19th May to 25th May 2025 (Monday to Sunday)

This week was super hectic, and the coming week is also going to be hectic as we’re traveling to Coonoor for the Earth Educator Workshop and meeting people in Bangalore.

This week started by losing my Pilot pen. Let me tell you, I really, really love my Pilot V7/V5 pens. This wasn’t the first time I lost it—I used to lose it when I worked in schools. I generally use my Pilot pen to make notes in notebooks. I love the smoothness of the writing experience that comes with liquid ink. The V7 has a refill cartridge. I have Hi-Tech Point Pen ink, which I put into the cartridge and use the pen again. This can be done 3 to 4 times. After that, ink overflows from the joint near the nib.

I prefer black ink over blue or other colors. I also have other ink pens for which I use Sulekha Swadeshi green ink.

At the end of the week, Nidhi found the lost pen in one of my shirt pockets.

I finally cleaned my laptop’s fan. I ordered a screwdriver from Blinkit, watched a video on YouTube, and opened the back cover of my super light ThinkPad Carbon. I observed that there was no heat sink paste remaining on the processor, so I decided to buy paste from Amazon and apply it myself.

It was around ₹500 to ₹1000. I searched for local shops and asked for rates. Finally, a very nearby shop did it for ₹300.

Nidhi made thali pith. We wanted to make something tasty and fast. A friend suggested this, and Nidhi made it nicely on her first attempt. She was super happy.

I had an online learning circle call with the Sanjhe Sapne team. We’re going to have this call every month. I’ll share more about it some other time.

Office colleagues came home on Wednesday evening. We had homemade cold coffee and lots of talking. We want to host friends and serve healthy drinks like ragi malt, hibiscus tea, aam panna, and sattu.

Nidhi made idli sambar. Now we feel at ease making idli sambar. We still need to buy a cast iron tava for dosa. Any good recommendations?

Nidhi’s friend from Azim Premji University came to our home. We both feel very happy when someone comes to our place just to stay without any agenda, to spend quality time. It’s a privilege to get time to go to your friend’s place and just stay.

Friend gifted us Mithila based homemade pickles

Friday evening we left for Vadodara. We spent our weekend with children and the Sakha Fellowship team. We had wonderful filmmaking with children.

I felt very nice to meet Rameshwari ben, Ashish bhai, Janantik bhai and other sakha team members after a long time. The workshop was nice.

Nidhi or Rameshwari ben will write about it. I’ll try to share it here. Right now, I’m sharing some photos here.

Weekend traveling was hectic. We took an AC Volvo bus. It was super expensive—a normal bus is ₹100 and Volvo is around ₹320—but it was helpful in this heat and with back pain.

Khojbeen Mandali Updates

I had a call with Adhvan about developing a map module. I want to develop activities where children can connect to their own place—town—city. Knowing local plants, trees, vendors, systems, being part of citizenship activities, heritage, conservation, using senses, walking.

Something like: Re-imagining Maps - Explore the science and art of cartography through conversations about maps and interactive mapmaking. This is an invitation to renegotiate how we interact with landscapes, how we understand maps, and how we document the spaces we occupy and the lives we live within them.

Recently, one of my friends shared an address of a famous Hindi author, which comes with a footnote after the main address:

🌱 (कटोरा तालाब मुख्य मार्ग में बूढ़ी मां मंदिर तक आना होगा। मंदिर के सामने मुख्यमार्ग में माँ शारदा होम्योपैथी दुकान के बाजू की सड़क पर अंदर आखिरी घर है।)

🌳 अंदर आने वाली सड़कों पर बोर्ड लगे हैं। जिस बोर्ड में कटोरा तालाब सड़क नंबर 11 लिखा है, उसी सड़क पर अंदर आना होगा। दाहिने ओर का सबसे आखिरी घर है।

घर के अंदर एक आम का पेड़, घर के बाहर एक ओर मौलश्री के दो पेड़ और दूसरी ओर सप्तपर्णी, मौलश्री, करंज के पेड़ भी रहते हैं। साथ में गिलहरियां, चिड़ियां और हम सब भी।

Are we connected to our place apart from Google Map locations? What Google Maps shows are commercially active places like malls, petrol pumps, shops—not trees, small shops, small landmarks, small water bodies. Anything that’s not generating money is not on Google Maps.

Can we design our own maps? Can we use maps as a tool to connect with ourselves and the places we live in? Can this become an activity module?

I’m super interested in this project. Let me know if you want to collaborate in any capacity.

Another project I want to work on is ‘fostering wonder and awe’ in children’s lives, very much inspired by the work of Dacher Keltner. I want to work with children from 3 to 11 years of age.

Read: Wonder-Full Hearts: Awe Turns Children into Caring Champions

I actually struggle to keep these two personalities—one which is very playful, curious, and storytelling while working with little children, and suddenly shifting to social justice, connecting with place, and citizenship ideas while working with older children or educators. I keep shifting between these. But ultimately everything is the same… be playful, curious, walk slowly, and wonder more.

Social Media Usage

I consume Instagram, which shows me mostly artists, photographers, writers, and nature lover profiles and posts. Posting on Instagram is getting less frequent. I want to put selected weekly note photos on social media regularly, but it’s not happening.

I consume LinkedIn, which shows me mostly people and posts from the development sector. I’m literally fed up with that.

Twitter shows me mostly developers and entrepreneurs from Bangalore.

Apart from all of this, I really enjoy reading weekly notes from different people. I use a feed reader to track and read weekly notes from selected people.

Overall mood is happy.

My reading is paused again. I’ll try to resume it in June.