Weekly notes 7 & 8 | Climbing Saavandurga, the beginnings of the mango and others

It was a late night. Everybody had left late. It was a tense day too, wound up in uneven patches of unfinished work. Bidar was also becoming hot and I had not drunk enough water. The morning after, the heaviness of the dinner bears down on me, and the 3 hours of sleep makes my eyes sensitive to the sun. I was unable to focus on one thing, each thing i would do would get interrupted by another action. Drinking water, cleaning the space, planning for the day, reading… There are simply too many possibilities. This feeling was particularly intense after the the sun hazes my sight, it is clear the day has begun, but my mind and body were not ready for it. The uneven patches kept piling on each other, you could resolve in a moment the mass of all the patches present, but you could never say when one patch would end and another would begin to pile in its place.

I tried to meditate - close my eyes and attempt to focus on nothing but the recently empty feeling stomach, the harsh sun but the mind rebels. I have no control over which patch it chooses to focus on. Any attempt to not think about anything ends with a thought. I struggle for a bit more. I set a timer, I attempt to focus. The timer rings, I have not been successful. The one thing I have been successful is to let sleep take over. It appears thought-lessness is sleep for me.

In retrospect, all my life, I have been the happiest when focused on a physical activity that forces attention or a task that leads to a singular outcome. That is why riding my bike may have given my most mindful moments. This has been a defining feeling for the past few weeks - time has passed very fast, I have not caught some of it to write my weekly notes and there are many patches of thought running.

• I was in Bidar for a short time, where I visited for the first time Veerbushan and Jaffer saab’s farms. I learnt a lot about Mango trees (They both grow mangoes in their farms). Harsha was teaching me about the lifecycle of mangoes. I learnt how mango flowers look like, and how so many baby mangoes fall away, counting down to the one mango that will grow from one branch.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

• I had not imagined such a big rock, nor had i attempted to see photos and videos of it to plan. The morning was cold, we were late and the forest officers talking to my friends who reached early kept suggesting that we were late beyond the permitted time. It appears that our government thrives on the control over information. Everything depends on what one tells you, and what one does not.