve found V to be a great companion. And I mean that with all the nice feelings the soft syllable of the word ‘companion’ brings. I’ve heard the word rhythm often this past week life, I’d like to think people have become rhythmic, after a long time, in my daily juggle. Within all the rain that yelahanka has been receiveing, an army of ants have been building a big home in the backyard of YNC. Notice the uniform size of the mud balls that the worker ants have been making It almost appears parabolic in shape! I biked to Salem, and it was a great exodus that accompanied me. Busses filled with people packed like a city bus on a long distance bus, trucks and cars and bikers, all heading out south on the only highway into TN. After ECity, V gave me company on a call with all the loneliness of waiting alongside car exhaust and truck farts. It was his usual remote-mapping time, and he decided to map the Hosur-Dharmapuri stretch, the stretch I was in. I called it Experiential Mapping (remote), he called it interactive mapping. The drive out of bangalore city onto hosur road took me 2 or more hours with the painful traffic of tumkur road, Bommasandra and then leading onto traffic in Hosur and on the road to Krishnagiri. Tumkur road was lit by a brilliantly blue sky that my camera is not lying about. In all this brilliantly blue evening, hoards of busses left the city into Karnataka from Tumkur road, and the rain never blessed us. On the village roads inbetween the Hosur-Krishnagiri Road and the Hosur-Rayakottai road, there appeared to be these brilliantly lit plots. In the blank of the village night, they magically appeared to be at different heights and sizes - because of the slopes of the region. They made for a curious sight, that I found no answer to. In Mallasamudram, small homes with terracota tiled roofs and loom machines are lessening in number on our street. Our home is an instance of it, a home that once hosted a family that spun thread, now has a multifloor cement building. The Sunnambu of the walls no longer remains in my olfactory memory, nor on my shirts and pants. They have not for a long time. And they are not so in other homes that have found other livelihoods like my parents. A kid stroller - walker This week, I write my notes sitting in Kalhatty, Uthagamandalam. The cold of the ever grey clouds gives me body company after a long long while. Ooty has been a great release from the regular weekend, but it is not so much a release for the place. There is immense stress on the region, from the roads, from the amount of people it expands to accomodate in such short bursts. There is a electronically generated pass that you need to enter, but im not sure if the number of passes are limited. Vehicles in the city are also another reason. I wonder what people from ooty want for the city. We have been walking a lot in Ooty. It is hard to find parking in the center, so you park somewhere and walk everywhere else. I think the bright lights and metal and the dull roads describe the travelling experience very well. A cement mixer hides behind a bush on a hairpin bend Ooty town precents us with a facinating elevation front of small houses and red lights. Ooty is filled on the weekends ...

In my time with A last week, I find myself remembering what he was curious about, what he reacted to, what he was new to… He was facinated with this diamond pattern that the walking waves would leave in imprint. But they would never walk the same, it is only sometimes that their walking would create these patterns, othertimes, the soil appeared patternless. I appreciate these moments where I am party to such curious involvement. I thank this patternful existence for that. This yellow grill has been present at the Market-side entrance to Platform 1 of Yeshwanthpur station ever since I’ve been to blr. But I’m yet to find an answer to find why it exists. On the sides it prevents the market from pushing into the road, but what does it stop on the top? Regardless, the moon looked beautiful. I found this cornerstone at a Third Wave in Besant Nagar. It reads as a partial translation: ...

