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.

The picture is from a bridge on the way to Kappad. It is artlessly out of focus and I was probably breaking more serious rules stopping over the bridge and taking a picture (than the rule-of-thirds-and-tilted-horizons). All I can tell you is (that) the gradients were as insane as expected.

The evening tints itself into the night sooner these days and I start late at 5:30; the ride is an hour (or sixteen buttery smooth kilometers) long, in good (as in almost no-) traffic and when the sun sets around 6:15 on regular days. By the time I get to this (picture-situation-above) it is already ISO60000 lighting and getting noisier and I resort to sunken-cost-thinking to keep pedalling. The beach is empty (save for a couple of couples and a late-evening-gathering-of-bros and the volunteer lifeguards inspecting the groynes for traces of selfie-takers-with-good-night-mode-endowed-cameras and alcohol-related intentions [deadly combination, that, on an artificial wall extending a good length into the evening retreat-monsoon sea]) and not many engines are running to pepper an otherwise good sea-wave-static with misfiring pistons. I record some sea-silence then give up when the bros decide to walk past discussing relationship troubles. (I have nothing against relationship troubles; ninety-nine-problems, etc. But that over sea-noise makes for a shoddy ASMR bit after.)

The sky is clearer and starrier than (even) my nostalgia-tinted-recollection of how clear and starry the night sky in remote (-ish) parts of Kozhikode is. It isn’t an average kinda clarity—the sky is clear and tinted green-to-orange in colours that would be illegal in a design foundation course from this end to that end and all around. Whatever is left of the moon is bright enough to drain the few solar-street-lights trying hard to keep up with the falling light. The edges of the sea glisten in silvery reflected moonlight bits. I move closer to the edge to double-check if it is a school of fish taking diving lessons. I think of taking a picture to show off later, and I do, only to realise night-mode on the phone means other unspeakable things. (Despite the inherent snobbery, I catch myself in the act of taking phone-pictures—panoramas of square subjects even—too often these days.) Lying down with the new aggressive™ helmet[1] on, I count the same stars many times over and decide it is better just to watch out for stray crabs trying to burrow new bases into my Kurta-folds. A couple of confused-crabs-crawling-over—you down, this whole lying-on-the-beach-looking-up-at-the-sky business starts to lose its charm.

The ride home is mostly eventless. It is a night so low on traffic, cresting a granny-gear-climb (there are at least three on the route, depending on how out-of-breath you are and how thicc the tyres) almost always rewards one with a kilometer long stretch where it is nice to coast and let the bicycle take you wherever it takes you. I think I understand some of the Punjabi kids in Gurgaon at some meta level now, zigzagging over asphalt on a Friday night in their open-top Audis. (Part of the fun in coasting over a low gradient is in going even more aero and pretending you have TT bars on.) Portions on the way back are so silent (shout out to ULCCS!) the Schwalbe Silentos are the only sources of notable noise over crickets and freewheel. Their naming is a road-stud-faced lie. The one-minute (more like thirty seconds) stretch through the banana orchard is not in season and is an eerie wasteland of free-standing plantain-support-poles.

Rides alone in the night—not solely because I prefer it that way; because I have no friends… to ride with—are a mix of tension, eerie clarity on life etcetera, worrying when the headlight[2] is going to run out of juice because you failed at adulting and recharging stuff when stuff needed recharging, wondering where you left the Staedtler mechanical pencil, etc. It is problematic when you’re riding to get away from too much clarity, etc.

—

1: I got this one because the other, more sedate commuter helmet gets too hot riding to work. Because the aggro™ makes me go faster even when presiding over a traffucked junction. Because it is way more noticeable and aero unlike the last one (a brick, a sizeable one, sideways, with a huge sail to top things off, in comparison). I keep wearing it lying down because I have no clue where I can prop it up without getting sand allover places where sand has no business getting allover. Because it was awkward to lie down and hug the helmet on my chest and look like a confused sea otter in action.

2: NiteRider replaced my Swift-450 with a -500 no-questions-asked. I love how this unfolded: the USB bit inside failed in an year-and-then-some; I read their lifetime replacement policy and left the thing with BoatRider; they replace it a couple of weeks later and call me up to go collect the new one. (Would I have preferred repairing this? Did I have the tiny soldering apparatus even if I could manage the tutorial-watching? Yes, and No.) The 500 is bright-as-hell and warms your hands when pretend-riding TT-style over the bars.

A woman sits on the ground, leaning against a pine. Its bark presses hard against her back, as hard as life. Its needles scent the air and a force hums in the heart of the wood. Her ears tune down to the lowest frequencies. The tree is saying things, in words before words.

It says: Sun and water are questions endlessly worth answering.

It says: A good answer must be reinvented many times, from scratch.

It says: Every piece of earth needs a new way to grip it. There are more ways to branch than any cedar pencil will ever find. A thing can travel everywhere, just by holding still.

— Richard Powers, The Overstory

I read parts of Overstory perched high(…ish) above the ground, atop a concrete Maple in Vijayawada. The balcony at the eleventh floor fortress is surprisingly calm and reading-inducing, despite (or maybe, because of) the drizzle and the breeze and the bird’s eye view it shoves on you unasked. It is only after I leave the raintrees alone and come home, that the strange and lamentable significance of the building-naming-scheme[1] sinks in. Whether the builders or the people-generally-upset-at-the-absurdity-of-naming-things-after-what-was-destroyed-on-the-way-to-the-things-themselves like it or not, being in a building named after a tree (I was in Pine for most of my stay; the choice of name made severely appropriate by how gloriously alone I was for the last three weeks.) makes you see and do things differently, say, from being in a building named after itself. (Hostel 13 said HOUSE OF TITANS in university-gothic letters—awkward-cornered inlines, protruding outlines, stab-serifs[2]—and one always felt someone shrouded in security-uniform-colours was about to ID you getting out of the john.)

