Books weren’t part of my childhood. Textbooks were. But not story books. There was no reading culture at home.

So, when I picked up reading habit, I started with non-fiction and then with dense and serious fiction. Only recently that I started reading children books. They have been my bed time books for over an year now, putting me to good sleep.

The first children’s book I read was the Diary of the Wimpy Kid (Ugly Truth) in 2023. I read it in a restaurant in Pondicherry, as I waited for the resort to allot a room for me. This is the only book I completed in one go. It satiated the mischevious part of me.

Then I started Harry Potter. I assumed for some reason that Harry Potter would be hard to read but I loved reading it. I completed philosopher stone and chamber of secrets — both reading and watching. I’m liking to watch the movie immediately after reading it. I’m now reading Prisoner of Azkaban.

One good place to pick children books are in book box events where people sell books in kilos. I think parents dump children books once their kids growup. I found ‘The World’s Worst Children’, ‘Just So Stories’ and ‘Judy Moody - Doctor is in’ in one such book box event.

World’s worst children is a hilarious exaggerated description of some worst things children do. The cover will show you some of them.

Just So Stories introduced me to the genre of ‘nonsense tales’. If you can tell a story — siller the better— of how something happened, it qualifies as a nonsense tale. Whenever I find time, I try to write a nonsense tale. I enjoyed the story of how the elephant got its trunk.

Last week, I read Judy Moody - Doctor is in. Its a relatable story of a girl who wants to get sick to avoid school.

If you are interested in children poetry, the puffin book of 20th century children verse has some nice poems.

Last week I finished Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a bed time read. I also watched the movie.

These are the children books I’ve read so far. Though I’ve picked them up very late in my life, I’m glad that I can read them as an adult. It helped me appreciate what good writing is — as good writing is something you can explain in simple words.

These children stories were used to cultivate values in kids. Charlie bucket sharing his only chocolate with the entire family. Judy maintaining her curiosity despite all her tantrums of going to school. Harry Potter standing up to the evil. These are timeless values and children books communicate them in the best possible manner.

I’m happy I didn’t feel too ‘grown up’ to read them.

Could you please comment your favourite children book?

Comment

Share

Subscribe

So I went to another place and got a filter coffee. My friend ordered only decoction. My coffee was not strong enough. So I took a little bit of my friend’s decoction and added it to my filter coffee. It tasted weird. The decoction was of black tea.

I always wondered how it’d be to mix coffee and tea. Don’t do that.

I was at a book launch event by Akshata Publications. They published a telugu book Anagha - a short story compilation from 9 writers. I got to meet a few of them.

What is politics? There are several definitions revolving around power, money, decision making, etc. I like the definition given by David Easton: “politics is the authoritative allocation of values for a society”. Put simply, its the art and craft of allocation— of money, attention, power .. anything.

My politics is that I want this allocation to happen in a rational manner, in a way that it builds a peaceful and liveable society for all. That’s the value I hold.

Our colony celebrates Seeta Ramula Kalyanam in a grand way. We decorate the entire street, call in singers, and there’s annadaanam for everyone.

As part of decorating the street, they’ve put tents all across the street to protect the diety and devotees from sun and rain. And to make way for tents, they’ve cut many branches.

“Why did you cut branches”, I asked.

“The shamiana would tear otherwise”, organisers said.

And then the David Easton’s definiton of politics came alive to me. In the organiser’s allocation, that tree branch has lesser value than the tent cloth. There could be other ways of solving this problem like not having a tent cover where there is a branch — the branch was anyway providing a natural cover. But that wouldn’t be aesthetic. Those aesthetics also have more value than a branch. How to bring a shift in these values?

Something to cherish about the World Theatre Day (March 27th) is that I worked with the veteran actor Ashok Kumar.

Subscribe

Share

I went to a musical exhibition Listening Room hosted by Sreya. It is about the theme of “Women’s songs of love and longing”. They played these songs on different vintage audio devices — cassettes and old nokia phones. It was a nice exhibit.

There is a telugu writing format naneelu that is trending off late. It consists of 20-25 letters, split across 4 lines, preferably in 2 sentences.

Last week, I wrote about using sentencex on a telugu book to analyse writing style. I added some more to it. I wanted to understand dialogue to narrative ratio of the writer. In this book Chaduvu, there was 15% dialogue. You can see how it is distributed here:

I talked at FOSS Hyderabad meetup about this. One can extend this analysis to word level and even sentence level. I didn’t find a nice telugu lemmatization model that can help find root word. It would have helped in building vocabulary of a writer. Telugu Tunakulu has a syllable level analytical tool as well, but my knowledge of language is limited to do that analysis.

I read “Adivasi will not dance”. This book is a window into the lives of Adivasis, especially Santhals. Couple of stories are very disturbing. But they are lived realities for many. However, not every story speaks at a community level. Some are about individuals and their desires, stuck in an exploitative environment.

Subscribe

Share

Often, new tools inspire new projects. When I started working, Varun Pawar, introduced me to a writing concept called “cadence”. Good writers have a cadence. They don’t use all long or all short sentences. They vary the lengths of sentences in a rhythmic way. This tool would help me in analyzing cadence of some of the books I read.

Anusha Motamarri scraped a bunch of telugu books in TXT format. I found the book Chaduvu that I recently read. Here is the chapter wise cadence of this book. More the red, more the pace.

In each chapter the median number of words per sentence is between 5-7. More than 50% of the sentences have than ~6 words. I think English, in general, requires more words per sentence. We can take the insight that we should keep our writing simple.

In what other ways can we analyse writing? Let me know if you have any thoughts. We can try it out.

Leave a comment

I read a short story Zikora by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I blogged Men should read more of women writers, after reading it. I didn’t plan it, but it became a good woman’s day read.

Nature must not want humans to reproduce, otherwise birthing would be easy, even enjoyable: babies would easily slip out, and mothers would remain unmarked and whole, merely blessed by having bestowed life.

Subscribe now

Share

A project can be anything that we commit to: from writing a book to raising a child. The focus should be on verbs, instead of nouns. We’d get whatever we want through these projects: money, satisfaction, community, pleasure, etc. There is always an urge to find a single project that gives us everything we want. But in most cases, a good project-mix would give us everything we want.

Executing projects is an easier skill, especially when you can use AI. There is ample knowledge out there with which we can eventually figure out how to do a certain project. The difficulty is in finding a project that we can commit to. Viktor Frankl articulates this difficulty as “Existential Frustration” in Man’s search for meaning.

