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 ...

Sireesh tells me that it is the design of some roads to be lit entirely by the light of commerce. This building, now lights up the entire junction, I capture this photo sitting in a new swanky outdoor cafe. Listening to the grand old trees of Cubbon park. We were in the sun and shade of the trees of Cubbon park one saturday. ...

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. ...

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 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. ...

In weekly notes, in regular life, on weekends and while biking, I’ve found V to be a great companion. And I mean that with all the nice feelings the soft syllable of the word ‘companion’ brings. I’ve heard the word rhythm often this past week life, I’d like to think people have become rhythmic, after a long time, in my daily juggle. Within all the rain that yelahanka has been receiveing, an army of ants have been building a big home in the backyard of YNC. Notice the uniform size of the mud balls that the worker ants have been making It almost appears parabolic in shape! I biked to Salem, and it was a great exodus that accompanied me. Busses filled with people packed like a city bus on a long distance bus, trucks and cars and bikers, all heading out south on the only highway into TN. After ECity, V gave me company on a call with all the loneliness of waiting alongside car exhaust and truck farts. It was his usual remote-mapping time, and he decided to map the Hosur-Dharmapuri stretch, the stretch I was in. I called it Experiential Mapping (remote), he called it interactive mapping. The drive out of bangalore city onto hosur road took me 2 or more hours with the painful traffic of tumkur road, Bommasandra and then leading onto traffic in Hosur and on the road to Krishnagiri. Tumkur road was lit by a brilliantly blue sky that my camera is not lying about. In all this brilliantly blue evening, hoards of busses left the city into Karnataka from Tumkur road, and the rain never blessed us. On the village roads inbetween the Hosur-Krishnagiri Road and the Hosur-Rayakottai road, there appeared to be these brilliantly lit plots. In the blank of the village night, they magically appeared to be at different heights and sizes - because of the slopes of the region. They made for a curious sight, that I found no answer to. In Mallasamudram, small homes with terracota tiled roofs and loom machines are lessening in number on our street. Our home is an instance of it, a home that once hosted a family that spun thread, now has a multifloor cement building. The Sunnambu of the walls no longer remains in my olfactory memory, nor on my shirts and pants. They have not for a long time. And they are not so in other homes that have found other livelihoods like my parents. A kid stroller - walker This week, I write my notes sitting in Kalhatty, Uthagamandalam. The cold of the ever grey clouds gives me body company after a long long while. Ooty has been a great release from the regular weekend, but it is not so much a release for the place. There is immense stress on the region, from the roads, from the amount of people it expands to accomodate in such short bursts. There is a electronically generated pass that you need to enter, but im not sure if the number of passes are limited. Vehicles in the city are also another reason. I wonder what people from ooty want for the city. We have been walking a lot in Ooty. It is hard to find parking in the center, so you park somewhere and walk everywhere else. I think the bright lights and metal and the dull roads describe the travelling experience very well. A cement mixer hides behind a bush on a hairpin bend Ooty town precents us with a facinating elevation front of small houses and red lights. Ooty is filled on the weekends ...