Weekly Notes 17 | Biking to Bangalore, Aspirations, the Carnatic Sultanate, Cemetries against development...

This past week has been tiring and filled. I’ve realised that I need to consciously seek out my free time, my aspirations and my imaginations. I realise this in the background of feeling all over the place in the amorphous sphere of what is the professional and the personal. I also realise that personal desires and validation may not come from what is a moral value you place on something. I can place moral value in something that I do, but does it excite me? I’m not sure. Not always. This ofcourse comes from the great privilege of being able to do what excites me for work and life and get paid for it.

This also makes me realise that I’ve never seen myself as an artist. As somebody who creates. I think that is what I must aspire to imagine for myself. Is the Constitutional Observer the result of my beliefs and reflections on life? yes. Is more of my work a reflection on what I think? yes. Then why must I not consider them my ‘pieces’ as a painter would a portait, or a composer would with their composition? Why must I not derive the acute feeling of having completed something from technology that I create? For it feels that in the cycle of technology that forever continues wanting to be developed further, there is no space for a suave sense of satisfaction.

• I drove back to Bengaluru through Chittor. It took me 9 hours because I got lost after entering Bengaluru Urban. It was hot because I’d left early in the morning and reached at the right time when all the dust in the city like to party. Just like the Glucon D ad! If you want to enter yelahanka from the west of the city, take the Satellite Town Ring Road from Hoskete (which I also learnt extends all the way to hosur and that section is going to open soon!)

  • I was crossing Ranipet at the right time and realised the amount of Nawab history that is present in the region. Which I did not know was called the Carnatic Sultanate.

  

  • Roads after ranipet were empty and surrounded by hills that continued till hoskote

  

  

• Me and archit visited my aunt in Hosur. While Archit was realising that temples in TN seem to have a lot of space to move around other than just for prayer, especially after noticing the grandeur of the new gopuram at the Chandra Choodeswarar temple at Hosur. While in conversation with my aunt and her wish to complete visiting over 270 sivan temples across the subcontinent, she shared her notebook. I realise after searching for the numbers that these are temples mentioned in the verses of the Shaiva Nayanars. (See the list at this link). And somebody has been numbering them on Google Maps.

  

  

  

• I’ve never visited the Narasipura and Vidyaranyapura lakes, I realise through many conversations that hidden park and lake entrances maybe a huge reason as to why footfall maybe lower. The BBMP(RiP) had put in >6ft grills only in the last 3-4 years for all the parks and lakes in yelahanka.

  

  

• I’ve been noticing cemetries alongside the Shivaram Karanth layout that are risk of having to be moved. This got me curious about the funeral practices of Castes here and back in TamilNadu: ^{1 2 3}. While it seems obvious that such cemetries would be under threat from urban sprawl, it is a curious question to see if they have been left protected… ⁴