One way that helped me to deal with this difficulty is to get inspired from people who could commit. I feel lucky to work with some of them [Dr Sarath, Apoorv], meet some of them in-person [Thejesh, Rukmini, Rahul], and many others through books. [Carl Sagan, Balagopal].

Another such committed story is of Sa Vem Ramesh. I heard him speaking last year [WL23/2025]. He is committed to preserving Telugu language and culture, especially outside the Telugu states. I recently found a small book he wrote about a medieval Telugu poet Vemana: Sajeeva Sampradayamga Vemana. Towards the end of the book, he establishes Vemana as not just a regional figure but a pan-South Indian poet. Vemana’s poems are still sung by a few people in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, even though they stopped speaking Telugu. There is his temple in Vellore and other places. There is Mahakavi Vemana road in Koramangala, Bengaluru. I walked several times on it without knowing.

I also got to watch Debalina Majumder’s documentary ‘Friends of Jilipibala’. Her commitment was for saving a tree. The documentary is currently doing festival rounds. Please don’t miss it if its getting screened near you. It is about relationship between a girl and a tamarind tree. They listed down all animal, bird and plant life in the rolling credits. I found it as a terrific choice taken by Debalina.

Debalina showed that, more than anything, it takes courage to commit. And when asked where she got her courage from, she humbly said that she is the least courageous of all involved in saving the tree.

I think we could all commit better if we have some of her courage.

Subscribe now

Share

I emphasized on articulating values mathematically in this workshop. I roughly jotted my notes related to it in my blog: Values and Linear Programming.

I also got to meet a group called hyticos - Hyderabad Tiger Conservation Society. They hosted a bird watching morning walk in University of Hyderabad, as part of their initiative called LUNGS — Last Urban Natural Green Spaces of Hyderabad. I learnt about an app called Merlin Bird ID. It will help you identify a bird around you by the song of the bird. Its a great companion to have when you are in nature.

I also learnt trivia and stories about a lot of plants. This plant is the Sanjeevani plant that Anjaneya wanted for Lakshmana. It is greener down the slope as water accumulates there.

You see, I said Lakshmana and not Lakshman! This is one of the features of Telugu language called Ajantham, which means words in Telugu often end with vowel sounds. I blogged about it here: Specialty of Telugu.

I finished reading a telugu book చదువు (Chaduvu). I found it flat. But it asked a good question on role of education. The protagonist in the book is someone who irresponsibly keeps getting educated. This review did a good job summarizing it.

Growing up, I’ve had little exposure to world music, including that of Michael Jackson. I saw MJ’s moonwalk and other unhuman moves, but I couldn’t get hold of even a line of lyric.

MJ has been on my social media feed off-late due to Epstein files issue. There’s also MJ biopic coming to theatres on April 24th, and I want to be prepared for it. Because I got hooked to a couple of stories around his songs: the brazil mafia etc.

So, I’m engaging with lyrics and the stories around his songs. It’ll be hard to catch-up with his entire work in a couple of months, but I’ll at least scratch the surface. I am sharing these stories on Whatsapp Channel. I covered Billie Jean, This Time Around, Earth Song and Smooth Criminal. The story behind Billie Jean is the craziest so far!

Happy National Science Day!

Sharing an old blog on this occasion: An ode to popular science books.

I hope you continue to ask questions. More and more!

I know science can’t fix the world — here’s why I do it anyway

Share

Subscribe now

Every village has some speciality. My aunt said that the speciality of Sahapuram is that every street has a temple for Shri Ram, hosting bhajans every night. In the temple on our street, they’ve installed new Rajasthan-made marble statues of Sita-Ram, Lakshman and Hanuman.

Every village also has something in common. As you exit the village, you’ll see statues of Dr.B.R.Ambedkar holding the constitution. I think they’re made of plaster of paris.

If you go further away, you’ll see green farmlands. Farmers have been growing paddy for decades, though you’d find a banyan plantation here and there. Those fed up with farming dug up their lands, filled in water and grew prawns. My uncle said the villagers dislike these prawns because of the excessive chemicals and medicine being used. They prefer direct catch from the Godavari river or the sea. The bred prawns get exported.

I asked why organic farming is not yet practiced. My uncle said that its hardwork to ensure that the crop doesnt catch disease with organic methods. Even if one lone farmer experiments organic farming and fails to contain disease, then rest of the farms would be at risk. A lot of cooperation and leadership is required to make such changes. Apparently, there were episodes of such cooperation in the past. Farmers here burnt stubble in the past but learnt that its not so good for them and that there are better ways. Not many farmers burn stubble today.

“ An acre of paddy farm takes about 6 women and 2 men labour to transplant paddy itseems in a day. Labour from Bihar who are apparently better skilled in transplantation. They’d also take payment on per-acre basis and not as daily wage, which villagers prefer. A few farmers try to underpay the Bihari labour by making them work on larger area. But the mesthri (~group leader) can estimate the land area well just by walking around it.”

All the farms are watered by canals. People here still thank Sir Arthur Cotton for constructing the Dowleswaram barrage and the canal network ~170 years ago. Curious, we went to the Cotton Museum in Rajahmundry.

The museum is not well kept. This cute picture will show this fact.

We finished the trip reminiscing about the numerous canals we enjoyed seeing along the road.

I am now in Bengaluru to attend SolveCon2026. I’m excited! Please come to SolveCon at PES University Banashankari if you’re free tomorrow (21st). They are doing a wonderful festival celebrating civic problem solving.

I’m doing one SolverJam on Linear Programming.

Many of my friends say they want to become journalists. But given the state of media, they get discouraged to see a full time career in it. If there is such a journalism bug in your head, check this out: https://citizenmatters.in

It is a citizen journalism initiative. That doesn’t mean it will select anyone writing about anything. You can go through their stories and you’ll see that they have a strict editorial filter. Broadly, they select stories on:

1. A good analysis on a civic issue around you

2. A community effort solving a civic issue

3. A step-by-step guide on accessing any public service

Try your hand and satisfy that bug. Also helps to build your journalism profile.

Guys do change a lot after marriage. My friend made rabdi for me

Subscribe

Share

Because the beach is fenced by coconut trees all the way, it is being called Mini Goa. A few films shot here but in the movie they show it as happening in Goa.

There are many towns nearby, each with its own speciality. Palakollu’s dibbarotte with paakam, Penugonda’s kajjikaya, Antharvedi where Godavari meets the Bay of Bengal. Each town is about an hour away from each other. The routes connecting these towns are beautiful. There is a canal parallel to the road with small bridges forming T-Junctions. It’s a bumpy ride, but a scenic ride.

