keyaar.in / Exif: Blog

The Fields are White and the Traffic is Okay

→ January 24, 2024 | Reading time: 5 minutes | Permalink

Mirrors

Our new home in Bengaluru has four mirrors (two tall, two small, and three large glass windows that turn into translucent mirrors past sunset). The Wayanad home had one (01) A5-sized mirror we awkwardly hung too close to a wall and never managed to look at unless we were leaning on to the wall purposely trying to catch it at the right angle. So, more reflection this year. It seems.

Moving

We moved here in the first week of January with a lot of anxious preparation and general anxiety about moving to a city. We also moved with a tiny house’s worth of stuff—kitchen utensils and all the accoutrements; foldable furniture from Decathlon and everywhere else; a wooden cot (that we had to prove wasn’t made of sandalwood); bicycles—in a fruit truck that would replace all this stuff with strawberries and such on its way back. While both of us (not all three of us) have lived in cities for weeks at a time for work, we hadn’t needed putting-roots-down kind of stays since 2014–15; life in cities was always out-of-backpacks and eating-at-canteens. In the three weeks we have been here, we’ve dealt with a couple of angry people, a couple of insecure vendors (especially print; long story) and a lot of nice neighbours and neighbourhood dogs. We are warming up to the city. We miss Wayanad too much to embrace all that the city is all at once.

App-solute Everything

While I knew life here would be run on apps, I did not expect this level of dependency and ease. We got a water purifier subscription and that took a while to sink in. The society has app-driven vending machines with funny-slash-scary-looking 360-degree cameras and some sophisticated weight-triggered payment system that I don’t look forward to checking out anytime soon. I also got blank RFID entry passes for River’s HQ and live the corporate-ish life everytime doors magically open.

Stuff

Once the money situation gets back on track—Bank-of-India treats online banking like it is a luxury; KL11’s accounts are stuck at Silk Street—we need curtains for the translucent-mirror windows. It looks like we may also need something to fill the hall with. We both love sofas but are open to ideas that involve other ways of pet-friendly seating. (That should be good reason to check out the ‘Say Hi’ WoT link up in the menu, if you’re reading this on the browser.)

Chelgato

Since the weather is comparably cold, Chellam is having a great time; she eats, she plays, she sleeps—a lot. She also figured out her bathroom business on day uno and hasn’t given us trouble since. We go for long walks in the evening, staying away from that one RottweilerLab from two houses away and staying close to the really curious Beagle from the other end of the society. The neighbours across from our balcony have a golden and a lab, both older than Chellam. They do a pitch-bending jugalbandi once in a while but haven’t met snout-to-snout yet. There are also two chonker-cats—one ginger, one grey—who visit the translucent mirror at night and mock Chellam for absolutely no reason. She has grown to ignore them, somewhat.

Everything Else

No teaching this year; except when/if Jodhpur calls—I loved that place and the enthusiasm. I am also done compromising on everything—quality, detail, being nice—all at once.

Worried that I have started having an early (mid?) designer-life crisis on the work that I automatically do. We did some nice layouts and made some nice typography choices for the River Store over the last month but it starts to feel ‘default.’ The guidelines are solid, perhaps. (Pats back vigorously.) Will need to start looking at side-projects to break from the (self-inflicted) mould.

So that is that and 2024 looks nice so far. Read the ‘How About Now’ magazine earlier—nicely done for most parts; I would’ve added a little more leading to the bodytext and dwelled less on some stuff. I’ll make a ‘Needs More Leading’ sticker like the old DesignPolice stickers maybe. (I had this one on the laptop-lid in 2013–14.) Here is wishing everyone a happy new year!

PS: I’m also testing the Paper app (just got a subscription to evaluate before submitting to iA again). There is a lot to love but I wish there was no AI integration.


Lakkidi Through the Mist

→ November 8, 2023 | Reading time: ~1 minute | Permalink

Driving up the hills on a Wednesday morning. Away from the rain, into the mist. A few minutes later, this turned to an even grey. A few tens of seconds before this photo, one could see a couple more layers into the mountains, too. Opacity changes the geography inside and out. Much to write about Jodhpur and the XR-Design typography course and the folks there. Also about feedback, answers, and taking care of machines.


HomeWork in Wayanad

→ October 16, 2023 | Reading time: ~1 minute | Permalink

Wayanad, rain, Bhaskaran Mash (MHR, Gowri Lekshmi too), Chellam under the table, R vibing to some other stuff while telling me the Manuka Condensed on screen is typically condensed, heavy dinner shenanigans, etcetera. Makeshift working from home.

My Bludit installation is misbehaving; I’ve had to manually FTP the image via CyberDuck and link to it the longwinded way to get it to show up in this post. That is not a route I want to go down again. It will take a while to set something else up and migrate content. We’ll see.


Viva, Panjim!