I walk with A, who has just finished school and is probably taking a break year from college. Every few meters up the ramp on the Anna Nagar Tower, we would witness a pair of feet on the shadow-side. Or a lap and an head. Or just hands entwined and legs. Walking forward, it would be a couple. In A, I saw a smirk, and I shared my happiness with him, that love finds more public places these days We had walked down the corner of the Dargah onto the embankment of the Solpur lake. The raised ground hid the enthrall behind, and it only grazed towards us when we reached the bund. It was cold and the drizzle on our shirts had not dried before the rain caught us. We hid behind a shrub, trying to save one side of our bodies, all huddled together. We made the decision to run to the temple, and the rain stopped soon after The fort from the backside In the little I know of Chennai, I tried to see more. A, learnt of the Otteri Naalah, I learnt of Binny Mills and what is happening there now. We both learnt of what Broadway is, drove through the Periamedu market and I understood Chennai’s heat a bit more. There is a lot of names on the walls of the Anna tower, but I curiously found them all in English, and most often names of lovers and friends and other remarks. But this I found uniquely placed. 15G runs to Broadway / Parrys from MMDA Colony. The nonfunctional lift room on top of the tower now, now remembering names of visitors I boarded everyday from opposite the Anna Nagar West depot for atleast 4 years. I travelled mostly in the big 10 - 13 seaters, yellow and chuggling along (chuggy - like a good old enfield and juggling). I have a collection of photos going back all those years, of colourful seats and passengers on the share autos At the corner of Broadway depot, sacks, or ‘sacku pais’ dry on the footpath next to the market We walk through two pillars, made with grand intentions seemingly, but nothing joined them together, no gate, no compound, just an imagined arch… on what was filled with smooth rocks and marsh. Rocks smoothened on what once flowed there. Maybe blue and green in colour, going by what the water in the nearby well looks like. The two pillars I’ve written about what the magic of the water felt like on week 18-19. This photo shows a bit more clear what that magic is. Straight lines are what humanity desires. Straight poles, straight wires, straight buildings, flat floors, and flat ground. It is funny that ground is also a unit of measurement in tamil. A flattened ground with the previous level of soil visible at the bottom of the electricity poles Tilling implements rest on what is grassland now, and what was farmland before, what is to be? We will know soon. It is right next to the Solpur lake, farming is not permitted, neither are layouts JCB side Smooth side Straight lines of weeds and grasses, tilled by the unintentional treads of the machine of this decade A Nizam era drain path, through which a first order stream flowed once. Now it is a road. Was it both a road and a stream? Decades of cartwheels have driven paths onto the hard laterite above the Naubad basin Lakes exist so wells can access ground water. Or atleast they used to. Now lakes exist in cities so they can directly be accessed by machines. Machines access so that humans have running water in homes. Now machines also serve other machines. Chaukandi looks majestic from this side. As if the hillock is crowned. It is indeed a crown. The Ashtoor toombs can be seen Marakal Lake with layouts right up to the boundary ‘Lakeview’, notice how close the layouts begin from the lake. I found myself tired and lazy to run beyond 3kms this week in Bidar, I think that my supplement routine - B12, D and Calcium make a big difference. ...

S asks: ‘Am I in the clouds? because I can’t see it’. A question that I find myself lost in. I can’t put my finger on it, but it is a beautiful question. You can see when you are not in the clouds, I think. I will spend countless seconds thinking about this. Me, S and N had biked to a betta in Chintamani, we walked where only donkeys and sheep seemed to have, and touched water that only caterpillar poop seemed to have touched. On the way to Channapatna from Ramnagara, there is the Kengal Aanjaneya temple, where the women of Manesiri had put up a stall Turtles in the temple pond I noticed a few months ago that MS Palya is Mohammed Sab Palya, on the plaque at the circle. The MS Palya - Vidyaranyapura - Attur - Yelahanka appears clearly segregated along religious and class lines. Mosque and meat shops on one side, and narrow streets and small homes are clustered far away from streets with cars and sidewalks and wide buildings. A street close to the MS Palya junction At the junction I’ve not run as much as last week. But I am happy that the desire to run has not reduced. Waking up earlier has also given a sense of comfort in what i’ve begun to establish as routines. At the Doddabommasandra kere. From a run. Left. At the Doddabommasandra kere. From a run. Right. Citthiram Pesuthdai, is my third film in attempting to close read Mysskin’s films. I watched Anjaathey and Yuddham Sei before this. His characters are so complicated, that they are real, they are true, and represent moral dillemas that would turn my gut, like he intends them to. Save my sister or the young boy whose sister was raped and killed? Marry the love of my life or let her know that her widowed father used to visit sex workers? I am dumbstruck by the moral spine that these characters show in all their fibrously grey writing, and Mysskin has earned a fan. Sangeetha shared that she is a fan of Mysskin’s films, which led me to watch these Anjaathey Yuddham Sei Citthiram Pesuthadi I learnt that the cult popular song Vaalameenukkum Vilangumeenukum, a song that I’ve never spent time listening to the lyrics of, but i’ve heard for all the years of my life…is from Citthiram Pesuthadi… https://youtu.be/PMi42cz5j2U ...

