The middle portion of the laterite bricks were melting onto the next. The laterite here was already slippery, but smooth steps going down into the well? I was scared, so I held onto the sides and attempted to find newer bricks that were placed here and there. This is a well in Bekal, Kasargode. In 48 hours, I had felt the salt of the Arabian Sea, the sand that is its companion, the rain and the mountains that lead to it. I had heard birds of the western ghats in their daily routines, the morning, the hot afternoon and in the nights. I had heard the crushing sea, the sweet diesel exhaust of trucks climbing and being stuck in traffic jams in the ghats of Sakleshpura, and the morning rain in Kasargode. ...

The over head metro tracks beside the airport expressway have never seen a train, but they already have water flowing all over them. It flows all over, over the bumps of the cast concrete, curving like the concrete does, but deciding where to fall. We were stuck for over 20 minutes My father asks me about the tone of my talk at IndiaFOSS last week. The imagery, the political perspectives and the choice of examples, are all things he pointed out to have been somewhere inbetween being direct, and a slippery, unclear direction. Neradiyavum sollala, ennavo solla vara, aana maluppura… There is concern, why need I talk about all of this? I realised that I use big words that act as euphemisims/placeholders for more direct speech. I like to say ‘context’, I like to end sentences with enquiries and questions rather than certain statements. With all of this in mind, I saw 12th Fail and Homebound on the same day. They are both good movies within their efforts and both feel very real - with simple, clear scenes in language that does not attempt to assess or require much esoteric thinking. My mother said this out aloud: that for all the accessibility I advocated for, the language itself was not accessible. Greens in a small truck with their roots hanging out, they also wait with us, along with all the other vehicles stuck in traffic Shoaib and Chandan in Homebound talk with an interesting mix of words, I learn that it is called Lakhnawi Tehzeeb, ‘~ Lucknowhi Culture’. One uses ‘hum’ instead of ‘mera’ to talk in first person, along with a general difference I noticed in their zubaan, ‘~ language’. I found this blog of anecdotes of Lakhnawi Tehzeeb a nice read. ...

Beautiful Khoutis, often homemade blankets from old clothes hang in this street next to the district jail, Bidar My week began in Chennai. That sunday morning it had rained, it had put off all the sunday morning beach plans, but the karmegangal blessed us with a pause after 8am. Metro work on the Marina Promenade has closed off much of the parking on the Marina, the rain had closed off many people as well. We walked from there to the Adyar estuary, to see the broken bridge. I’ve never walked this full stretch before, so was excited to walk on the pattinapakkam beach (I’ve been to the pattinapakkam road a few times). I was playing catch with the tiny sheets of waves reaching up to our feet. The beach was clean except for something I’ve never noticed before, open defaecation, right on the shore. A reluctantly walks with us A temple, and dargah? on the shore Kannadikari Mariayamman abode/temple. Glass wala mariamman. Glass Mariyamman? I left for Bidar on Monday to work on planning and making a field guide for the Mapping to understand socioecological phenomena in the place. We were capturing videos to describe alongside the essay we have been writing to describe the path of a natural drain that goes out of Bidar City. While making this essay, we have been discussion what it means to call something a stream. If something actively carries water that is visible, and is large enough, it is a stream, it contains running water! But geologically, water need not run on the ground always, but we do not recognise such paths of water with the same weight as a ‘stream’. This stream becomes a way for the city to drump drain water away, so there is water flowing, but mixed with sewage and hidden away behind lanes and buildings and folded into the ground, and most times, conveniently covered with cemend slabs. ...

While the talk’s original proposal contained the title: ‘Let us make accessible political archives on the internet’, it morphed into a pitch to make political archives outside of the internet, because the definition of ‘accessible’ is my mind is to really take these out of the circles within which these often get shared: The internet, public policy circles, bangalore and so on. See the slides here

These past few weeks have been very busy, and I have no energy to reflect, so it will be a very short one. The mosque beside begins celebrations for Eid A attempts to break free his blocked nose, I suggest that the Sun in the east might help. His body warms up. There is a great comfort in accidental encounters with friends, I encounter S one day, and they come home I drove through NICE road to visit a friend’s new home in Thalaghattapura. It was a beautful ride in the rain, but none of my clothes would dry the next day. ...

Somewhere along the Hessaraghatta reservoir, we look into water. It is sandy where we stand, sandy enough to worry me that the drizzling rain will make it soft and marshy. We’d only discovered that there is a path after seeing a few other people walking out onto the road from this side. Near the Durgamba Devi temple, a well and two people.There is a path on the embankment where most people walk. There is also a path below the embankment that gives access to the few farm houses, cattle sheds and coconot/palm plantations that line the side. This Ganesh Chaturthi, there is a remnant of a procession in every street. Streets are lit up, there are some streets that I have never seen so brightly lit with festival lighting in the last few years. Close to my home, there is the Chickabettahalli Jamia Masjid, that is right on the BEL - AFS - Vidyaranyapura - Yelahanka road. The road is a sharp white line of seggregation. You will not find so many muslims on the east side of the road, while the western side is not so fancy looking. The left side is also the Chickabettahalli village. For Ganesh processions, there is a lot of police personnel who have been stationed all along the road. And there is a van of personnel who stay opposite the mosque, all evening, and possibly all night. It is everybody’s wonder why they stay in front of a mosque during ganesh processions. ...

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. ...