23rd to 30th March 2025 (Sunday to Sunday)

This week was hectic again. Meetings, calls, outings and work. I am having shoulder, neck and lower back pain. It feels like my body hasn’t rested for months. Maybe it’s because I daily travel 20 to 24km on my Activa. Maybe it’s because of stress? It’s more painful than I thought. I need to figure out some exercises to get rid of this.

After a year of writing weekly notes, I’ve developed some guidelines :

I’ve learned to be selective about what I share publicly:

• Office details remain private, though I can mention celebrations like Holi or special events
• No workplace photos
• Always get consent before mentioning names or sharing photos of others
• Draft everything in private notes first, then curate what goes public
• Be aware while writing about issues at home

What to focus on:

• Cool stuff I’m reading, watching, or exploring
• My latest experiments and tinkering
• Personal projects and how they’re coming along
• How I’m feeling overall
• Interesting conversations and stories
• Quick updates about life

With Monday to Friday consumed by work, I’ve decided to dedicate Sunday evenings to this practice. I’m setting aside two hours to reflect on the full Monday-Sunday week, even if that means occasionally missing late weekend updates.

I’ve come to value these notes as an important weekly ritual—a chance document and share my journey.

23rd March - Sunday

I skipped going to Navjeevan Trust on Sunday. Instead, we (Nidhi, Mom, Mihir) went to watch the Gujarati film ‘Fati ne’. It was a Horror-Comedy film, a new attempt in Gujarati films. We enjoyed it. I felt that it was a little too long…

24th March - Monday

We had our first planning meeting for Khojbeen Mandali. We discussed:

• What are our learning objectives
• What is our target age group
• How we will document the whole thing

Nidhi will take two weekly sessions at Anusandhan Learning Center.

25th March - Tuesday

• We were looking for a summer intern to work on Khojbeen Mandali, but we didn’t get good applications. Mostly freshers have applied. Also, the work is only for two months, the honorarium is low, and it’s onsite work, not a remote job.

• This internship is a good opportunity for someone who is based in Ahmedabad and wants to kickstart their journey in nature education or educational research.

26th March - Wednesday

We had a short online meeting with dear friend Chetna. We discussed Khojbeen Mandali. She shared some wonderful insights and ideas from her experience of working with children. I felt very positive and inspired after this meeting.

27th March - Thursday

I attended an online meeting of Voice of Vishwamitri (a group of citizens working on environmental and developmental issues of Vadodara city). I wanted to attend the meetings and get involved in action but couldn’t attend earlier because of my busy schedule. We need to make a website for the work happening around Vishwamitri river. We had a discussion around the same. I will try to make a basic prototype as soon as possible.

28th March - Friday

Met dear friend Malay after a long, long time… almost after 8 years. We chatted about design thinking, aesthetics, wonder, awe, technology, work, education, life and more… He recently joined IIT G. We will try to meet frequently. This meeting was the highlight of my week.

Pictures from 2018 :

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29th March - Saturday

We bought a mobile for Mom. She never owned a personal mobile till now (strange, right? But it is real). Instead of ordering online, we went to the nearest mobile shop and bought a Vivo model for 15k. It’s a basic smartphone with 8GB RAM + 128GB storage. It’s enough for Mom’s usage. I didn’t do research or even check the price online. I didn’t want to go into my overthinking loop. Also, I wanted to give her the touch and feel of the buying process.

Nidhi wanted to do something around documenting bio diversity. We started with identifying and note down trees in our apartment compound. I am really happy that we could start this.

30th March - Sunday

Mom went back to Padra. Nidhi and I went to drop her at Geeta Mandir bus stop. After that, we visited Navjeevan Trust Campus. We got a surprise… There was a farmers’ market happening there—‘Srishti Khedut Hat’. Nidhi was super excited to see this. A few alumni of K Shala were also holding a stall there. I was super happy to meet them. We had lunch at their stall.

I bought 4 books from the Navjeevan book store.

• Ghar by Kirit Dudhat
• Mane fom chhe by Bharat Nayak
• Tilor by Dhruv Bhatt
• Jodasankor Dhare by Avanindranath thakur, translated by Ramnik Meghani

I was trying to find my old Gujarati textbook from grade 10. I wanted to read stories from it and go on a nostalgia trip, but couldn’t find it. The textbook board has changed the textbooks. I want a textbook of grade 10 from 2010.

I found ‘રસિકભૈ રસો’ on the internet. I loved reading it…

We had an online sharing meeting with 2 of our friends who are also working in the nature-science-education field. We shared our current work and life updates… we decided that we will do this every month. I felt connected and hopeful after the meeting. Thank you Nidhi for initiating this.

Current Reading

Almost finished “Electric Train” but needed a change of subject, so I started reading “Tilor by Dhruv Bhatt”.

Overall mood

I am so happy to see how Nidhi and Mummy are bonding. I’m grateful that I got the opportunity to spend time with Mummy. I was very anxious when Mummy was leaving alone for Padra in a bus.

Photosssss