M tries to recognise these ducks at sankey tank, technology too fails, but we walk on with our conversation. I’ve always disrespected what Sankey Tank represents. With its cement embankment and an almost flat, lifeless water except for the occasional Mallard (as we would later learn are the ducks in the water) and the fish. M leads me to one corner where she likes to watch the rats scuttle inside the rocky embankment.
At the Shanti Nagar busstand, Chennai bound busses pause thankfully close to the toilets. When leaving, they are convenient. The board saying urinals are free to use is hidden with this very convenient contraption
My bus was late because quite sadly the KSRTC conductor had suffered a heart attack, KSRTC replaced both the conductor and driver with people who had not been on this route often before. We lost our way at 3am, heading into the new Chennai-Blr expressway under construction, instead of heading down from Chittur to Ranipet. We reached three hours late, at 9AM

This plot of land, close to my home in chennai, with the creepers forming the canopy of the plot has remained unused for almost a decade or more. In prime real estate, anna nagar! I wish to enter it one day, to witness how the canopy of the creepers feels like from the inside. To the right of this frame, is a temple that I used to visit with my mother often. It has no gopura, and has grown populated with gods and spaces being determined by who donates for it.

  • I came across the Ajab Shahar glossary while trying to find urdu words to learn and use in daily conversation. I’ve started seeing the Kabir Project’s work recently, listening to recorded songs on YouTube, even though I understand very little. Only now did I realise that they publish translated lyrics as well on their website.

    Seeing the grinding grind-stone Kabira starts to weep. Between these mighty slabs, Oh! who can escape unbroken?

  • More than eleven Booth Level Officers have died during the Special Intensive Revision that is on in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and other states. They are being held liable for delays via FIRs. Read this NewsLaundry report about it. When I was in Chennai this weekend, we went to the Booth help desk to submit the forms. It was confusing, I do not understand what part of the form verifies the voter. What is the point of collecting Aadhar? What if you had not been present in the same address in 2005 when the previous SIR happened? How are you verified as a citizen? This week I will try and understand what is happening in the background.

    ‘Illai’, ‘not present’ marked across our SIR forms as we were absent in the 2005 election in the same address
    My parents wait for me to bring Aadhar copies

  • The Cloudflare outage took out our selfhosted Nextcloud, untold.town, livinglabs.institute, pgsl.aruvu.org and other sites for a few hours. I’ve been improving Nextcloud speeds over the last few weeks: switching the DB to the SSD (we had not cared to move it out of the HDD), Collabra (selfhosted collabrative document editing suite) speeds improved considerably once their jail configurations were applied. There is still the fundamental reliance on Google within the organisation and it irks me. I realise that this may sound naive, but I think the reason technology-people resort to solutionism, is this mirage that software giants have built on the backs of an unimaginable amount of resources: stability, infinite money and a monopoly on what appears to be good software.


    As a joke, I have been telling people that software too must be treated like a human, with its own pace, slowness or quirks and downtime. It is being made and maintained by humans, and what appears to be permanence is guaranteed by ethical overreaches many of us will not agree to. With the environment, with labour rights, with inequality…


    It is also a reminder to start using our static IP.

  • I received lessons in identifying plants: wild flowering plants, grasses, fruits from Harsha. Malaika has been warming me up to iNaturalist: My urban brick head could not recognise a Mango tree instantly. And I grew up next to a mango tree by my window, what made me so ignorant to the shape of the leaves?

    Nilgiri stamens rest on this mango tree close to it. Harsha identifies them as nilgiri stamens
    I taste lantana nectar for the first time, thanks to Harsha
    As we walk in the fort, the central area is covered in shrub and grass. This wild flower, from a plant called the Crown Flower, Calotripis gigantea, is sewn together to make garlands for Shiva. We talk of why Shiva is garlanded with mostly wild flowers
    At the court complex in Bidar
    I enter the fort after a long time

  • I have been in Chennai for two consecutive weekends now. In a desire to finally get my bike back from the service center after the accident I told you about in Note 41 & 42. I magically got a seat on a special train that ran for Puttaparthi Sai’s centennary celebrations, that took me straight to Yelahanka.

    The Airport metro line in construction, Kogilu Cross, a view I have never seen, for i’ve rarely been on this track
    Morning on the airport road

  • In The Dispossessed:

    As for the doctor’s mind, though intelligent and certainly well-meaning, it was a jumble of intellectual artifacts even more confusing than all the gadgets, appliances and conveniences that filled the ship. These latter Shevek found entertaining; everything was so lavish, stylish, and inventive; but the furniture of Kimoe’s intellect he did not find so comfortable. Kimoe’s ideas never seemed to be able to go in a straight line; they had to walk around this and avoid that, and then they ended up smack against a wall. There were walls around all this thoughts, and he seemed utterly unaware of them though he was perpetually hiding behind them. Only once did Shevek see them breached, in all their days of conversation between the worlds.

    I feel very much like Kimoe. Walls are how I define how I think.. boxes, I categorise first and then later think. I first imagine constraints, what are not possible? Then I begin to construct within those limits. I have been observing people who do not live that way, and it always makes me amazed: the number of ways one can think fluidly without constraining their thought.