And that’s how I spent my birthday🥳

Red car theory: once you notice something peculiar, like a red car, you’ll start noticing it everywhere.

Something similar has happened with me. Commodification is a good framework to analyse economy and culture that I picked from Balagopal’s book. Since then, I’ve noticed the word and its application in several other issues. Commodification of land is discussed in the analysis of air pollution. Pratap Bhanu Mehta wrote about commodification of bodies, writing about Epstein files issue.

Shapefiles, Geojsons, etc., can be easily converted into SVGs with this command line tool SVGIS. There was a small issue with it and I spent sometime on it to fix it.

Comment

Share

Subscribe

Lamakaan’s 16th Annual Day celebrations have begun and will continue over the weekend. Naseeruddin Shah came yesterday and read Urdu poetry and stories. It was a packed hall as you can see that people sat over the rock. I didn’t understand much Urdu but I enjoyed his recital nevertheless.

History Literature Festival is happening at the Hyderabad Public School. I wish Manu Pillai was here.

I wrote an essay on commodification. These were a few thoughts that captured my mind after reading Balagopal’s book Man and Marxism.

Freedom at Midnight is an amazing web series. It is on Sony Liv. Of course the book has more details. The chapter on the vulgar display of wealth and arrogance by Indian princes is skipped in the web series. I loved the guy who played Jawaharlal Nehru. Brilliant performance. The camaraderie between Nehru-Sardar Patel is also well shown. Don’t miss!

Even Dandora is a very nice Telugu movie on Prime. Very few Telugu movies work with the subject of caste oppression without diluting it. Dandora will be one of it for a lot of time. The good thing is that it did it without becoming a ‘parallel’ movie.

I’m talking about Linear Programming on Feb 21 at PES University in Bengaluru. It is part of SolveCon by Reap Benefit. They are trying to get students involved in civic issues through skill-building. I liked that approach.

I finished a couple of books that I started in January.

More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop has been a cozy bedtime read.

The other book is - Mother Mary comes to me by Arundhati Roy.

I stayed away from Arundhati Roy’s works despite all her literary achievements. I’m glad I overcame that taboo. This is the first time I’ve read her work and its not a surprise that I love her writing. The wit and humor, especially dark humor is joyful to read.

Keeping aside her politics, we can acknowledge that she observed Indian politics over the last four decades from a different standpoint. From fringes. Our understanding will only be better if we acknowledge such observations.

I want to read more of her works, but I’ll first watch:

Subscribe now

Share

I did a couple of workshops at the Hyderabad Literary Festival (HLF) over the weekend. Looks like HLF will the event when I will do anything related to colors. Last year, I attended a cheriyal painting workshop [W04/2025].

1. From the urban sketching workshop, I learnt that we can attempt sketching from simple mathematical shapes. Host Ishak Ziaee made us sketch the historic Osmania Uniersity Arts College facade using rectangles, triangles and circles.

   

2. Rohini Chintha from Popscicles made us draw a high school science concept in Bhil painting form (It was a 7+ age event :p). I drew life cycle of a butterfly. The characteristic feature of Bhil painting are the dots that you can see in the image. We made those dots using a toothpick. They are apparently like fingerprint of the Bhil artist. Each artist would naturally have their own pattern of dots, even if the overall drawing is the same.

   

3. Satwika Taduri hosted a “Design your Climate Home” workshop where a group of participants is asked to design a home for a given climatic scenario. We were given a flood prone area scenario. I doubt if anyone would eventually sign-up to live in the home we designed.

Actress Jhansi designed a wonderful play bringing poetry to stage. It is called “కవిత్వం ఒక తీరని దాహాం” (Poetry is an insatiable thirst). Don’t miss the next time it is enacted.

I read K Balagopal’s మనిషి-మార్క్సిజం (Man and Marxism). I felt it like a political education. I wrote about this book here: Link. If you think about capitalism and its issues, how to overcome them, etc., you may find it useful.

Telangana Government organised a conference on Air Quality Management at MCRHRD. The last time I went to MCRHRD was to drink tea with my sister when I was preparing for UPSC. Felt nice going wearing a different hat. The chai place is not there anymore. But that memory was strongly etched in my mind for some reason. It was a big task then to travel all the way just for tea and we felt it like an achievement.

I saw an advertisement which led to this Essay: Commodification of Air.Reading మనిషి-మార్క్సిజం also helped me write this.

I hosted a write club session today. I wrote to you previously[W03/2026] how I started to like this literary genre called flash fiction. I prompted the group to write the same — a story in ~55 words. You can read the full prompt here: Sticky Stories

I wrote this (55 words).

I read a few interesting pieces of flash fiction!

Subscribe now

Share

So there is a job to people like me to split these two tables and make them CSVs. And a few also sell it. Probably this is the implementation of Keynes idea of “paying people to dig holes in the ground and then fill them up” to reduce unemployment.

Anyways, I used camelot previously to scrape data from PDFs. It has been a while since I scraped a PDF and so checked if there’s a new tool out. I found pdfplumber. It seems superior than camelot in a few use-cases, especially when PDF makers show their creativity. I’ll use it often now.

There is Children’s Film Festival happening at Lamakaan. Every month, Anil Battula will play one children movie. January’s selection was an Iranian movie “Children of Heaven.” It is about how a brother-sister share, help and think for each other in the midst of poverty. Here is the full schedule of the festival:

@anilbattula007

Anil battula on Instagram: "ALL IN ONE POSTER
**
Please save th…

Where is the Friend’s Home? is an amazing movie as well. If you never visited Lamakaan, this can be a nice reason for you to visit.

I felt nice walking at KBR. I want to walk at least once a week in a Park to have show more green to my eyes. There are 49 big enough parks and tens of tiny parks in Hyderabad. Of course, park scene is not as good in Bengaluru.

In 2024, a paper got published in the European Journal of Pediatrics which claimed that Homeopathy is superior to conventional medicine for under-2 babies. It was a news headline as well. There were several statistical issues in the paper. I wrote them in my blog.

The good news is that the paper got retracted now. Will there be a news headline about the retraction?

I went to Numaish exhibition. This Well of Death seemed like a blood-sport and reminded me of Gladiator games. But then a few would say they are doing it willfully and getting paid. I don’t know.

I bought a reusable notebook in which I can wipe off pen strokes with a wet cloth. Hope it works as promised.

Hyderabad Lit Fest starts today! Hope to see some of you there!