→ June 27, 2023 | Reading time: 2 minutes | Permalink

So… we were in Goa for a two-week workshop (R was documenting; I went along) and made some supertalented-neighbour-slash-faculty-slash-friends. Sampled all the curries at VP (practically next door) and found them all excellent etcetera. Robbed Siridao beach clean (the flat shells are otherworldly nice; we don’t know what to do with them, yet). Looked at some veryold verynice Portugese houses from the inside. And went to a total of three beaches. The sand was in the process of turning into glass (or so it felt at mid-noon). And there were lotuses sprouting from cashew nuts.

There were long walks in Fontainhas (pronounced Rajarajapuram or some such; most spellings had moved on from the spoken word counterparts) with bathes of friendly dogs on tow. We met some folks from Paldi and GN too and campus-jokes flowed. The place (Goa) was sand-into-glass hot, all the folks at R’s workshop were such sweethearts, and offered such warmth (and stuff; jackfruit, mangoes, kokum, pastries, crochet, the works). On the day the workshop got over, J gave me something to remember Kalyani by. It was a nice two weeks.

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That is Siridao post our collecting ALL the fun/flat shells.

Serendipity!

Reshma is going back to Panjim (North) again in December for the Serendipity Arts Fest. She’s won the photography grant and is one of the five people exhibiting work. (It is a deeply personal project. Visit her/us!) Here is hoping for a good show! Maybe we’ll make small books to give away.


Early (ish) Morning Ride

→ April 9, 2023 | Reading time: 2 minutes | Permalink

The paddyfield in all its misty, blurry, newness. This is around 8–8:30 in the morning—people are already on their way to office-jobs, cows are already in their designated field-slots, etcetera. A beautiful (odd) thing about Wayanad is how cool (cold, even) the shades are while the rest of it gets superhot by 9:30–10. The lines on the road (in the first photo) are from tractors/tillers exiting the fields. The ride was uneventful; met a few regular dogs. Not Tiger. Tiger lives at the house next to the three-roads-intersection, down the hill. He’s mastered the art of sitting still outside his gate. We mistook him for a gunny bag once. He’s actively angry. The ones I met today were more shy than suspicious. The three puppies are gone. One of them had whined when Chellam gave him/her a nosing-exam last time. They’d looked well-fed so that is a relief.

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The mist veils more cows—grazing between paddy-plots in the distance. You can—kind-of—see a black-and-white one to the right, facing away from the camera. Beyond that coconut-tree-line is where we live, atop a small-ish hill. A new paddy crop has come up in most of the fields, with plantain and spinach and weeds peppered in between.

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The mounds of hay look like alien-movie monsters against the haze and the general people-less-ness of the field. Chellam keeps trying to find evidence of something around this particular one whenever she’s around. R thinks it must be rats. Or, less endearingly, snakes. Or both. Things are wild around these parts. (Last month we saw a bear along the road to Muthanga; it was a mostly casual encounter—for the bear. We freaked.)

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Today, walking out to the butcher’s after the ride, we met so many (overwhelmingly large enough number; five) neighbours and folks we only sort-of know but everyone spoke to us as if we have been here for longer than a year.


Numbers

→ April 1, 2023 | Reading time: ~1 minute | Permalink

R turned ◼︎◼︎ yesterday. (Happy birthday R!) Here is an excited-blurry longexposured picture. She’s been applying to grants and looking forward to teaching again. (She says young-er kids this time around and I have seen her deal with tiny ones in the last two weeks at temple festivals and family gatherings. She’s good.)

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We went to Kappad and the sunset was otherworldy. Chellam pretends (?) to be afraid of the sea. Then laps up the receding foamy saltwater. There is sand everywhere under the backseat. Podimol indeed.


Moonrise in Kuppady

→ January 1, 2023 | Reading time: ~1 minute | Permalink

The year was a mixed bag. Of many happinesses: Chellam and Podimol coming into our lives and bringing along joy and responsibilities in equal measures; moving into this lovely old house in the Nilgiris; R exhibiting work at the India Art Fair; KL11 being able to mentor students for the first time; many long trips for work and otherwise; good food; family gatherings. Of many things that humbled and saddened in excess: Kalyani’s many old-age-driven health problems; P and family’s sudden passing in a road accident; R’s papa leaving us after a week-long ICU-stay; associated complications and stresses; being with the many old people (‘bystanders’) lost in the corridors of TVM Medical College.

The courses this year were all excellent—the students did more and better work in the weeks we were together than I had any realistic right to expect. The colleges often felt less like going home—thanks to the bureaucracy and general slowness in moving things. KL11 has had a wonderful and exciting—if a bit too full of meetings—year.

But it has mostly been about loved ones leaving. Here’s hoping for many better revolutions around the universe.

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Sun sets in Kuppady. Chellam on a superlong makeshift leash. Mathai’s snacks. Mellow conversation. Fog.


Pee Yes See

→ August 14, 2022 | Reading time: ~1 minute | Permalink

Iranics with a lovely fade. Somewhere on a wall near Malabar Hospital in Kozhikode.

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 Says ‘do not pee here’ in superrefined calligraphy. That e-matra is lovely. One can see where the brush strokes start and end and start running out of paint. Funny (er) that the hospital most famously deals with urological anomalies.

Update. Just ’cause. I’m overthinking peesigns now.

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