The quarantine has made us self-reliant of sorts, in the vegetables department, at least. R’s tomato seeds have fruit-ed and jackfruit is aplenty, in all stages of ripeness (there is no such thing as too much jackfruit in the menu). There are yams and all kinds of leafy stuff and bananas to pluck off the earth and the sky and in-between. I realise not everyone is this sorted in the entertainment department during lockdown. The downside to all this is that little work gets done in the middle of figuring things out and distractions. Hope all of you are well and well-fed. Here is something worth a read: Ken Liu’s Bookmaking Habits of Select Species.

Plus, the ungg leaves after a shower are like polished cheenachattis. They glow.

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.

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.

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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.

Dried moss (lichen) on the rock makes it super-grippy[1]. The climb up is easy, in-spite of the fixed-gear ride leading up to it and my being out of breath (not planned) and water (planned cockiness I now regret). Lying down on the pockmarked summit (it isn’t a sizeable climb; just a sizeable climb right after a ride and unfortunate decisions) rewards one with a breathtaking third-floor-terrace-view framed for the most part by coconut groves long overdue their general grooming. (That does remind me of the aerodynamics of riding a bicycle while bearded but that tigress we shall address later.) It is near-silent, except for the faraway beats of a song being played at some wedding reception (today is one of those weekends after an astrologically well-endowed week and it shows) and the odd Bullt misfiring in the distance. (You are never far from a motorcycle in these parts, remote as the parts are.) I can hear the birds—most are crows heading home, some bats waking up—flap their wings. It is an odd sound; something you don’t want to expect as BGM while attempting to contemplate life, the multiverse, rising price of gold, etc. I grew up in a house near this rock and was denied late-evening visits till I was old enough to ride a bicycle without people waiting along the road as if it was leTour. It was a fuller rock-formation ‘back in the days;’ many homes got built over solid foundations since then and what is left of the quarry is a cricket-badminton-coconut-drying field in the non-rainy months. The niches left in the rock-face where boulders were blasted out make for a gallery worthy of ticketed entry. Some brilliant, harmless village-funds-redirection makes for ample lighting post sundown—when someone decides to get the Panchayath to fix the LD-Resistors on the electric-pole LEDs. The LEDs are not in the mood to work today. The scene is hiplessly un-lit. The only shop (down the rock along the gravel road; the blue tarpaulin in the photograph) in these parts is shut (the shopkeeper is a shout away, and it isn’t like there are no motorcycles around for a trip to the town). My new-old phone—after seven years of missed application updates and broken glass—is good at stitching panoramas. I remind myself throwing away the little green paper pieces was worth the effort and then quickly re-seal the waterproof pouch.

It starts to drizzle. Spray-and-pray in terms of hitting crucial electronics. Dried moss assumes oil-slick-consistency when wet. It glistens in rainbow colours. It starts redefining slippery. I think up scenarios where I am variously stuck on top for the night (no big deal, apart from it not being voluntary and my having heard foxes on other nights), slide down the rock-face face down (big-deal), run down yelling nothing (big-if-true-deal), etc. The clouds pass and the rain fades, not before my khakis burst into irregular polka dots of cold and start speaking clingon. There are many things worse than a shower that prematurely drops the mic, including having to slide down a rock-face, face down, etc. I am thankful of the polka dots and the added motorcycle-silence the rain brings with it. The bird-wings flap louder and the sound echoes against the concave rock-face. Ungroomed coconut trees let go of some leaves and coconuts in the wind. There is enlightenment in the air.

The ride home is slower, for there are no fenders on the #F00 and for the NR450 is awaiting its warrantied fate at the bicycle shop. (They haven’t called yet, despite the enthusiaashaan and promises to transcend customer-support timezones.) The motorcycles are out again and drain the puny backup front-light on the #F00 in their holier-than-thou beams.

1: Grippy, unlike the Supacaz tape that left me 5x poorer than the normal ones. Consider this my official review and stay away from them if you are hovering over an add-to-cart button somewhere on the internets.

Numbers on the way to the studio. That 6 up top is so lovely it demands its own wall; the counters work way better than the ones on its bottom, about-to-fall-over-backwards-twin. I love how the E above is visually corrected to some extent; there is lot to feel good about on this middle-of-nowhere wall. A well-considered instance of hand-painted letters—where the artist gave enough figleaves about not just the nonexistent brief but the letters’ brief encounter with the nonexistent reader as well—is a joy to walk by and get stuck staring at as you wait for an ill-timed train to be signalled past. Those moments are pockets of joy in an otherwise mundane walk alongside Kozhikode’s version of rush-hour-traffic.

Not sure why the area code to the left (95) needed to be a sans-serif. I’m going to call -929 one of these slow moving days of unannounced power outages and figure out what happened.

The house next door—with the STD Booth and huge red letters bleeding allover the alcoves and fixtures that once held coin-operated red telephones—is being torn down.

Baloo Chettan in the flesh. Single colour offset on fairly cheap paper.

On the Asoka Hospital compound wall. Shot over the morning sun ignoring concerned-looking pedestraints.