It drizzled for sometime. It was cold for sometime and it was clear for sometime. It was an all pleasant evening all along from Channapatna to Nelamangla to Yelahanka this saturday. I had the privilege of maps that allowed me to take long, thin windy roads on hillocks and downhill from villages onto valleys. The jasmine tree in front of Aruvu fell We heard a sharp cracking sound, almost like the sound of thunder and then heard the tree hit the roof. The atleast 30 foot tall Jasmine tree in front of YNC fell. We were shocked and went out to realise that that the compund wall had taken most of the hit and the top was resting on the sloped roof of YNC. ...

I would shudder intensely as soon as I started, the shudder would pass down to my karmoda’s handle - only a small moment of instability and then I would pick up speed back again. In the last 250 kms to Bangalore after Anantpur, I must have stopped atleast 4 times to drink some tea to warm myself up, but everytime, I would shut off the engine, think for a minute if i really wanted to open my luggage for that would wet my devices. Reaching home faster was more important - I would decide to ride away again, starting with shudders and then getting into the groove with the wet wind. ...

I drove on my bike to Bidar from Yelahanka. I reached Bidar as midnight came. The moon had just been covered by clouds, and I’d driven into the quiet of the city, even more quieter when on the new Humnabad Highway, which was just me, another car and a satisfying amount of reflectors on the lane markings. I started at 6 in the morning from Yelahanka, and by the end of the journey had been driving for 18 hours, with a few long stops inbetween to skip the mid-day heat of the Deccan. ...

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. ...

தமிழ் புத்தாண்டு நல்வாழ்த்துக்கள்…ஜெய் பீம் Happy Ambedkar Jayanthi. Jai Bhim. Happy Tamil New Year. This week has been entirely spent on a dream that refuses to be realised. Howmuchever I attempt to make it real, the world acts like a parent wanting to teach me patience, hiding it away for a few days, then not giving it to me. I’ve spent many moments of this week thinking about ambition and the wish to be driven… to be both the driver and the driven. I remember the pleasure and happiness of finishing off my mother’s Aviyal - right after I returned having known weightloss from my NCC camp. I remember having known the feeling of passing 12th standard, without failing any subject - I’ve never felt liberation like that after. There have been other kinds of weightlessness - of sunset after a light day, or in the lap of a lover on a September evening. How are these related to being driven? I think you need hope to really be driven, and I think I’ve let myself lose simple hope and the promise of pleasure in the everyday. ...