I write after eating mochakotta kolambu (lab-lab beans curry) and rasam, from Chennai. It was very well made by S. Even a little of rice is enough to provide a feeling that I do not get with other foods, an over-filled pleasure that is not too harsh, especially when you have it after a monstrous nap. I have found a liking for rice in the past few weeks, my tummy too visibly reflects it. I refrigerate it, and have it with a meal-prepped pot of dal with vegetables, when at home in Bangalore. But I will have to stop having rice, will do. ...

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. ...

It started with a curiousity to see what the Hesaraghatta grasslands look like… I have been to the dam and the south and western sides… After the conservation reserve notification, i had not been to Hesaraghatta, nor had I seen the northern and western sides. I asked P to join me on her avenger. It was teeth chattering and bladder-squeezingly cold. If any naturalist knows and can name the trees, the plants and knows the history of this western portion of the lake, tell me please! the bed of the reservoir PGs are propping up everywhere Eucalyptus, Agave and cows A borewell on the bed of the reservoir After reading Pookuzhi, I wrote a blog post in Tamil: பூக்குழி நாவலிலிருந்து சில குறிப்புகள் - அரசியல் அமைப்பு சட்டத்தின் அடிப்படையில் (Some notes from the Pookuzhi novel, with the constitution as the basis). I write that much the landscapes and the happenings in the book are new to me, very sharply so… It was a serious lesson that you have to keep reading a language to keep up with the euphemisms, metaphors and even the vocabulary. This printed preamble of the constitution and a rose live together in my topbox for an evening The question that arised from reading Pookuzhi, of the village and why it was not chosen to be the governing unit led me to enquire more. I asked this question to the Constitutional Observer: Why must the village not be the unit of governance? The beginning portion of the EPW article, Nation and Village: Images of Rural India in Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar, dated August 10 2002: 1 2 ...

This white headed grass follows me all the way from Ramnathapuram to Bangalore. This photo was taken in Vellore, of the Ponnai River bed, which joins Palar near Ranipet and joins the ocean below Kalpakkam This week has been a mix of sun and very cold days in bangalore. Abhiram stand in the YNC porch. Last year has been a very consequential year. I completed a year and a half with Aruvu and LLN, the experiences and people and places have in many ways rewired my being. We launched Living Labs Institute. We experimented, failed and restarted many efforts. I speak much better Kannada and Dakkani, thanks to the people of the places of Bidar, Kundapura, Channapatna and Bangalore. I have begun to live alone this year and have made it a good home with the help of my dear friends. We engaged with Chennai, in Pallikkaranai 1 2 and in Ennore previously. ...

This blog narrates my 1400km ride, and is photo heavy (meaning it is mostly photos) Time has been on my mind for some time. Particularly the more self-filled time. The time you spend by yourself, the time you spend thinking about yourself, the time you spend on doing things, the time you spend not doing things. Neram is what it is called in Tamil, and neram is fickle. You have to decide what to do in advance, you have to stick by it, you have to stitch it with the importance needed in your mind. Otherwise, neram is no longer yours, it belongs to other people, other happenings, feelings that piggy back onto this neram that never will be yours. ...

It has been a long, muddled two and half something weeks. It has also been a diverse few weeks, we ended the year, had our annual break, I drove for 1400kms inside TN… Inside the motoroom of the old busstand, Bidar. This is connected to a well on the left I was in Bidar for a few days. I was in Bidar for a few days. Yelahanka station in the december fog/smog of bangalore This African Tulip Tree in the Horticulture Nursery in Bidar City has been shedding its leaves with no being to remove for many seasons. Your feet drops in as you step on this floor The roots of a tree I could not identify. There is a text-only corpus of TN, UP, AS and KA state legislature debate archives available for download at https://github.com/Constitutional-Observer/Scraper-India-State-Legislatures/tags. We made this to test out multi-lingual search across the entire archive. The archive is now at a new url: https://archive.org/details/legislaturesofindia ...

It has been many weeks of great company. It has also been many weeks of great learning and great teachers. The rain has taught me to drive slowly, calmly and most importantly the gentleness of a focussed mind. My eyes naturally enquire about the grasses and the trees, and my enquries are answered. M and H annotate those enquiries. H particularly takes an interest and questions me later, so that I remember. I have cooked food many times and have had food cooked for me many times. It was a particularly warm set of weeks in the unusual cold of Blr. ...

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 ...

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. ...