Share

Subscribe now

Last year, I’d been to Art Science Museum in Singapore [Week 19/25] where I learnt about a book “Particle Physics: Brick by Brick." It teaches particle physics using Lego blocks. I built a Carbon atom using lego blocks then.

I wanted to host a similar session in Hyderabad, but kept procrastinating. With a friend’s nudge, I finally ordered some clay and designed a one hour workshop called: “Build your atom with clay”. I’ll host it soon in one of the coming weekends. Here is a deuterium atom made of clay. I chose clay because Lego blocks were too costly :p

𝐈𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬, 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐚𝐲 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐛𝐲 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐬? I answered it on this blog: Aggregation Bias.

I have been struggling to gift friends as I overthink a lot on what to gift. I thought I’ write it out to get some clarity. It is one of the most random essays I’ve ever written: How to gift? I wrote it in Telugu. The English version is AI translated.

I discovered a literary genre called flash fiction. It is an extremely short piece of fiction that still offers characters and plot. I picked the following story from the book: The World’s Shortest Stories, edited by Steve Moss. All the stories in the book consist of exactly 55 words. It is a good book to read if you are in a reading slump.

I’m also writing them whenever I’m bored. It’s like sudoku. Take it as a writing prompt and try to write a short ~50 word flash fiction! I’d like to read them :)

Leave a comment

I got to put my hands on the DIY Neuro Science kit thanks to my friend Aditya. It has a BioAmp EXG Pill that amplifies the ECG, EMG, EEG, EOG signals through an Arduino. It was the happiest moment this week 😁

I’m reading K. Balagopal’s essays “Man and Marxism”. It is his critical analysis of Marxism, but not to be mistaken as an applause of capitalism.

There is one question that stuck me. I posted it on reddit and got some good answers: Is self-interest part of human nature as capitalists argue? Or are humans self-interested when they live in a capitalist system?

Let me know what you think about it!

Share

Subscribe now

Anyways, there seem to be a few interesting courses on Swayam. Check and let me know if you find something of your interest: Courses. I’m curious about this course on Air Pollution.

CPCB’s AQI Bulletins data from 2015 to 2025 is now available here: Link | You can also download calendar heatmaps for each city.

I read a Telugu translation of “The First Teacher”. It is a short story and you can read it 1-2 sittings. It is about the struggles of a rural Kyrgyz girl child in getting access to education and how the first teacher to the village helps her. I felt there is some Soviet propaganda in the book. Nevertheless, the story stands tall in the theme of education. It’ll be relevant as long as there are girls kept out of schools.

I wrote more about it on Good Reads

I didn’t know that Honey has sugar. Except for that one ignorant mistake, I stayed away from added sugar for the entire week. I never did this before :)

I wrote a blog, What is Literature?

Literature is the presentation of natural truths in a beautiful way (Prof. Chintakindi Kasim)

The best moment of the week is when I learnt about a poetry movement in telugu called Digambara Kavulu. It existed for a brief period of three years from 1965-68. As the name goes, the six digambara poets wrote poems exposing the naked truths of the society. So much so that they were also put under preventive detention by the government. I found their entire compilation: Dhiks (That is what they called each of their poem).

K Balagopal wrote an obituary to one of the Digambara poe - Cherabanda Raju. It throws good light on the politics of poetry back then.

Share

Subscribe now

I wrote the year-end reflection letter.

I’ve been working on creating charts using SVG. I started making maps through SVG as well. SVGIS is a good library that helps to convert shapefiles/geojsons to SVGs. I wrote more about it: Creating Geographic SVG Files with SVGIS. BharatViz also helps you download SVGs of Indian administrative boundaries.

I spent my new year eve with my college friends. One of them has a pent-house on a terrace. We projected music videos on a wall and danced together. I was awake until morning, enjoying the gradual transition from moonlit night to sunlit day.

I tried cinnamon powder in black coffee. It smelled and tasted well.

I tried pudina in ginger chai. Even that tasted well :)

Share

Subscribe now

As every year, I reflect the year according to different roles I play in life.

Civic-Technologist

• I built a RAG Chatbot using the Constitution Assembly Debates. It should help you talk to the makers of the Constitution. I couldn’t improve it much beyond the initial version. https://constitutionbot.streamlit.app/

  • I discovered Constitutional Observer when I reviewed IndiaFOSS proposals. It did a far superior job. I hope they add LLM summary to the queries asked.

• I used AI to build some front-end work like this Air Quality Quiz. I later started feeling that I’m not enjoying building stuff using AI. I’d like to use AI to learn to build, than to build directly.

• I wrote 13 stats blogs and two statistical reports this year. I wrote 40 blogs last year. I’ve spent less time on learning Stats. We started the model thinking reading group a couple of months ago to fix it, but we’ve been a little irregular there.

  • Statistical Ambiguity: Was Delhi’s Air Quality in July 2025 the Best in a Decade?

  • PERT estimate is an under-estimate. Visual evidence from computational statistics. This can be useful for certain project managers.

• I spent more time on learning Data visualizations this year.

  • I learnt Bokeh, to build static, but interactive, charts. I presented AQI Bulletins data using Bokeh.

  • I started learning Svelte, D3.js and SVG to create scrollytales and custom visualisations. This story on Benford Law is my favorite: How to spot anomalies in AQI data? } An application of Benford's law

  • SciPolStories: I’ve listed all my visualization works here.

  • How to visualize air quality monitoring data?

• I learnt Datasette and Parquet. The AQI Bulletins data is available on Datasette and in Parquet format. I presented this data at IndiaFOSS.

• I assisted the legal team that fought the deforestation of Kanche Gachibowli Forest area in Hyderabad with satellite imagery. It was a small win. More details about this work are in this letter: Weekly Letter 14/2025

• I did a course on R Programming. But LLMs made me lazy to learn it well.

• I wanted to learn and get comfortable with hardware. I spent some time last year but this year has been a flop in it :/

Actor

I did one play - The Proposal. It is a Hindi adaptation of a Russian Play by Antony Chekhov.

I acted in one shortfilm Pothunna. It got screened at the Hyderabad International Shortfilm Festival last week, giving me a good finish to the year.

I learnt to canter on a horse.

I’ll categorize my strength-training journey in my Actor’s role. I’d been hitting gym for years now, but I could hardly squat 30kgs till February. I read Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe this March and took weight training seriously. I saw good gains initially, reaching a 60kg squat by April. Then, there was a plateau. As I end the year, I can now squat 100kg, bench press 70kg, shoulder press 50kg and dead-lift 130kg. I can also do a pull-up without any assistance. I’m happy with this achievement of mine.

