In the morning, my phone is unable to capture the bright lights adorning the Hazrath Syed Madar Sha Wali Dargah, near Mohamed Sab Palya. My phone camera’s shutter speed is faster than the light’s frequency. It is the annual Urz, the annual gathering around the time of the Sufi peer’s death. My ImageMagick installation is unable to convert that into a .webm video without the artifacts I know 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and more people who have been down with fever, cold and/or other things. The 6th is me. I thought it was all fine once the fever went away and I could walk somewhat in the sun without being tired. But looks like a hot body needs a lot of water. Dehydration brought me to a night at a hospital with IV fluids. Dawn rose and in the room whose window doesn’t even tint yellow during dawn, the only marker of morning was the loud shift-handover conversations. The doctors and nurses were kind, and the room was ...

V asks me if my notes are a direct, full, exact representation of my life, so much that what are my notes is my life, and my life are in my notes. I wonder if they are so. Memory and associated feelings are a crafty construction, so are my notes by extension. I feel that I craft my memory, I choose what to remember, what I associate with it and my weekly notes have been a handy tool for that construction. For example, in the past many months, in the many times I spend by myself when I would rather not, when the dull evening sets in and you do not want to wash your face, but mull and rull in the comfort of your companion chair, my only living companion has been Floyd. She would get up on her front legs, and express with the most vulnerable eyes - But she has never made it into my notes with the gravitas that she holds in the rhythm of my life. ...

Deepavali has always begun with vadas fingerprinted with my amma’s hands. The crests of the prints burn more so they are nicely contrasted. They also fill your stomach for the day, I have had a bad relationship with food for a long time, but these past few weeks they have shot up. I like to eat, eat without limit until I feel full and sleepy, which is when I feel good. Pigeons sleep/hide/stay on the ledges as the city breathes in the smoke of deepavali. Somewhere on the wetlands at the Poondi Neer Thekkam (reservoir). I’m riding in the front of a 4 wheeled mini truck, with 2 other passengers and a kind driver. My face is grimy from over 300 kms of driving on the bike, and 30 seconds of an accident somewhere 40 minutes before this picture was taken. All the cool wind of the just-rained highway could not make me feel calm as I begin to unravel, in my mind, the implications of the disabled second passenger on the truck, Karmegam. The most calming evening of the week, was when this young visitor chose to sleep in my lap. Sometimes he moved my arms to coop inside and sleep, sometimes his hind legs would slip and fall for me to coop him back up. Caring like this is something I’ve not done in a long time. The days appear to fly away. I settled into a routine that made me skip my weekly note last week. There was a lot happening, there were many kinds of work happening in the collectives and inbetween all this, I hear something in a passing conversation where we were deciding where to eat dinner: I hear, said as a joke about me, but something I’ve not stopped thinking about… anyways he [me, adhavan] doesn’t have the time for all that [relationships, love, socialising] ...

The middle portion of the laterite bricks were melting onto the next. The laterite here was already slippery, but smooth steps going down into the well? I was scared, so I held onto the sides and attempted to find newer bricks that were placed here and there. This is a well in Bekal, Kasargode. In 48 hours, I had felt the salt of the Arabian Sea, the sand that is its companion, the rain and the mountains that lead to it. I had heard birds of the western ghats in their daily routines, the morning, the hot afternoon and in the nights. I had heard the crushing sea, the sweet diesel exhaust of trucks climbing and being stuck in traffic jams in the ghats of Sakleshpura, and the morning rain in Kasargode. ...

The over head metro tracks beside the airport expressway have never seen a train, but they already have water flowing all over them. It flows all over, over the bumps of the cast concrete, curving like the concrete does, but deciding where to fall. We were stuck for over 20 minutes My father asks me about the tone of my talk at IndiaFOSS last week. The imagery, the political perspectives and the choice of examples, are all things he pointed out to have been somewhere inbetween being direct, and a slippery, unclear direction. Neradiyavum sollala, ennavo solla vara, aana maluppura… There is concern, why need I talk about all of this? I realised that I use big words that act as euphemisims/placeholders for more direct speech. I like to say ‘context’, I like to end sentences with enquiries and questions rather than certain statements. With all of this in mind, I saw 12th Fail and Homebound on the same day. They are both good movies within their efforts and both feel very real - with simple, clear scenes in language that does not attempt to assess or require much esoteric thinking. My mother said this out aloud: that for all the accessibility I advocated for, the language itself was not accessible. Greens in a small truck with their roots hanging out, they also wait with us, along with all the other vehicles stuck in traffic Shoaib and Chandan in Homebound talk with an interesting mix of words, I learn that it is called Lakhnawi Tehzeeb, ‘~ Lucknowhi Culture’. One uses ‘hum’ instead of ‘mera’ to talk in first person, along with a general difference I noticed in their zubaan, ‘~ language’. I found this blog of anecdotes of Lakhnawi Tehzeeb a nice read. ...

