The most comfortable mornings will begin with the rubbing of the feet. If I don’t immediately open my phone, and don’t remember what awaits to be done that day and jump out, it is a good day. If the rubbing of the feet leads to slowly-opened eye lids looking at the glowing trees outside, and 5 minutes spent like an hour - it is a good morning.

But my mornings have been filled with a sense of worry. I do not look forward to sleep, but worry that I sleep too much. The 5 minutes I want to spend, but make it feel like an hour? It becomes an actual, real hour. The real is not so much wonder, but worry of losing it. I look forward to a rubbing-of-the-feet that makes the chest heave with no worry of the future.

The windows of my house like the morning sun. They let the summer sharply shine onto the edge of my bed. The summer nights also shine heat onto me. Sometimes I wake up sweating under the fan, and I wonder how.

Friends who visit SFS always find their near-constant closeness to parks nice. M and I collect flowers, the roads are a spring-bed of flowers, we found the Pink Trumpets, the Jacarandas and Frangipani. I learnt how the Mahogany seedpods look like and that somewhere in the last 8 years, even going through a art and design education has not managed to get my patience to draw back.
There is enough wonder left in me to wonder how each cell in this leaf, bounded by venation may vary in colour. It may be that my eyes are playing my senses, but I wish to be naive enough to wonder still for somemore time

  • See this ‘Flowering Trees of Bengaluru’ map online. And this photograph collection of the many species in bangalore, along with other resources. There has been some conversation about the making of data ‘explorers’, and how since LLMs, it has exploded. The discussion has largely been about the lack of enquiry and character in the making. What is it about making explorer that is exciting? While we have to acknowledge that it is often one of the earlier steps in heading towards more complex and layered enquiries, and is crucial for individuals to make and explore for themselves…how do LLMs change this? It is no longer learning-to-make, but rather the end-result in itself, perhaps that changes things drastically.

  • We (A, V and I) co-worked in Church Street for some time. It appears very affordable, I might return.

    Digital screens have been popping up over the last 2 years. Hebbal is full. MG road is full. I’ve been noticing it in central bangalore as well. They are bright enough to take over the entire light environment of the area. Look at the building opposite the board.

    The moon rises above the metro line on MG road

  • I have been sharing about Shivaram Karanth layout here for sometime: The vast scales of transformation that is happening there and the complete unrecognisability of spaces inbetween weeks. I visited again over the course of two mornings. New roads have made my memory of the space useless, I have to reorient myself. Lakes have transformed.

    Connecting to Veerasagara lake, a newly cemented kaluve. Grass is already growing all over
    Lone trees are left to survive, their companions are gone
    There are random buildings in the middle of soon-to-exist roads, the ‘market’ has had its eyes here for some time
    Ready to build
    This junction is at one corner of Ramagondanhalli lake. The dog is overlooking the corner where trash is dumped. Below that is a cemetry. The cemetry now border a new 4 lane road.
    this thindi (breakfast) place feeds cows with their vegetable waste everyday.

  • The Techno-Biographies course has begun. It is an exciting frame for me and Naveen. It will be particularly interesting for us to learn how people respond to archives like the Constitutional Observer, The Public Resource’s work with Gazettes and other documents to trace histories.

  • We are hosting another edition of the Hyderabad Karnataka Karwaan this coming Friday. This time, it is a different subject, we are going to be mapping the forts of the region. We will go beyond Bidar! And there are so many many forts… Please join us, RSVP at this link

  • We saw Thaai Kezhavi (Grand old grandmother? Or something to that effect). It was a refreshing film, showing how a very independant and husband-less grandmother and matriarch lives for her own pleasure and refuses to give up her rights. I am reminded of this quote and star trek episode that led to Game Aids for the Elderly > “They (old people)had meant something, and they were forced to live beyond that into a time of meaning nothing, of knowing that they could only be the beneficiaries of younger people’s patience. We are no longer that cruel, Lwaxana” 1 I wish my grandmother was alive and I could have shown her this film, it would have reinforced her belief in saving money for herself, and not having to depend on her children.

  • I will be looking for part-time job opportunities to support myself over the next few months. Digital Archiving, Creative implementations of Technology, Map interfaces, Field/Technological/Socio-political Research are some broad themes I will search through. I will develop a vision and pitch for the Constitutional Observer to sustain. If you find opportunities in the form of grants, fellowships, projects etc, please share them with me. Thank you.