Sometimes your destination will need more than just exact address. I have never reached any place in Delhi by giving the exact address: Flat name, Building name, Road, District, Pincode. Let's just keep the google map reliant uber examples aside for this, please. For me, reaching a place has always required knowing about other places. Especially knowing roads. Road names. Then there are times when knowing road names is also a confusion. So we are drawn to landmarks, like post office, big transformer, samose ke dukaan, all famous structures in little localities. Subramania Bharti Marg is a long stretch of road. Named after a poet, this is a significant road in Delhi: At one end is the Lodhi Garden. At the other end is the Purana Quila. In between Khan Market, government colonies, private and government schools, MP houses, museums and India Gate, all dot it like scooters and rickshaws in a vegetable market early in the morning. But is that the real significance of this road? Subrama...

It was an early April day. Daylight had increased as the sun was setting around 8:30 pm. I was walking back from the University at 6 p.m. thinking about what to prepare for the dinner when I saw two boys at the cricket pitch. They were with their mum who was standing by side and giving the young boys their space. They were in nets area playing with a ball. The younger boy was around 3-4 years. The elder son was around 7 years old, kicking football towards the nets. The younger one was watching him with admiration. He closed his eyes tightly whenever he sensed that the ball was aimed at him. There was the net though shielding him. Phew! The elder one kicked the ball a few more times.  Every time the brother would shut his eyes tightly. Once the ball bounced back, he would open and smile. He was holding one of the cricket stumps, green in colour. After a few rounds of this, the elder kicked the ball again but this time football shot up to a height, somehow managed to pass throug...

The book is an emotionally charged account of what might happen if fairy tales start experiencing climate crisis. The story begins with expected confusion and chaos. Imagine water crisis in the world of Rapunzel! Titles of main characters change - There is No White - so do their energies.  It is an intelligent retelling that delves with climate denial, toxic masculinity, climate anxiety, capitalist greed and climate grief. Many of these are either consequences of climate crisis or become even more exacerbated by the it. The story shows the ways in which these consequences impact. It treats you intelligently and leaves a lot of the reading to be done by the reader too. The illustrations complement the text in telling the story.  Some characters have been Indianised. Goldilocks wants Pyassam. Apart from the humour that this is able to add, I find it aligning with the immediacy of the crisis which is not just climate related. In naming Jasmine as Chameli but letting Snow Queen be...

I have lived in gated and ungated colonies for most of my life. I use colony in a very loose sense and use it synonymously with neigbourhoods here. In these colonies, walking was as everyday affair as water shortages were (are). Unlike water shortages though, walking did not register to me as a community activity or a mega event until I started thinking more deeply about lives lived in various places. Conversations around water and air were arising from a space of lack, insecurity, privilege, and anxiety. We were always worried about water tankers not coming in, electricity available between particular slots, thick air smog in the mornings. But walking was never uttered as a concern which was endangered. It was in fact uttered as a medicine: "High BP?" "Walk!"  These colonies see their usual walking everyday. In the evenings, you would find someone or the other walking. There would also be morning people who'd go for a walk after dropping their kids at the bus s...

If things go on like this  Then a mango tree is looking for a part time job. It always wanted to be more than  A season's search. "Honestly, anything would be great right now - Just keep me away from  Property*." At a session with sun,  Brilliance registered for name-change Museums have sided with Marigolds in the case "State vs Plants" Walk-in Interviews are being held for pavements All land is only offices now.  So scholarships are being awarded For making a green leaf into a leisure activity All writers are busy working on this curriculum.  I wish there was a way to bring the water prices down. I just want to drink water and breathe air  Will say no tree ever. *"Property is Theft."

Seeing the City through a Walk 2 March, 2024 Acknowledgements: Taking a Walk courtesy Wild Aesthetics of Urban Environments, a two-part workshop led by Kush Sethi. The walk  was aimed at being a gateway into urban ecology through gardening . Thank you to the wonderful facilitators of the walk and the program curators who designed this event.  Below is a series of photos and documentation from an urban nature walk held one breezy nice March morning in Delhi when we got some respite form heat and a confused cold. Some of us collected in Max Muller Bhavan as part of their exhibition, Critical Zones. In Search of a Common Ground. We went on a walk outside the institute and observed foliage growing. I recorded some of the plants, trees, bees, buildings, people and roads that we observed. After the walk, we returned to the Bhavan and observed some of the leaves under the microscope and tried to repot some of those plants taken from the roadside. No plants or animals were h...