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] ...

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. ...

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. ...

In my time with A last week, I find myself remembering what he was curious about, what he reacted to, what he was new to… He was facinated with this diamond pattern that the walking waves would leave in imprint. But they would never walk the same, it is only sometimes that their walking would create these patterns, othertimes, the soil appeared patternless. I appreciate these moments where I am party to such curious involvement. I thank this patternful existence for that. This yellow grill has been present at the Market-side entrance to Platform 1 of Yeshwanthpur station ever since I’ve been to blr. But I’m yet to find an answer to find why it exists. On the sides it prevents the market from pushing into the road, but what does it stop on the top? Regardless, the moon looked beautiful. I found this cornerstone at a Third Wave in Besant Nagar. It reads as a partial translation: ...

I walk with A, who has just finished school and is probably taking a break year from college. Every few meters up the ramp on the Anna Nagar Tower, we would witness a pair of feet on the shadow-side. Or a lap and an head. Or just hands entwined and legs. Walking forward, it would be a couple. In A, I saw a smirk, and I shared my happiness with him, that love finds more public places these days We had walked down the corner of the Dargah onto the embankment of the Solpur lake. The raised ground hid the enthrall behind, and it only grazed towards us when we reached the bund. It was cold and the drizzle on our shirts had not dried before the rain caught us. We hid behind a shrub, trying to save one side of our bodies, all huddled together. We made the decision to run to the temple, and the rain stopped soon after The fort from the backside In the little I know of Chennai, I tried to see more. A, learnt of the Otteri Naalah, I learnt of Binny Mills and what is happening there now. We both learnt of what Broadway is, drove through the Periamedu market and I understood Chennai’s heat a bit more. There is a lot of names on the walls of the Anna tower, but I curiously found them all in English, and most often names of lovers and friends and other remarks. But this I found uniquely placed. 15G runs to Broadway / Parrys from MMDA Colony. The nonfunctional lift room on top of the tower now, now remembering names of visitors I boarded everyday from opposite the Anna Nagar West depot for atleast 4 years. I travelled mostly in the big 10 - 13 seaters, yellow and chuggling along (chuggy - like a good old enfield and juggling). I have a collection of photos going back all those years, of colourful seats and passengers on the share autos At the corner of Broadway depot, sacks, or ‘sacku pais’ dry on the footpath next to the market We walk through two pillars, made with grand intentions seemingly, but nothing joined them together, no gate, no compound, just an imagined arch… on what was filled with smooth rocks and marsh. Rocks smoothened on what once flowed there. Maybe blue and green in colour, going by what the water in the nearby well looks like. The two pillars I’ve written about what the magic of the water felt like on week 18-19. This photo shows a bit more clear what that magic is. Straight lines are what humanity desires. Straight poles, straight wires, straight buildings, flat floors, and flat ground. It is funny that ground is also a unit of measurement in tamil. A flattened ground with the previous level of soil visible at the bottom of the electricity poles Tilling implements rest on what is grassland now, and what was farmland before, what is to be? We will know soon. It is right next to the Solpur lake, farming is not permitted, neither are layouts JCB side Smooth side Straight lines of weeds and grasses, tilled by the unintentional treads of the machine of this decade A Nizam era drain path, through which a first order stream flowed once. Now it is a road. Was it both a road and a stream? Decades of cartwheels have driven paths onto the hard laterite above the Naubad basin Lakes exist so wells can access ground water. Or atleast they used to. Now lakes exist in cities so they can directly be accessed by machines. Machines access so that humans have running water in homes. Now machines also serve other machines. Chaukandi looks majestic from this side. As if the hillock is crowned. It is indeed a crown. The Ashtoor toombs can be seen Marakal Lake with layouts right up to the boundary ‘Lakeview’, notice how close the layouts begin from the lake. I found myself tired and lazy to run beyond 3kms this week in Bidar, I think that my supplement routine - B12, D and Calcium make a big difference. ...

At the entrance of Kolar, I find this banner. In the possible decade that this banner has been up, the image of a Bulldozer/earthmover and the text ‘A great movement’ have acquired very many different meanings I realised after reaching the entry ramp to the Chennai - Blr expressway that bikes are banned. It was not enforced on the approach from bangalore, possibly because I entered it from the Satellite Town Ring Road. But I wonder what the value of banning bikes is, if the inability to maintain expressway speeds is the problem, why not ban bikes of a certain speed-power class? ...

The week rushes, through some amount of anxiety and masked existentialism. I realise that the only habit I’ve realised in the past few months is of escaping the city. I wake up to an empty home, complete with the all the remnants of an unwilling night. Unwilling because the only resident does not do anything willingly - he gives into Netflix, because it a captive companion in the house. He gives into a messy bed and cupboard, full with clothes of yesterday, the day before and a few from the week before. The bed even hosts diversity in cleanliness: the clean refuse to get folded, the unclean refuse to be washed until smelt: Bangalore’s weather gives me an excuse, and i wonder how my room would have looked like in Chennai… I could talk in Tamil, curse at my friends maybe, or maybe hangout without it being in a fancy Indiranagar equivalent. The local tea shop or a ride would be possible, but then my friends in Chennai don’t have a job yet, the few in blore do, making them freer. ...

I have been noticing closed wells in the city, and I wonder how differently these neighbourhoods were, when these borewells were initially constructed. A borewell, somewhere SFS 208, Yelahanka New Town I wrote about my ‘zest-lessness’ and my escapes with karmoda in biking to escape I drove to Chennai for what else would I be upto in bangalore? The new highway is empty, and the Satellite Twon Ring Road is helpfull. I can reach Yelahanka faster in the city than reach Annanagar in Chennai after I enter the city. The Poonamallee - Maduravoyal - Koyambedu stretch can be hot! ...

This past week has been tiring and filled. I’ve realised that I need to consciously seek out my free time, my aspirations and my imaginations. I realise this in the background of feeling all over the place in the amorphous sphere of what is the professional and the personal. I also realise that personal desires and validation may not come from what is a moral value you place on something. I can place moral value in something that I do, but does it excite me? I’m not sure. Not always. This ofcourse comes from the great privilege of being able to do what excites me for work and life and get paid for it. ...

[17/04, 18:54] Adhavan: Sabi dream aur uska realisation ke madhya mein sarkar… Hmm [17/04, 18:57] Adhavan: Pyaar ko bhi… Maut ko bhi I finally got my bike, I wrote this to a dear friend a few days into waiting for the bike to pass layers of government. Registration, transport, realising how much of the bike was just taxes, RTO’s weird requests of ID cards: An aadhar and a ration card and many more anxieties…amidst and after all of this, I got my bike. I do not wish to write about the feeling of riding my bike around. It appears more reductive than speech to write, and less real than simply driving or sharing the ride with you, the reader and the future retrospector who might read the archives of my weeks. ...