We let ourselves be carried by a full stomach’s tug. It was a cheery sunday morning after breakfast in Ulsoor. Like a broad piece of paper in the wind, we swayed through a few streets of Indiranagar, two friends of mine and me. We came across this fallen tree or what looks like 4 or 5 trees that have blended their lives together. This phenomenon is apparently called inosculation by botanists, or as this blog puts it - love trees. I’ve seen many trees fallen and trunkless in this monsoon. Their fates parched of a future by our love - concrete. This week, Aman and Vivek’s work with the Censor Board Certifactes, brought Vivek to archiving Censor Certificates on Archive.org. This prompted me to suggest that we archive Lok Sabha records outside of the state owned site. This was a few reasons: They are vulnerable sitting within silos, and can often disappear when administrations change or modify digital locations. They sit in silos and are not available as indexed material to search and find, and thus do not contribute to public knowledge easily. Old LS debates pre 70’s are not reliably available…This prompted Vivek to start archiving both the LS recordsand began looking at Vidhan Sabhas (State Assemblies). Starting with Karnataka, Kerala and theKarnataka State Archives. This prompted me to look at the TN legislative Assembly records. Did you know that TN has a unicamarel parliament? There is noupper sabha…no RS, no legislative council. You can see this happening here: at my profile. Vivek says that the Archive.org API can be better documented, upload speeds appear slow and collections can only be created by Admin. ...

Harsha captions a photo of himself: “Bhed ki sath bakra jaaraha” A huge cast-iron weighing scale to weigh logs A telephone pole appears to use an old cast-iron bollards/posts A family of pigs sleep near a nali and a natural drain. The Bidar City is building drains (hybrid as somebody coined it, both drainage and rainwater use the same drain here) to flow into this natural drain I have been facinated with Ram’s films. I have not liked a director so much to follow their trajectory so far. From Kattradhu Tamil and Taramani to Peranbu and Parandhu Po (both of which I watched this week). I will passionately wait to encounter some of these characters in my life. There is great care, love and patience in many of his characters. Some things I hope to be, some things that I hope nature bestows on me. ...

Release poster of Kattradhu Tamil Release poster of Taramani I watched Kattradhu Tamil, a film by director Ram. The last film of his I watched somehow troubled me less, for it had a unserious thread between the others that was being woven. Taramani but by no lesser means was equally troubling (It missed my then week’s note for some reason), and I am unable to place why women appear to be the intersectional victims of his commentary on globalisation, gentrification, and capitalism that appear in both films. I wonder what childhood memory I carry at all for me to remember in the hands of a person, like Ananthi appears to be for Prabhakaran. There is so much tragedy in Kattradhu Tamil, tragedy that numbs people, tragedy that makes people go crazy. I do not know if it is a tragedy that Ananthi and the Tamil Vaathiyar were the only love that he has had, so much that Prabhakaran goes in search of Ananthi to Savergaon (unclear if this is a real village), Sangamner, close to Pune. Or, I do not if it is more a tragedy to not have a someone to go in search of. Atleast in the end, Ananthi and Prabhakaran both found each other to go in search of Tony together… I wonder what the circumstances of the family were in Acchankovil for them to migrate all the way to a remote village in Maharashtra. Was this informed by a real account? I also wonder what schools were like in summer holidays then. For the tamil teacher to have stayed for just one student… and for a relationship to have been like that… No such relationship could exist now I think…but maybe, I hope that they do. ...

At the entrance of Kolar, I find this banner. In the possible decade that this banner has been up, the image of a Bulldozer/earthmover and the text ‘A great movement’ have acquired very many different meanings I realised after reaching the entry ramp to the Chennai - Blr expressway that bikes are banned. It was not enforced on the approach from bangalore, possibly because I entered it from the Satellite Town Ring Road. But I wonder what the value of banning bikes is, if the inability to maintain expressway speeds is the problem, why not ban bikes of a certain speed-power class? ...

The week rushes, through some amount of anxiety and masked existentialism. I realise that the only habit I’ve realised in the past few months is of escaping the city. I wake up to an empty home, complete with the all the remnants of an unwilling night. Unwilling because the only resident does not do anything willingly - he gives into Netflix, because it a captive companion in the house. He gives into a messy bed and cupboard, full with clothes of yesterday, the day before and a few from the week before. The bed even hosts diversity in cleanliness: the clean refuse to get folded, the unclean refuse to be washed until smelt: Bangalore’s weather gives me an excuse, and i wonder how my room would have looked like in Chennai… I could talk in Tamil, curse at my friends maybe, or maybe hangout without it being in a fancy Indiranagar equivalent. The local tea shop or a ride would be possible, but then my friends in Chennai don’t have a job yet, the few in blore do, making them freer. ...