Make sure you’ve read part I and part II.

The project of demolishing the building opposite my house has taken a new turn. As part of the deal between me and my neighbours and the contractor, Monday, November 18, was his deadline to finish the part of the job that required the use of the offensively loud pneumatic jackhammers. The contractor was also to pause work on Sunday (November 17), which he didn’t: the workers didn’t use the jackhammers but continued working with sledgehammers and the much simpler electric drills.

My neighbours and I also noticed the two tractors that powered the jackhammers were driven away on Sunday morning. We simply assumed the contractor had leased the equipment and was returning them for the day to avoid paying rent. However, the workers continued to demolish the building on Monday with sledgehammers and electric drills. (One of us went over but the contractor wasn’t on site.) The tractors didn’t return either.

The situation continued into Tuesday. At this point we began to wonder if the article in The Hindu might have had anything to do with it. Late last week, after we’d lodged out complaint with the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB), I reached out to one of my colleagues at The Hindu asking if they could help expedite the board’s response. Apparently they did, and they also arranged for the noise complaints to be covered as a small item in the paper the next day (November 16).

It wasn’t implausible that the people who made the work noisy in the first place decided to take a step back at this point and revert to more peaceable methods. A user named “Joseph” also posted an encouraging comment on the article: “If the TNPCB cannot take action on a complaint already received, then what is the drafted jurisprudence and responsibility of the TNPCB? Hope the lawmakers amend the defective law and permit the TNPCB to take suitable action against willful noise pollutors.”

But my neighbours and I also began to feel guilty: if that bigwig at the other end of the road didn’t allow the contractor to use an excavator and we didn’t want him to use pneumatic jackhammers, were we condemning the workers the contractor had hired to slowly, painstakingly demolish the building with sledgehammers and electric drills over several weeks?

Fortunately, Wednesday (November 20) dawned with good news for us as well as the workers: the contractor brought the excavator back. Unlikely though it may be, I’m tempted to think the article in The Hindu also spooked the bigwig. The excavator is currently parked on the front side of the building and we’re all excited for it to bring what remains of the structure down in a day or two.

As of 4.25 pm on June 4, the NDA alliance stood to win 294 seats in the Lok Sabha while the INDIA bloc was set for 225 seats. This is more than a pleasant surprise.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) consumed everything in its path in its aggressive bid to stay in power. If it is being pushed back, it is not a feat that can be the product of nothing.

After a decade of resistance without outright victories, in a manner of speaking, the pushback is a resounding abnegation of the BJP’s politics, and by doing that it embodies what the resistance has stood for: good-faith governance informed by reason and respect for the spirit and letters of the Constitution.

Embodiment is a treasure because it gives form to some specific meaning in our common and shared reality, which is important: it needs to breach BJP supporters’ pinched-off reality as well. There needs to be no escaping it.

Embodied meaning is also a treasure because the meaning is no longer restricted to “just” shouts of protest carried off by the wind, words left unread or protests the national government saw fit to ignore.

This is 294-227 — or whatever the figures are once the ECI has declared final results in all constituencies.

It’s a win for democracy, but a lot of my elation is coming from the notion that the outcome of the polls also demonstrate not only that journalists’ work matters — we already knew that — but that we’re not pissing into the wind with it. It’s being read, heard, and watched. People are paying attention.

Congratulations. Keep going.

I’ve been a journalist for 12 years. For the first few years these anniversaries helped to remember that I was able to survive in the industry but now, after 12, I’m well and truly part of the industry itself — the thing that others survive — and the observances don’t mean anything as such. This said, my professional clock runs from June 1 from May 31 and the day is when I break up the last 365 days into a neat little block of memories and put it away, with some notes about whether anything was worth remembering.

Last year of course, I joined The Hindu as deputy science editor and began a new chapter in many ways (see here and here). One that I’d like to take note of here is The Hindu’s paywall. As you may know, thehindu.com has soft and hard paywalls. You hit the former when you read 10 free articles; the eleventh will have to be paid for. The latter is the paywall in front of articles that are otherwise not freely available to read. Most articles behind a soft paywall are straight news reports and, of course, The Hindu’s prized editorials. Analyses, commentaries, features, and most explainers are behind the hard paywall.

