It is Boxing Day, and I’m hitting publish on this week’s notes as I get ready for a day of watching cricket. Where I was itching for little household errands a couple of weeks ago, now I am saturated. I wish the house would just take care of itself, and take care of me too while it is at it.
WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING
1.
Amber and I joined my cousin, Aditi, and my uncle, Alok, on our maiden trip to the Surajpur Wetlands. The wetlands are just 40 mins away from where we live, but everything we had read had always painted a very dreary picture of the place. And so, we’d never made the effort. The trip turned out to be an adventure because when we arrived at the gate marked on Google Maps, it was locked. No amount of banging on the gate led to any response (even though that is what the helpful neighbours told us we should do). With some rough directions, we left in search of the other gate. We almost gave up and drove to Okhla Bird Sanctuary instead, but thankfully, a last ditch effort took us to the right spot.
The wetlands were surprisingly well-maintained, and we saw about forty birds in about two hours of leisurely ambling around. I was very happy to see a large flock of bar-headed geese up close. I’ve always found them to be beautiful creatures, but had never had the good fortune of seeing them very well.
2.
Most of the week was eclipsed by the mammoth task of cleaning and organising our primary bookshelf. It lines one long wall of my studio and houses the majority of our combined books. You won’t believe how long it takes to pull down 1300-odd books, dust them, check whether they are properly cataloged and then put them back where they most belong. We were at it for days. This annual tradition always starts with a lot of excitement and ends with us being bone-tired and questioning why we ever bought a single book.
3.
This year we started the bookshelf cleaning with my collection of Pelican books. Because of the aforementioned excitement, I decided that I would take the opportunity to photograph all their covers. A makeshift studio was built, the tripod set up, and the camera connected to its phone app. After a couple of hours of sitting cross-legged on the floor and pressing shoot after placing each book in the right spot, I was done. I’ve been meaning to do this for years, and I’m glad to have finished step one. I hope that I can find some time late in January or early February to clean up and organise the photos. I couldn’t resist working on a few yesterday.
4.
As the last of my “work tasks” before the year ends, I sent out an issue of my newsletter on Tuesday. This issue was co-published with 3 Sided Coin. For the main essay of the newsletter, I wrote about three recent Devanagari typefaces that broaden our imaginations of the script. This essay is available in both Hindi and English. With that, I also shared some Air India first flight covers from my ephemera collection, and mused about faux-script lettering.