There is a lot of hesitation, especially in women, to lift weights. Please start with some guidance. It’ll be the best thing you can do to yourself in 2026 :)

Writer

I started this year with a poetry workshop on Coursera. I highly recommend that workshop if you are interested in poetry. I read a lot of poetry this year and wrote for the first time. I wrote 23 poems, including a couple of Haikus. I wrote more in the beginning part of the year than later. This poem on air pollution remains my favorite:

Farts of a City

The city farts 
from its many holes:
Vehicle tails, Power plant bums
metabolise petrol and coal.

Gosh! More holes! On fire
wood, dung and kerosene. On fire
city’s feces. 

Ughh, this stinking smoke
enters my holes! 
My eyes
I rub rub rub;
My throat
I cough cough;
My nose
I die.

Mask up, cityzen, Mask up
Turn on the purifier
Close your windows
Shoot the anti-fart gun
Bring home green plastic plants.

Alas, your lungs still burn
“What else to do?” You ask
“Eat less, eat clean,” Doctors say.

I’ve also put a poem to reel:

• I published 5 stories, thanks to the Hyderabad Write Club.

• I wrote one 30-min screenplay. I hope it becomes a movie soon.

• I wrote five essays this year. I wish to write more. I really cannot choose the best of these five. You could start with this, maybe:

Leave a comment

I read 36 books this year. I’d recommend you to try

1. Just So Stories to explore the genre of “nonsense tales”

2. అసమర్ధుని జీవయాత్ర for some existentialist literature in Telugu

3. బాలగోపాల్ సైన్స్ వ్యాసాలు / Balagopal’s essays on science | Telugu review

4. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

5. The Art of Statistics: How to Learn from Data

My reading habit improved with as I documented my learnings on Krishnapedia and My Gita

I tried a few new things this year

• Cheriyal Painting

  

• Bleach art

  

• Cajun Box

• Played poker

  

• Learning Kannada

• Learnt about Mushrooms

  

• Tried some sketching, if I can call it so

  

  

Some memorable moments:

1. Meeting Sa Vem Ramesh

2. Lunar Eclipse observation event

3. Trip to Kuntala water falls.

4. 16 Rojula Pandaga movie opening

5. Trip to Maredumilli

6. My shortfilm got screened at Prasads

Share

The seconds did a loop
we wish, we hug, and
kiss dears

The minutes did a loop
we cut cake, and
clink glasses

The hours did a loop
we dance, we sing, and
fire crackers

The earth did a loop
we reflect back, and
dream forwards

Happy New Year :)

Subscribe now

Nice resources:

• https://www.findthatessay.com/

• Writes and Write-Nots: How the act of writing becomes much more important in the times of AI.

• I Play to Play by Amit Varma

• Video: Strange Math that (almost) predicts everything.

• Why time is not running out by Paras Chopra.

Previous year-end reflections

1. 2024

2. 2023

I watched some nice short-films. Some of them are not on internet yet and so I’m unable to share my excitement with others. Here’s a list of short-films I enjoyed:

Anbirku En Ondrai Azhuthavum (Tamil): It is about how a mother struggles to send a picture of a certificate to her son. In less than 5 minutes, the film will made me both smile and sad.

Shopkeeper (Persian): This was my favorite. It is not on YouTube. But, I found it elsewhere for you! This shortfilm will be streamed online temporarily on December 30th as part of another film festival. Don’t miss it! Here’s the link: Shopkeeper |Capri Hollywood International Film Festival

Dark Dance and The Whistle were other Iranian shortfilms that I enjoyed, but I found no digital trace of them. I also liked Collage, Marigold (Tamil), Birds Can’t Fly (Telugu) and Prasanna Vadanah (Telugu).

Making quality films is tougher than what I’d thought. Making short-films and independent films is even tougher given the constraints the makers work with. Meeting these makers was an emotional moment. It ended well for me when I got to interact with filmmaker Nagesh Kukunoor.

If there’s any shortfilm that you enjoyed, please send the link! I’d love to watch!

Leave a comment

Hyderabad Bookfair is happening! Don’t miss it - 29th is the last date. I got a few telugu books. Three of them were given for free :p

We friends met on Christmas and played Codenames.

I finished the SVG tutorial and also learnt animating them.

Subscribe now

Share

We didn’t find rooms in Maredumilli and so camped in tents inside a rubber tree plantation. In a village nearby called Vetukuru, Swecha organisation installed a community digital library inside a government school. I got the chance to visit the library. The computers run FOSS software. Scratch, a tool developed by the MIT to initiate children into programming, is installed on these computers and I saw a few kids playing with it. The initiative is aimed at reducing the digital divide and more schools need it.

We later went near waterfalls. I spent sometime sitting in the middle of a stream, building a seven stones pyramid. Also we were seven people in the trip :)

On the way back to Hyderabad, I enjoyed lunch at Appalaraju Gari Bhojana Hotel in Eluru. The ambience is not great, but the food was amazing.

I finished a telugu book “Chillara Devullu”. The title (~useless Gods) refers to landlords (Doras) and other government officials during the Nizam rule in Telangana. The book shows us the life in 1930s rural Telangana. I learnt about the exploitative aadapapa system through one of the main female characters in the story. The book also reflects on the caste system in rural Telangana, forced religious conversions and how Telugu language suffered under the Nizams.

With this I completed my goal of reading 36 books this year :) You can check the books I read this year here: Link.

I learnt to create interactive SVG charts using Python. Jakob Jenkov’s tutorials helped me immensely. There are other python packages like Pygal that also help build SVG charts using Python, but they did not give me all the customization I’d wanted. Here’s a sample scatter plot: Scatter SVG. It has interactive elements like highlight, tool tips all within it. It is basically like painting with code. I want to further learn creating SVG Animations with Python.

Talking of painting, I attended a fabric bleach art workshop today at Lamakaan. The art, if I can call it so, is just by using bleach on a pure dark cotton fabric. The science behind it seems interesting. I’ll have to read up.

I wrote this story about a woman with PCOS struggling for better health for Deodar Prize. It didn’t get shortlisted. Let me know what you think about it :)

Leave a comment

Pothunna, the shortfilm I acted in, is selected by the Hyderabad International Shortfilm Festival. It will be screened at Prasads on both Saturday and Sunday. About 60 short films from different languages—Persian, Russian, Assamese, etc.,— will be screened over the next two days. So, consider this if you’re interested in watching something beyond mainstream cinema. The ticket for the festival is 500 INR. There are panel discussions as well and you’d get to meet the cast and crew of few of these short films.

