Cleaned up and refilled five of my most favourite pens because procrastination. (Three old V SignPens and a couple of Hero 339s.) I love how the SignPens age. The more one wears the nib down, the better it gets. I think I’ve had one in black since Ahmedabad (somewhere between 2007 and 12) and the tip is a flat-ish stub that takes a little getting used to before it gives one a thick-thin stroke. In spite of being metal (or because of it being metal) the 339s age disastrously and flat-nib-temperamental-calligraphically.

The question of whether you pursue change or whether you maintain your own distinct form becomes difficult. We have all seen the work of illustrious practitioners that suddenly look old-fashioned or, more precisely, belonging to another moment in time. And there are sad stories such as the one about Cassandre, arguably the greatest graphic designer of the twentieth century, who couldn’t make a living at the end of his life and committed suicide. But the point is that anybody who is in this for the long haul has to decide how to respond to change in the zeitgeist. What is it that people now expect that they formerly didn’t want? And how to respond to that desire in a way that doesn’t change your sense of integrity and purpose.

— Ten Things I Have Learned, Milton Glaser. The bracketed title is copypasta from the PDF essay.

Rode up some hills instead of rolling into the beach (the heat here is tiring). Climbed a tiny rock outcrop to wait till the foxes came out. Climbed quickly down once the pack arrived far enough. Major MagentaRiddim vibes off that abandoned cigarette-lighter. The shoes are well-worn; Decathlon has stopped making these ultrapackable, ultrabreathing lightweight walking shoes in favour of some chunky grey plastic. The socks are snowflakey thanks to R.

R: Shooting star.
Moi: No mann. That is not.
R: Shooting star. (Makes wishing noises.)
Moi: Stop wishing on satellites and shit, maann.
R: (Keeps making wishing noises.) I’m done!

2019 was, as one is expected to say at the end of such a particularly generous year, generous. I turned thirty with unsurprisingly little effort and climbing some nearly snow-clad mountains accompanied by grief and loneliness and an unforgiving cold, mentored some exceptionally brilliant kids at two different design schools and towards the end of the year[1] and in one of those schools surrounded by open fields and hill-ranges carpeted in the prickliest of grass and populated by phantom peacocks and watched over by brutalist architecture and the sweetest of dhaba-made black-tea, fell mundu-over-manbun in love with the kindest, bubbliest, most strong-willed and not-so-strong-stomached (she claims otherwise), breathtakingly beautiful lady I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. In the beginning, it was strictly professional, R having called thisguy to talk Typography with her students (who adored her way before I could start) and demanded a daily course-plan (the audacity!; I’d always made them yet no one had ever asked). Over texts, I assumed R to be a married old-lady with twenty-two kutti-monsters and five cats (or the other way around); she sounded (and texted in a way that sounded) so patient and well-sorted (which she turned out to be despite the confusion with kittens and kids). When I met her for the first time, clad in a bow-tie-polka-dotted dress floating around her luminous self like a loosely defined cloud, my heart skipped a couple of beats despite the obvious, obligatory anxiety at meeting students whose names I had not by-heart-ed over the journey to the course. Over the next three weeks, we talked for longer than I’d ever talked to anyone for (in thirty years’ worth of three-week installments), often from five-thirty in the evening to two-three in the morning when the cafe-folks would throw us out with knowing smiles as they shut shop for the night. Over the next three weeks, R consumed copious amounts of dhaba-black tea because I could not figure out she was downing the liquid just to be around me sans the awkwardness of being around with no intention of drinking anything (she prefers coffee and mint-lime juice; and that we consume volumes of, now). Over the next three weeks, I ran away from her after many late-night dinners fearing having to open up about the skipped heartbeats and the butterfly population that had claimed permanent territory in my stomach. Over the next three weeks, after the prickly-grass trekking incident (sans-R) and many shooting-star-punctuated night skies and conversations under them, we told each other what we had been wanting to tell each other for quite some time, over coffee and exchanged winter-wear and a broken kolusse that I kept insisting I would safekeep for her (totally off-context). Over the next three weeks, R helped fill a cup-shaped void in my life while filling out an R-shaped one less visibly.

It is absurd how unpardonably minimalist, reductiv-ist even, love at first sight as a cliche operates. It is incredible how one notices a person from afar, sleep-starved and polka-dotted and bubbly, and know (just know) somewhere in the long-abandoned-and-vastly-significant vaults of one’s heart (or head, or both; I am confused) that this person (vyakthi, in R’s terms) is meant to be significant in one’s life in ways one has always wished for. Here is to the many years I’ve been waiting for R to waltz (she would prefer to bachata) into my life. Here is to the many years ahead, together.

—

1: While the country’s ruling class was falling out of love with democracy and constitutional values and the rest of the country was finding itself defending those values with their sweat, blood and tears; the unrest around us in stark contrast with what we were nourishing.

This:

The need for unequal privilege in an industrial society is generally advocated by means of an argument with two sides. The hypocrisy of this argument is clearly betrayed by acceleration. Privilege is accepted as the necessary precondition for improving the lot of a growing total population, or it is advertised as the instrument for raising the standards of a deprived minority. In the long run, accelerating transportation does neither. It only creates a universal demand for motorized conveyance and puts previously unimaginable distances between the various layers of privilege. Beyond a certain point, more energy means less equity.

And this:

Participatory democracy demands low-energy technology, and free people must travel the road to productive social relations at the speed of a bicycle.

From Ivan Illich’s Energy and Equity. Thanks to short nights at the W Library.

Early (-ish) morning climb up the hill with S, V and N (minus R). The grass was prickly, their stalks knee-tall, the sun above-and-to-the-right toasty, the prickling incessant. Yet the whole thing went down well. Now that I know the road (a chicken-egg-type-situation) often doesn’t exist, anticipating many more mornings up there among the sea of gold-tinted grass, pointing one places where the feet find excuses not to stray. At the hill along and outside the W campus, Kamkol.

I think I am leaving some (prickly and randomly so) seeds pinned to the shoes in memory of the walk and the late-into-the-morning conversation that framed-and-set-it-up so well.