This week: a truckload of books, a birthday lunch, and a nod back to my shuttered eye.

For folks not in the know, this is a weekly stream of consciousness zero-agenda “here’s what’s happening” or “here’s what’s interesting” post. Read my first entry from the series.

What’s been happening

• Our bathroom wall had a leak. We found this pretty late because we have bookshelves on pretty much all walls, but the repair went off fine. We had to displace a ton of books though, and Ammu keeps reminding me we need to have more shelves for these.

• It was Ammavan’s (my mother’s brother’s) 80th birthday, and we had a small lunch at his place. A couple of his friends turned up and sang a song for him. We’re having a much bigger bash later this month when my cousins are also coming down from the US and Australia.

• I finished watching Castaway Diva and it’s a nice feel-good show that teaches you to live in the moment. Recommended!
• I fell ill early this week and work suffered as a result. I’ve been focusing on getting better and finally feel back to normal now.
• I’ve been trying to get back into using a camera and photography the last few weeks. I have a Fuji X-E3 bought a long time back, and I dusted it up and started to take some photos with it. There is something magical about composing photos using a viewfinder instead of a screen. One problem though is the bulk, and having to carry the camera around. I’ve been thinking of always keeping it in my car and just taking it out when we go places.
• To wrap up, here’s a nice photo of Ammu ??

Links of the Week

• Found 0xProto, a really neat programming font via https://www.programmingfonts.org/. It’s amazing how far programming fonts have come in the last 10 years or so. They are far more legible and I can’t live without ligatures now, and 0xProto’s philosophy there has a wonderful balance.
• I think this 2020 video on CAA and citizenship by Abhinav Chandrachud is doing the rounds again, and rightly so. It’s cogently argued and first points out the compromises that secular India had to make just to survive, and then breaks down why the CAA act may be unconstitutional. One point that Abhinav makes early on is that it’s necessary to sometimes understand the why behind certain articles in the constitution, and I’ve always wanted to delve deep into the constituent assembly debates: some of those tensions are still resonating in the India that we see today.

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