Prasads is where I watched many movies. I’m very happy that I will be on the big screen there tomorrow 🤓

I reached a good fitness milestone. I can now squat 100kgs and shoulder press 50kgs comfortably.

Share

Subscribe now

Her first blow struck deep.

Her rebellion ended.

##

A few months ago…

She toddled back, smacking her lips against his. He followed her with his eyes closed, guided by the scent of her lip gloss. His hands fumbled with her shirt buttons. When her shin hit the bed, she fell back on it, dragging him down with her. He opened his eyes wide to see all of her at once. His knees framed her hips as he unbuttoned the last button. Their giggles filled the pauses between their quickened breaths.

“Did you take the pill today?” he murmured, searching her eyes.

She nodded yes with one side of her lips beaming into a smile. But he didn’t notice that the other side fell under the weight of her distracted thoughts. He turned off the lights and curled upon her, pushing her onto the bed and the present. Hiding from the world beneath the blanket, they melted into each other until they smelled alike.

**

“Are these pills even working?” she asked, sitting across from her gynecologist, her hands folded tightly against her stomach. The gynecologist raised his hand to collect reports from the nurse.

She likes visiting this gynecologist for many reasons. One, she can just walk in without having to book an appointment. Who visits a male gynecologist? Two, she kinda likes him checking out on her. Err… checking her. “A doctor is a doctor,” she tells her cysters who ask her to visit a female gynecologist, “just that he is hot.”

“It’s quite common to miss a period on these pills,” the gynecologist said as he glanced through the reports, “they make the uterine lining so thin that sometimes there isn’t any bleeding. It usually isn’t something to worry about.”

That’s the third reason. His eyes twinkle when he explains the science of her condition to her. As he waved his hands to sketch the contours of her body, she rested her chin on her palm pillared on the desk and let romantic music stream in her head.

“Did you get that?” the doctor asked, noticing that she wasn’t paying attention.

The music shut off, and she remembered the actual thing that she wanted to ask before the explanation began.

“So… I’m not pregnant?” She mumbled, struggling to make eye contact with the gynecologist.

He looked at her from above his glasses. “Not if you took pills consistently. You want to get tested?” And that’s the final reason. She never felt judged by him, unlike the gynecologist aunties she had visited in the past.

**

She scanned the menu for vegan desserts. A little treat for all the worry she carried for over a week.

“One masala omelette and a vegan hot chocolate,” she ordered. The gynecologist’s parting words haunted her as the waiter filled her glass with water. “Without sugar, please,” she added.

She sipped some water and found peace romanticizing the ambience. She circled her fingers on the handmade coasters on the table made of palm tree leaves. The tissue papers have eucalyptus trees designed on them. A huge chandelier canopied her, throwing a golden glow on her as she penned a poem. A woman entered, walking slowly with one hand held by her husband and the other on her bulging stomach. Gynec’s words crept in her mind again as she looked at her. The poem stopped abrupt.

“You keep eating outside food always.” Five seconds into the call, and her mom started to yell.

“Amma, please! I just got back from the doctor. Don’t irritate me now.”

“What did the doctor say?”

“To reduce my weight, eat well, and hit the gym. Usual!”

“Just do the household work well… gym and all is not needed.”

“Tell Appa to clean house instead of loitering around in the gym taking selfies then.”

“Arey, I...”

“Okay, my food has arrived. I’ll call back.”

She ate without even looking at food, busy downloading the fitness app. The monthly subscription costs made her think her dad was probably right about her career choice. She scrolled further. “It is only affordable if I am consistent,” she thought. She selected the EMI option and paid for the yearly subscription. She finished eating the masala omelette and logged it on another app. “That’s it for dinner,” she reassured herself as she left. The waiter cleared the table: used tissues, the empty plate, and the half-full hot chocolate.

**

The needle didn’t move an inch. It has been a month since she joined the gym and ran countless miles on the treadmill, often at olympic speeds. And yet, the needle on the weighing machine didn’t budge. She didn’t even drink one liter of warm water in the morning to check if it helps in seeing some reduction. No change.

Disappointed, she stepped off the weighing scale and sneaked towards the weights section, avoiding the gym trainer. She placed a long bar on the bench and added two 10-kilo weights on either side of the bar. She lay down beneath it, gripped the bar with both palms and pushed it upward with a loud grunt. The moment the bar left the rack, it sank toward her chest. She gave out a startled squeal, struggling to push it back. The trainer rushed over and lifted the bar off her neck.

“Madam, you should not do this!” He scolded, shaking his head.

“Thanks for the help,” she muttered, brushing the sweat from her forehead, “but I have to lift weights. Running on treadmills is not helping me lose weight.”

“No, madam. You will develop muscles like men. Why don’t you try Zumba? It’s good for weight loss.”

“But what’s wrong with having muscles like men?” she asked. The gym trainer laughed it off and beckoned her towards the Zumba class.

**

“You do have a bit more testosterone,” the endocrinologist said, flipping through her reports, “but not enough to make you bulky as a man. Continue lifting weights. Good muscle improves insulin sensitivity. It’s the root cause of your problem.”

“But I am unable to lift weights. I almost died the other day.”

The endocrinologist chuckled. “You should start with smaller weights. And you will have to fix your diet as well. Are you logging your food?” The endocrinologist asked for her phone. “See... barely any protein. Eat well and start lifting smaller weights.”

“Could you suggest any diet plan, doctor?”

“Yes, any food restrictions?”

“I wish I could eat chicken and eggs, doctor. My parents didn’t allow me to eat when I was a child and now I cannot fathom the smell of it.”

“That’s fine. There are good whey protein products now.”

“Oh no! I can’t take dairy. Lactose intolerance”

The endocrinologist scratched her head. Most of her diet plans were not useful.

“Okay... you could try whey isolate. It has less lactose. But it seems like you will have to cook plant-based…”

“Doctor!”

She didn’t speak for a moment. The endocrinologist got conscious of scratching her head in that silence.

“I don’t cook,” she said, breaking the silence.

If there was any romanticization she hated in the history of romance, it was the romanticization of women in the kitchen. She once sold all the utensils at home to a scrap dealer and got candies. “Women of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your utensils,” she wrote later.

**

Sweat dotted her forehead. She clenched her fingers so tightly that her nails left imprints on her palms. She shouted so loud as if she were delivering a baby. The shout awakened her boyfriend and other guests in the hotel. She placed the faucet back and squeezed her stomach with her hands.

