Weekly Notes 02/2026

The weekend and the week were busy as we wrapped up at Thrissur, traveled, and got back to work after the holiday season. Uma’s school also restarted this week after the holidays. We are back to regular programming.

• Saturday was spent meeting Manikantan. Manikantan was a temple elephant, but no more. There is a life-size statue of it in the temple, which Uma loves as much as a real elephant. So we spent some time around him and also took some pictures. I managed to visit one cafe this time The Town House in Punkunnam. They have decent coffee and parking.
• We are back in Bangalore, and it is cold. We drove back early Sunday morning. This time, I found more nut cases on the road than usual. Usually, when you reach the outskirts of Bangalore (about 50 km) in any direction, traffic and driving patterns change a lot. Some of it could be because people are reaching home and are suddenly eager. But I suspect it’s also because the driving culture across different parts of India varies widely. It’s not that one is better than the other (some are really bad), but what you expect from your fellow driver changes a lot. If you can’t anticipate it, it causes trouble. An easy place to see this is in the mountains, where folks from the plains drive very differently from local drivers. Anyway, around 50 km from Bangalore, where highways merge, and these cultures merge, it’s wild. One wouldn’t know what to expect other than employing defensive driving. Also, this has nothing to do with traffic or roads.
• Back to twice-a-week P.Ts and at least one game. I have started enjoying both the workout and the games, now that I am no longer a complete beginner. We continue to have simple breakfasts with mostly eggs and coffee.
• I watched Badlapur (film). It’s very violent for my liking; that said, I liked the ending.
• Just like how the Indian government and then the Supreme Court of India whitewashed the riots at Babri and the demolition of a national monument, in the other part of the world, they are trying to whitewash the Jan 6th riots. All democracies should oppose the US’s act in Venezuela, just like Russia’s advances in Ukraine, not just by saying “Deep Concern”! Hopefully they do. But for some reason, I think it will be ordinary people doing it rather than powerful states. My belief that we are back in the 1920s continues, may be we have progressed to 1930s.
• I continue to paint as part of #30DaysOfWatercoloring. This week wasn’t easy, as we were traveling and also work was hectic, but I did manage to paint five of them. Some of them are quick paintings.