I would shudder intensely as soon as I started, the shudder would pass down to my karmoda’s handle - only a small moment of instability and then I would pick up speed back again. In the last 250 kms to Bangalore after Anantpur, I must have stopped atleast 4 times to drink some tea to warm myself up, but everytime, I would shut off the engine, think for a minute if i really wanted to open my luggage for that would wet my devices. Reaching home faster was more important - I would decide to ride away again, starting with shudders and then getting into the groove with the wet wind.
I wish I had captured the vast and dark emptyness of the surroundings, with no shops, no houses, except a wide road and vegetation. I would consistently witness immensely grand strikes of lightning, some that felt very close to the road and some for whom it did not matter how far they were, the entire globe would light up in my eyes, a dull violet like color that the sky would borrow, and then go back to the blinding blackness of the night and of highbeams.
Soaked through for 4 hours atleast and the two times I saw a motel, I would keep telling that it was only a few hours left, a self aware lie, for I knew that it would take the middle of the night, and that I will shudder through all of that. And so I reached Bangalore 18ish hours after I had left, at 6:30 in the morning from Bidar.
This past week, thought, life, and my body has felt like it has been in constant movement. In many moments of gentle emotion and reflection, I have teared in happiness. I thank the chaos of this world, the random and non-random people, places, beings and this earth for having kept me moving.
I have been thinking of why I don’t practice photography more intentionally. I have been getting more comfortable with not seeing myself as a practitioner of solely digital technology related things. Abhiram commented that my practice is of observation and questioning, not the form, but the enquiry. In my perception of my own self, this is not something that I’ve used to describe me. Only after the beginning of these weekly notes do I see an emerging something in what I take photographs of, why and how I put them together. It also appears that I am writing less, and using captions to narrate more.
I have come to understand water better, of how water is flat, or how it percolates into the ground when it held in a lake, a dabri, a dam, a checkdam, from our/my interactions with farmers, conversations with Harsha and Vinay and I have more questions now. Broad questions about the history of the borewell, of how acquifiers connect, of how polluted acquifers share their imposed disease, of how much the government understands water.
I was reminded of how my parents used to tell/scare me when I was young, that I must be taken to my village, to walk the fields and recognise crops, to walk along the lake and recognise trees. Because growing up in the city, with an affinity to English and a fancy living, my urban mind was small. It was limited to Annanagar, where I lived and went to school. I may not be able to name a lot in Tamil, but I find joy in walking on the land, moving, and talking to people, and I hope my parents are happy knowing that.
We drove to a lake to spend the evening in the company of water, wind and quietness on my birthday. This birthday, I had no expectations, it flowed and I enjoyed where it went.