“What happened! Do you need any help?” her boyfriend asked from the other side of the bathroom, startled.

“Yes, could you get me some black coffee? That might help.” She answered from inside.

The boyfriend boiled water in the kettle, emptied an instant coffee sachet, and stirred until it foamed. He pushed the bathroom door open just enough to slip his hand inside and saw his girl squatting on the commode, steadying herself with one hand against the wall. Not a pretty image, he thought. He got another cup of coffee for himself and they drank together on either side of the door.

“I think I consumed a lot of whey this week,” she said.

“Yeah… I don’t think you should depend completely on supplements. Why don’t you consider what the doctor said?”

She didn’t reply. She lifted the cup to gulp the remaining coffee in one go. Her small mouth couldn’t manage it and coffee spilled on her top. He heard her clicking her tongue in irritation.

“What happened? Okay, sorry!”

“Nothing. Here, take the cup,” she said, handing him the empty cup through the opening of the bathroom door.

She resumed pushing after the coffee break, hoping the squat would push the poop down better. The boyfriend closed the door and cleared the floor of square aluminum foils as she began to grunt.

**

The gynecologist looked at her from above his glasses. “Again?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m fed up with this. Will becoming pregnant help?” she asked, hopelessly, pinching her new burst-outs on her face.

“You got married?” he asked, trying to hide his startle. He received a mild head shake in response.

“Anyways, it is the worst reason to become pregnant. Some symptoms will recede, but PCOS will return after pregnancy,” he said, looking straight into her eyes. “You should work on the root cause—reduce weight, eat well, and hit the gym.”

Same words. She felt as if she was stuck in a loop of her menstrual cycle. She looked at herself in the mirror. The stubborn fat on her waist. The perennial thin line of moustache above her lips. The revenant acne on her cheeks that returns with vengeance every month. The fears of infertility and even cancer. She was done with all of them.

Whenever she faced a problem, she answered it with a rebellion. When her mother pressed her to be ‘presentable,’ she cut her hair short. When her uncles policed her decibel levels, she laughed even louder. Even her choice of Gynecologist was an act of defiance. But what rebellion was left when her own body had turned against her?”

##

And thus she entered the place where she never imagined herself to be in. The air felt heavy, as if the walls were pressing in on her. Her hands trembled as she reached for the knife. She held it up and stared at the blade, tracing the sharp edge with her tired eyes. In its glint she saw both danger and deliverance. A single stroke that could sever her from all of her travails.

She took a deep breath, raised the knife, and stabbed the tofu with a full swing of her arm. Her boyfriend hugged her from behind as she froze still, replaying how the blade glided through the firm skin of tofu.

“You did it! See, it’s so easy!” he said and went on to light the stove and heat a pan on it.

“This has to be mine. You’ll cook with me when we start to live together,” she said, taking the carrot from his hand. He shrugged and left smiling.

She chopped carrots, capsicum, and onions and sautéed them with a dash of olive oil and spices. She added tofu and mushrooms to the mix and squeezed some lime at the end.

The scent of the cooked meal drew the boyfriend back to the kitchen.

“Healthy and tasty Tofu-Mushroom salad, shall I taste it first?” he asked, reaching out his hand.

She slapped his hand.

“No, it’s mine,” she said.

“Okay... let me feed you then!” He lifted a spoonful of the salad to her lips and cupped her chin with his hand to collect the spillover.

Her eyes watered as soon as the spice kissed her tongue. Taking a long breath, she stared out of the window and let the setting sun fall on her face. When the boyfriend lifted another spoonful to feed her, she took the spoon from his hand and fed him. He stayed quiet as he chewed, watching her. She squeezed her eyes, bracing herself.

“When are we moving together, then?” he asked. She let out a soft sigh and wrapped her arms around him in a tight embrace.

There, over his shoulders, she looked at the kitchen around her. The place that imprisoned millions of women is where she’d liberate herself of her fears. The utensils that she felt were chains are now weapons in her fight for better health. She chuckled as she found herself romanticizing the kitchen. She couldn’t help but write a poem. This time, the poem did not end abruptly.

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now

I lunched at Kerala Pepper Kitchen on Sunday. They have a decent Kerala cuisine. I liked the Avial milk for dessert.

I spent a lot of time generating data visuals as SVG charts using Python. There are a couple of packages like pygal for this purpose but none gave me complete customisation that I want to. I’ll have to check more next week. Let me know if you know of any better method.

The Great Pre-Wedding show is on Zee5. It’s a simple and hilarious watch.

I came to Rajahmundry and am writing to you sitting by the riverside and sipping lemon tea :)

“ఎన్ని సార్లు బ్రేక్అప్ చెప్తావు రా!” మాధవ్ కసిరాడు.

తల దించుకుని మౌనంగా కూర్చున్నాడు గోపి. ఈ ఏడాదిలో అయిదవ బ్రేక్అప్ ఇది. దాదాపు ప్రతీ నెల బ్రేక్అప్ చేయడం, మాధవ్ దగ్గరకు వెళ్లడం, కుయ్యోమని ఏడవడం. ఇదో అలవాటు అయిపోయింది గోపికి. టెబుల్ మీదున్న అమ్మాయి బొమ్మ చేతి నుంచి కడవ తీసి తల మీద పెట్టాడు. బొమ్మ చేతిని కూడా బుజం దగ్గర తిప్పి తలమీద ఉన్న కడవ పడిపోకుండా పెట్టాడు. నడుము ఇంకా వంగే ఉంది.

“గోపి! నీ సమస్య ఏంటో చెప్తే నేను పరిష్కారం చెప్తాను కదా!” అంటూ గోపి పక్కన కూర్చోని బుజం మీద చెయ్యి వేసి అడిగాడు మాధవ్.

“నాకు ఎవరు నచ్చడం లేదురా”, తల ఎత్తకుండా, బొమ్మ నడుమును సరిచేస్తూ అన్నాడు గొపి.

అవును నిజంగానే గోపికి ఎవరు నచ్చడం లేదు. అందరిలో ఏదో ఒక లోపం చూపించి బ్రేక్అప్ చెప్పేశాడు. ఒక అమ్మాయి లొడలొడ వాగుతూనే ఉంటది “not a good listener” అని చెప్పి బ్రేక్అప్ చెప్పాడు. ఉంకో అమ్మాయి అసలు మాట్లాడట్లేదు “too boring” అని చెప్పి బ్రేక్అప్ చెప్పాడు. అమ్మాయి బొమ్మ నడుము సరైంది కానీ బొడ్డు మధ్యలోకి లేదు. ఆ బొడ్డును పూడ్చి, సరిగ్గా నడుము మధ్యలో మరొక బొడ్డు పెట్టాడు.