Beautiful Khoutis, often homemade blankets from old clothes hang in this street next to the district jail, Bidar My week began in Chennai. That sunday morning it had rained, it had put off all the sunday morning beach plans, but the karmegangal blessed us with a pause after 8am. Metro work on the Marina Promenade has closed off much of the parking on the Marina, the rain had closed off many people as well. We walked from there to the Adyar estuary, to see the broken bridge. I’ve never walked this full stretch before, so was excited to walk on the pattinapakkam beach (I’ve been to the pattinapakkam road a few times). I was playing catch with the tiny sheets of waves reaching up to our feet. The beach was clean except for something I’ve never noticed before, open defaecation, right on the shore. A reluctantly walks with us A temple, and dargah? on the shore Kannadikari Mariayamman abode/temple. Glass wala mariamman. Glass Mariyamman? I left for Bidar on Monday to work on planning and making a field guide for the Mapping to understand socioecological phenomena in the place. We were capturing videos to describe alongside the essay we have been writing to describe the path of a natural drain that goes out of Bidar City. While making this essay, we have been discussion what it means to call something a stream. If something actively carries water that is visible, and is large enough, it is a stream, it contains running water! But geologically, water need not run on the ground always, but we do not recognise such paths of water with the same weight as a ‘stream’. This stream becomes a way for the city to drump drain water away, so there is water flowing, but mixed with sewage and hidden away behind lanes and buildings and folded into the ground, and most times, conveniently covered with cemend slabs. ...

While the talk’s original proposal contained the title: ‘Let us make accessible political archives on the internet’, it morphed into a pitch to make political archives outside of the internet, because the definition of ‘accessible’ is my mind is to really take these out of the circles within which these often get shared: The internet, public policy circles, bangalore and so on. See the slides here The recorded talk is available on YouTube

These past few weeks have been very busy, and I have no energy to reflect, so it will be a very short one. The mosque beside begins celebrations for Eid A attempts to break free his blocked nose, I suggest that the Sun in the east might help. His body warms up. There is a great comfort in accidental encounters with friends, I encounter S one day, and they come home I drove through NICE road to visit a friend’s new home in Thalaghattapura. It was a beautful ride in the rain, but none of my clothes would dry the next day. ...

Somewhere along the Hessaraghatta reservoir, we look into water. It is sandy where we stand, sandy enough to worry me that the drizzling rain will make it soft and marshy. We’d only discovered that there is a path after seeing a few other people walking out onto the road from this side. Near the Durgamba Devi temple, a well and two people.There is a path on the embankment where most people walk. There is also a path below the embankment that gives access to the few farm houses, cattle sheds and coconot/palm plantations that line the side. This Ganesh Chaturthi, there is a remnant of a procession in every street. Streets are lit up, there are some streets that I have never seen so brightly lit with festival lighting in the last few years. Close to my home, there is the Chickabettahalli Jamia Masjid, that is right on the BEL - AFS - Vidyaranyapura - Yelahanka road. The road is a sharp white line of seggregation. You will not find so many muslims on the east side of the road, while the western side is not so fancy looking. The left side is also the Chickabettahalli village. For Ganesh processions, there is a lot of police personnel who have been stationed all along the road. And there is a van of personnel who stay opposite the mosque, all evening, and possibly all night. It is everybody’s wonder why they stay in front of a mosque during ganesh processions. ...

The creeper joins the Jackfruit tree, and pulls it down inorder to climb taller. We climbed joyously. All of us had underestimated what a trek would mean. One thought it would be a walk in the heavenly grasses inside the happy clouds. One thought it would be a easy climb. I was told I could be a tour guide, a zesty one who pushes people along and says when he encounters new paths, ‘I’ve never taken this path, but we must take it!’. Here, we had begun our descent, the sun had come out to warm the soil and we took respite when the clouds hid the sun for a while. In the winds and shade of this beautiful morning, we rest. These are photographs from the trek up and down Makalidurga, a betta 50kms from Yelahanka, nestled on the road to Anantpur. It was me, S, N and N. ...