July-July-July

Never seemed so strange

Preethi Govindarajan

Published in

Siggu

6 min readAug 7, 2020

This month was the month of my birthday. It felt a bit like childhood, we ate cake, crisps, and pop through the day. Steven bought me a DSLR and I have been trying to take some photos with it. Some of them are below. They are not very good. If anyone has any easy tutorials, please do send them on.
I also went from being the owner of one set of IEMs to now having three devices for sound: a Bluetooth earphone for my running experience (Steven's pressie) and one shower compatible speaker for my showering experience (mum’s pressie). Both of these have greatly improved the quality of my podcast listening.
My friend Aarika also gifted me an insulated water-bottle which I have been using for the copious amounts of Khus Sharbat and Roohafza I have been consuming. All in all this birthday felt like my childhood :)
I started running again, mostly short distances. I think the structure running brings to my life has been the most useful: To complete a small run before the sun comes up means I have to start around 6 AM and this also means I have showered and meditated by 8:30 AM. I buy vegetables on my way back from the run and I get to see the morning in Jammu which has to be most pleasant time for the city in the summers.-
My friend Pop’s mum has an absolutely lovely garden with a lot of fruit trees (In Lal Bagh, there is this flower clock which has been planted in such a way that each month there is a certain flower that blooms). In the same vein, aunty has something like a fruit clock going. It started with lychees and then we had an abundance of chikoos and then briefly we had pears and lemons and now with the monsoon, we have many many mangoes and jamuns. I think the winters will bring guavas and pomelos. Interacting with fruits here has been quite a strange experience, and I am often transported back to my childhood and the mango tree with the curved branch where we would swing for most of our summer holidays. There is a certain childlike excitement that comes with fruit eating (maybe because it is quite a messy feat) that I seemed to have lost with time.

I have also been getting really into the mangoes. We had a lot of them this year! I made a few desserts with them. The only thing I did not do was to attempt pickling them (like my mum would have). With the end of July, our mango stash has dwindled and we are trying very hard to hold on to the last of our mangoes.

Mango: Milkshake, Pie, Pudding, & Icecream

I realise I create a nest when I have my period. I create a space usually on my bed and delineated by the edges of my போர்வை . It is themoregulated (i.e. airconditioned) and contains everything I need near me: all my books, my laptop, the embroidery I am working on, Liquids to hydrate myself, medication, and my hot water bottle. The shape it takes feels very nest-like especially when I finally get out of that space once my period ends. I even work from there. It is very strange.

Work has been busy. We launched the Fiscal Data Explorer and also conducted a webinar on the need for fiscal transparency.
I am also working on the Free and Open Source Software ecosystem report. Answering the question “why FOSS in India” is proving to be really interesting. I am talking to various players through the spectrum of intentions, ideologies and use of FOSS. The entire ecosystem lies on some sort slightly blobby obscure continuum and trying demarcate the edges is going to be tough. It might be easier to point to some issues and ways to help but that will be too shallow unless the subject is defined. properly.
We are also working toward creating a tab for procurements into the Explorer as a part of the Presidential Hackathon 2020 which has actually been a fun exercise. It is quite a bit of work and has really short timelines. Added to that the Indian Procurement process is as opaque as a cooked egg so let’s see how this really turns out.
I am also thinking about changing my work week to 4 days instead of 5. I think having a day in the middle for relaxation might help with not feeling so exhausted at the end of each week.

I have also finished reading “The Genius of Birds”. It is a beautiful book that makes a really compelling argument for bird brains. As I have been reading this book, I have also gotten quite into spying on birds, with my trusty new telephoto lens camera thingy. There is an abundance of insects where I live and every bird I have captured has an insect in its mouth. Though I find myself increasingly day dreaming watching red vented Bulbuls or Brown rock chats feeding and preening wondering about their smarts and what they must be contemplating. I think birders (like my dad) will love this book.
Towards the end of the month, my schedule completely fell apart timed with my anxiety returning and I had no exercise for almost two weeks. I guess I must pick myself back up and get in the game. That’s life.
It was also Steven’s birthday and we may have overdone the cake this month.

For his birthday we went for a walk along the river (it has been our view for the past couple months) and got stuck in mud and had a bit of an adventure which ended with us trespassing through a neighbors farm to get back to the road and finally home. We also spotted a pair of Indian Grey Hornbills. So all in all A+ day, I guess.