I read significant parts of the book (the ‘Roots’ is poetic and a guaranteed tearjerker) with the day’s newspapers laid open to the Aarey disater with an effing parking lot over dead stumps. This was reminiscent of the Hitchhiker’s Guide in ways more than one and none of those ways was fun.

With all the teaching, I’ve been more than drowning the bicycle-trips to the studio in truckloads of carbon-footprinting. On a peculiar night at AmalodTheGreat[3] over cups of thick tea, I quasi-decided to ride to the next course (in Hyderabad) and failed to realise there was not under- but over-one-thousand kilometers separating home from the college. It would have easily taken 10 days with hundred-plus kilometer days to get there in time for the first day of class. This, I am not prepared for, with the many projects deadlining in November. Yet, it looks like a good opportunity to turn courses into aftermaths of long-distance bicycle-trips; it seems like the only strict brief one could give oneself to stick to the road and hope for tailwinds. Wishful thinking: the money made from the courses can then go into funding the trips and not into unnecessary bits of gear that tie one down to a place. (I’ve come to terms with there being nothing wrong with tying oneself down to a place, mentally. Besides, the place I am tied down to is beautiful; yet it is a place in place.)

1: The other structures are named after Walnuts and Teaks. There is a tea-shop under Teak that is good material for low-hanging-fruit-puns. I’m in two minds about Walnut and Maple; they don’t do poetic justice to the the whole shebang, IMNSHO.

2: Joke! Just in case.

3: AmalodTheGreat is Vijayawada’s chai-gate in limbo. (From Wordweb: Limbo: ‘The place of unbaptized but innocent or righteous souls [such as infants and virtuous individuals].’)

Like most (eh?) five year olds who grew up on a steady diet of Manichithrathazhu, I was madly, hopelessly, somewhat anachronistically in love with Shobhana.

Without fail, the film marked the bringing-home of new video-viewing technhology. Post purchase of a VCR, VCD player, DVD player and so on, depending on the year, on the way home from one of the few weirdly architecture-d appliance shops (one was clad in a three-storey tall wall of glass and falling water) in Kozhikode, we would stop religiously at this video cassette shop in Kakkoor (that gave way to the CD rental shop where we reenacted the ritual with eerily similar longing despite the advancing years) and relieve the shopkeeper of a recent copy of the film. We continued the tradition long enough to watch the YouTubed version as we brought in the flat-screen TV only couple of years ago. Like Shobhana, Manichitrathazhu hasn’t aged a day since my feverish five-year-old-boy encounter with her uncompromising, wholesome grace.

Various heroines made mincemeat of what was left of my cardiovascular system and associated parts later in my teens. Yet Shobhana remained the sole, spirited image of a fierce, unattainable, truly significant, other. Over at r/kerala, someone mentioned this 2002 Karan Thapar interview with her and she is variously bold, beautiful (duh) and intimidating. If I say any more, this is going to sound like an unsent inland-love-letter. So, here is the thing.

Ten (…ish) rules for students and teachers. Half-way through the Typography-1 course. Good kids, unforgiving weather, too many holidays, not enough LAN cable, too many exercises in the spreadsheet, not enough hours in the day. Better chocolate-tarts at Baker’s Inn (no apostrophe in the original and I do have a problem with that) this time around. Number six reads:

Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.

Link

Despite being in Mrs A’s reading list from college and his turning up (often tucked away into uncanny corners) in commercial bookshelves everywhere, I’d delayed picking an Oliver Sacks book up, thinking I’ll find one in a library someday or technically ‘borrow’ one. Vintage Sacks is from SPLRC (of the DiceyDewey’s fame). Sacks makes chemistry (of the trivalent-bond-and-isotopes kind) feel deeply personal. (The chapter is titled Stinks and Bangs.) I wish chemistry textbooks from my literature-starved hostel years were written with such love and sense of adventure. In twenty-twenty-perfect-hindsight, I think the textbooks (the NCERT ones in two-colour offset [1]) took things too seriously and forgot test-tubes over bunsen burners were also supposed to be fun in mysterious ways. (This is a well […ish] description of Sacks’s description of test-tubes-over-bunsen-burners.)

I’m about to head to Vijayawada for a re-run (hardly; same river, not twice, all that) of the typography course and think this divine-ish intervention calls for a much more end-products-unknown approach for it to balance out the dashes-dots-spaces-pedantry.

In an excerpt from Uncle Tungsten, Sacks footnotes Euler’s thoughts on lights, colours and (inevitably) music.

The nature of the radiation by which we see an opaque object does not depend on the source of light but on the vibratory motion of the very small particles [atoms] of the object’s surface. These little particles are like stretched strings, tuned to a certain frequency, which vibrate in response to a similar vibration of the air even if no one plucks them. Just as the stretched string is excited by the same sound that it emits, the particles of the surface begin to vibrate in tune with the incident radiation and to emit their own waves in every direction.

I’m so going to find a way to shoehorn that into a lesson on the black-on-white-and-readallover typography landscape.

1: Their managing science textbook diagrams with just two colours (often a sedate palette at that) wasn’t particularly amusing then. Wish I could say I was entranced, etc., but in reality, I was stuck SunTzu-ing my way to entrance exams like almost everyone else.