“నీకు అసలు ఎలాంటి అమ్మాయి కావాలి రా? నీకు క్లారిటి ఉందా?”

బొమ్మను పక్కన పెట్టేసి, “నాకు నాలాంటి అమ్మాయి కావాలి రా” అని చెప్పాడు గోపి తడుముకోకుండా.

“అంటే?”

“అంటే… నా లాగా… నాలా ఆలోచించే అమ్మాయి. నా ఇష్టాఅయిష్టాలు పంచుకోవాలి.. సినిమాలు..షికార్లులో భేదాభిప్రాయం కూడదు,” అంటూ పెద్ద లిస్టే చెప్పాడు గోపి.

మాధవ్ కాసేపు ధీర్ఘంగా ఆలోచనల్లో పడ్డాడు. గోపి మళ్లీ బొమ్మ నడుమును నాజూకుగా చెక్కడం మొదలెట్టాడు.

“మార్కెట్ కి వెళ్లి శెనగ పిండి తే.” ఆలోచన ముగించి ఆర్డర్ వేశాడు మాధవ్.

“ఏ! నేను dieting చేస్తున్నాను రా!” పొట్ట మీద చెయ్యి వేసి అన్నాడు గోపి.

“నీకు బజ్జీలు వెయ్యడానికి కాదు బాబ్జి… వెళ్ళి తే చెప్తా”

“సరే!” అని గోపి లేచాడు.

“అరవై కిలోలు”

“ఒరేయ్! అంతెందుకురా!”

“నువ్వు తేరా!”

కొద్ది సేపట్లో అరవై కిలోలు శెనగ పిండితో గోపి తిరిగి వచ్చాడు. గోపిని సోఫా మీద కూర్చోపెట్టి, శెనగ పిండి మెత్తాన్ని పెద్ద గిన్నెలో వేశాడు మాధవ్. గోపికి ఏమి అర్థం అవ్వడం లేదని మోహంలో స్పష్టంగా తెలిసింది.

“ఇప్పుడు నీకొకటి చూపిస్తా.. నువ్వు భయపడకూడదు”

“ఏంటి రా!”

ఒక చిరునవ్వు నవ్వాడు మాధవ్. కళ్లు మూసి పార్వతి దేవిని స్మరించి ఒక శ్లోకం పాడాడు. టేబుల్ మీదున్న అమ్మాయి బొమ్మ కడవతో పాటు నడుము తిప్పుకుంటూ వెళ్ళి శెనగ పిండి గిన్నెలోకి దూకింది. అది చూసి గోపి నోరు పాదింతలయింది.

“ఎడమ చేయి చూపీ” అని మాధవ్ అడిగాడు. నోరప్పగించే చేయెత్తాడు గోపి. Gillette Blade తో చిటికెన వేలు చర్మం వళిచి శెనగ పిండిలో రక్తాన్ని కలిపాడు మాధవ్. గోపి కుయ్యోమని అరిచి వేలు నోట్లో పెట్టుకున్నాడు.

శెనగ పిండి అంతా ఒక అమ్మాయి విగ్రహంలా తయారయ్యింది. నూనె లేకుండానే ఎర్రగా అయింది. బంగారపు ఛాయ. పొడవాటి జుట్టు. నాజూకు నడుము. మధ్యలో బొడ్డు.

“ఇదుగోరా గోపి. నీ లాంటి అమ్మాయి. ఇంటికి తీస్కుని వెళ్ళి సుఖంగా ఉండండి. నన్ను ఇక దొబ్బకు.” అని చివరి మంత్రం పాడేశాడు మాధవ్. గోపిని చూసి కన్ను కొట్టింది విగ్రహం. గోపి సిగ్గు పడ్డాడు.

నిజంగా తన లాంటి అమ్మాయేనా టెస్టు చేద్దాం అని, “నీ favorite hero ఎవరు?”, అని గోపి అడిగాడు. “బాలకృష్ణ” అంటూ అమ్మాయి సిగ్గు పడింది. గోపి కళ్ళు పదింతలయ్యాయి.

“మాధవూ! ఇలా ఎలా చేశావు రా! Thanks రా!” అని మాధవ్ ను కౌగిలించుకున్నాడు గోపి.

“ఆ ఆ.. పేరు ఏం పెడతావో పెట్టి ఇంటికి తీసుకుని పో”

బాగా ఆలోచించి, “స-రో-జ”, అన్నాడు గోపి.

***

మరుసటి వారం:

గొపి మాధవ్ ఇంటికి వెళ్ళాడు. “ఈడేంటి మళ్ళీ వచ్చాడు”, అని అనుకుని, “ఏంటిరా! నీలాంటి పిల్లలు కూడా కావాలా?” అని మాధవ్ వెటకారంగా అడిగాడు. గోపి హాలులో సొఫా మీద దిగాలుగా కూర్చున్నాడు. మాధవ్ కి మనసులో పిడుగు పడ్డట్టు అయింది.

“మళ్ళీ ఏమయిందిరా!”

“బ్రేక్అప్”

“ఏ! నీలాంటి అమ్మాయేగా!”

“ఈసారి అమ్మాయే బ్రేక్అప్ చెప్పిందిరా!” అన్నాడు గోపి తల దించుకుంటూ.

“ఏంటి!?”

“రాత్రుల్లు గురక పెడుతున్నానట. మాట్లాడే అప్పుడు ఫోను ఎక్కువ చూస్తున్నానట. పంక్చువాలిటి లేదట. ఇలా ఎవెవో చప్పి బ్రేక్అప్ చెప్పిందిరా” అంటూ గోపి ఏడుపు మొదలు పెట్టాడు. మాధవ్ బుజం మీద చేతులేసి ఓదార్చాడు.

“దీని బట్టి నీకేమర్ధమైంది రా గోపి?”

గోపి మౌనంగా ఏడవసాగాడు.

“నీకు నువ్వే నచ్చవురా గోపి. ఇంక వేరే వాళ్ళు ఏం నచ్చుతారు? ఇప్పటికైనా వెరే వాళ్ళలో లోపాలు చూడడం ఆపి, నిన్ను నువ్వు సరిదిద్దుకో!” అని మాధవ్ హితోపదేశం చేశాడు.

సరే అన్నట్టుగా తలాడించాడు గోపి.

Leave a comment

Share

Subscribe now