We all know why these barriers exist: journalism needs to be paid for, and better journalism all the more so. But one straightforward downside is that the contents of articles behind paywalls are rarely, if ever, represented in the public conversations and debates of the day — and I haven’t been able to make my peace with this fact. Yet.

Eight years at The Wire spoilt me for it but the upside was clear: everything from analysis to commentary would be part of the marketplace of ideas. Siddharth Varadarajan was clear The Wire would always be free to read. Of course, The Wire and The Hindu are different beasts and pursuing very different survival strategies, and on the path The Hindu is treading, quite simply forcing people to pay to read has become necessary.

This shift has also forced me to contend with my own writing — mostly explainers, op-eds, and reports of physics research — being confined to a smaller, but paying, subset of The Hindu’s readers rather than all of them as well as to the public at large, which in turn often makes me feel… distance, not readily visible, if at all.

Just one more thing to figure out.

As of 4.25 pm on June 4, the NDA alliance stood to win 294 seats in the Lok Sabha while the INDIA bloc was set for 225 seats. This is more than a pleasant surprise.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) consumed everything in its path in its aggressive bid to stay in power. If it is being pushed back, it is not a feat that can be the product of nothing.

After a decade of resistance without outright victories, in a manner of speaking, the pushback is a resounding abnegation of the BJP’s politics, and by doing that it embodies what the resistance has stood for: good-faith governance informed by reason and respect for the spirit and letters of the Constitution.

Embodiment is a treasure because it gives form to some specific meaning in our common and shared reality, which is important: it needs to breach BJP supporters’ pinched-off reality as well. There needs to be no escaping it.

Embodied meaning is also a treasure because the meaning is no longer restricted to “just” shouts of protest carried off by the wind, words left unread or protests the national government saw fit to ignore.

This is 294-227 — or whatever the figures are once the ECI has declared final results in all constituencies.

It’s a win for democracy, but a lot of my elation is coming from the notion that the outcome of the polls also demonstrate not only that journalists’ work matters — we already knew that — but that we’re not pissing into the wind with it. It’s being read, heard, and watched. People are paying attention.

Congratulations. Keep going.

I’ve been a journalist for 12 years. For the first few years these anniversaries helped to remember that I was able to survive in the industry but now, after 12, I’m well and truly part of the industry itself — the thing that others survive — and the observances don’t mean anything as such. This said, my professional clock runs from June 1 from May 31 and the day is when I break up the last 365 days into a neat little block of memories and put it away, with some notes about whether anything was worth remembering.

Last year of course, I joined The Hindu as deputy science editor and began a new chapter in many ways (see here and here). One that I’d like to take note of here is The Hindu’s paywall. As you may know, thehindu.com has soft and hard paywalls. You hit the former when you read 10 free articles; the eleventh will have to be paid for. The latter is the paywall in front of articles that are otherwise not freely available to read. Most articles behind a soft paywall are straight news reports and, of course, The Hindu’s prized editorials. Analyses, commentaries, features, and most explainers are behind the hard paywall.

We all know why these barriers exist: journalism needs to be paid for, and better journalism all the more so. But one straightforward downside is that the contents of articles behind paywalls are rarely, if ever, represented in the public conversations and debates of the day — and I haven’t been able to make my peace with this fact. Yet.

Eight years at The Wire spoilt me for it but the upside was clear: everything from analysis to commentary would be part of the marketplace of ideas. Siddharth Varadarajan was clear The Wire would always be free to read. Of course, The Wire and The Hindu are different beasts and pursuing very different survival strategies, and on the path The Hindu is treading, quite simply forcing people to pay to read has become necessary.

This shift has also forced me to contend with my own writing — mostly explainers, op-eds, and reports of physics research — being confined to a smaller, but paying, subset of The Hindu’s readers rather than all of them as well as to the public at large, which in turn often makes me feel… distance, not readily visible, if at all.

Just one more thing to figure out.