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

At the same time, the traffic has put in an extraordinary amount of stress on the ecosystems and people here. Nothing ever stabilises seemingly, there are layers and layers of development
The city from a dark alley
The city from the front passenger seat
Just a few kilometers outside of the city, homestays and cafes develop
The Ooty racecourse is now part marsh, part construction and part bendy white tubes

  • There are many artefacts that reflect different eras of the place. From bus stands, to jobs, to e-toilets that. I saw it as a facinating history of development in blobs. The Government Museum is also such a palimpsest. The language used in the museum, reads sometimes like a colonial agent describing indiogenous communities. It is sometimes indegiestibly not something that should be read at a modern museum.

    A map of indigenous communities present at the museum
    This plaque describes the people of the irulaa tribe as ‘dark skinned’ who are ‘fond of the flesh of the black monkey’ and are ‘taking their place among the civil population’
    The english ‘revolutionised’ the ‘economy’ of the Badagas
    Surely these mannequins do not appear like darkskinned Todas
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    The Mini Bus Stand in front of the race course is just car parking and marsh now. There is no space for cars near the lake and beyond the railway station.
    Auto stand that also appears to be primarily car parking, with the Kodappamund canal behind it
    The window reads Tamilnadu Computer Technology (Center), now stuffed with …trash?
    A temple with two differently styled gopuras

  • For Karmoda, I have installed a carrier that has made tying luggage infinitely easier and more resilient to shocks from the road. I have been trying to find auxilliary lights that I can complement the headlamp with. But these are mired in a grey legal area with high costs.