I wake up abruptly these days. It does not feel like I have slept enough. I ask that he wakes up and gets on the road to jog somedays, but he has excuses: that I’ve woken up late, and must rush to work or that I feel like feeling warm, in all of this conversation my thoppai keeps growing and is more noticeable even with my trusted shirts. I keep thinking about being called an uncle and how increasingly he is hurt or the feeling of having supposed to be hurt.

There is too much time spent feeling these days and these aren’t like the feelings of a sunny day under the shade in Yelahanka. Although I don’t know or remember feeling that sunny day, just that I know it must feel so.

  • The Nagarppadam series’s second meetup happened in Pallikkaranai, in what looked like a sleepless morning for both me and Sangeetha. More Sangeetha, but I’m new to the world of sleep-less-walkers, I think. Pallikkaranai surprised us at every edge that urbanity has bounded it in. On the northern side, we have it bounded by the MRTS line and the Perungudi urban area. The Pallikkaranai Dump Yard has grown tremendously since the 80s and so have we - urbanity.

    A timelapse of the growth of the Palikkaranai Dumpyard from 1984 to 2022. Images sourced from Google Historical Imagery
We hear an interesting way corruption manifests in the region. Man hole covers in this road leading to the Pallikkaranai Marshaland, the portion below the Thoraipakkam road are less than 2meters apart. There is no need for manholes to be so frequent, but apparently it allows contracters to say budgeted distance/resources have been used
We found a lot of empty plots, with the wetland taking over or construction being dumped which had just the entry gate. The rest of the compound wall had disintegrated.
We are at the point the storm water drain opens to the marshland. It is just a simple street that ends here.
The view of the marshland from the other side of the previous photo. The hills that you see on the left side of the frame in the horizon is the Pallikkaranai Dumpyard
Another dilapidated gate

  • We played Shaasn, a political strategy game that focuses on a contestant’s responses to political questions, that then gets you resources to get voters. It is an interesting game but I feel that binary responses reinforces existing indian political paradigms. I wonder if it could imagine more…

    Shaasn in play. I won the game! or rather we all forfeited the election because sleep was more important

  • A difficult conversation ensues: Their housekeeper was unable to communicate her request for a leave of absence. Her knowledge of Hindi was not so good, and my friend does not know Kannada or Tamil. Some difficult emotions are recognisable on both sides. I wonder how these conflicts have played out in other homes. While I think to use words like ‘language-politics’ and ‘migration’ and ideas like ‘migrants must make an effort to learn the language’, which is common social-media language, or ’there is a caste hegemony present here that one side recognises (realises is another word that could be used here, but that would mean there is a moral imperative to do something, I think), but is unwilling to. I think i must at times shut up and think less from third-person, for my own sanity.

  • I met some school friends of mine, from 10th standard. I have changed, they have changed in some ways, our memories have been lost and some people completely forgotten. We found some old photographs and wanted to know what happened to some people in our class whom nobody has heard of spoken to in many years. k

  • I’m understanding more of what is where in Chennai City now. I took the suburban (this particular train was going to Chengalpet Junction) from Trisulam station (the closest to the Airport Metro station) to head to Tambaram, passing by Chrompet (Where I realise MIT is) and Pallavaram.

The train arriving after a long time.
The Airport visible from the Trisulam Station
  • The RTO broke my direct-sarkari-contact virginity back in 2021 I think. I wanted to get a driving license, and with all my new-india-is-on-the-internet energy I applied without going through a driving school. I have over the course of getting my licence and later in 2024 applying for a duplicate to be issued because my original had been stolen - learnt much about how the system functions. And how the system resists to be digital in many ways. The resistance also appears to benefit the supported economy of Driving Schools, Print Shops, Notaries and other allied service providers situated around the RTO. Annoyed, sweaty and furiously wanting to write about is what i’ve felt everytime I exited the RTO, atleast 5 times to get a licence. But this time it was different, I’d finished all the formalities and had come to have my photograph taken. It got done. I left. I hope to never have to return for the remainder of the period of the state thinking I can drive. I’ve survived all of this due to a human-secret that I will probably never tell the internet. It has mellowed me.
Benches at the waiting area