We had a nice Vijayawada teaching-road-trip last month. It was the first post-Covid-lockdown offline course (abstract doc) for Communication Design so the benchmark for awesomeness/okayness was set quite ground-level and below. The bachchalog did well, with some well-written books in the last week. I was impressed (capital I) with the depth and breadth of work; kind of reminded me of the good old times as a student in Paldi. R cooked everyone dinner (like the good old times in Paldi). We had fun (capital F) and some spicy Andhra food. On the way back (Vij–Chennai–Coimbatore–Kozhikode) there were friends, Tamizh food, football-field-sized roads, shady hotel rooms, aeroplanes, Burmese food, near-miss Tollbooth stucknesses, etcetera. (More on all that later.)

Here is everyone making posters out of thin air and newspaper at the makeshift CD-studio (IT Lab) at Vij. Capital F.

At home in Wayanad, Podimol is ‘in’ the Monsoon way more than we are. We just had her power-washed yesterday (because she was looking more terracotta-sculpture and less metal-sheet-stamped) and today, she looks like this (below). We—not so—accidentally drove into a green patch that turned out to be a Rasayanam-consistency patch underneath. Getting out was harder than getting in. The mud flew everywhere.

The Monsoon (coupled with rising prices for everything) is really hard for many people in many places in Kerala, but we are okay. Dealing with leaks in the kitchen and more-slash-bigger wasps-and-technicolour-bugs is not much of ‘dealing with’ really. We had some hard-ish times a couple of months back (delayed payments and some such logistical effups) and sailed slowly through them.

KL11 has resumed work on River and I’m looking at multiscript wordmarks. We are also looking for interns/project-associates to help us for three months (more on that too, later). Some expansive icon-sets, web-design, brand-guidelines and extending the product identity, etcetera, are in the works. Drop me a line (KL11 mail) if interested. I’m putting together a document on the what and the why and all that soon. We are kind of particular about some basics (like third-year-in-college-basics; not unreasonable basics) of type and form but are hoping to be able to mentor people as well. We shall put our semi-abandoned Instagram page to some use, maybe. And I have so many emails to catch up to.

Chelgato has put on good weight and has no hesitation anymore before jumping into bed before we do. That usually means we end up fighting her for realestate but are also kind of halfhearted about it thanks to the added warmth. (Our part of Wayanad gets cold like most other parts of Wayanad). She pretends to guard the house while secretly hoping for strangers to come and pet her.