December 2025: Ganges blue, Delhi metro, Mum in Kwa-Zulu Natal
The above photo is of the Ganges River about 40 km along the road into the mountains before Rishikesh. I also took this photo because of the staircase, noticeable for its trans colours of light blue and pink. If there were also white, you'd have the 3 colours of the trans flag. I'm in the habit of noticing this colour combination and come across it here in India more than I expected.
Bell's mum is navigating some life changes, and December was punctuated by leaving India for South Africa to spend time with her.
Previous monthly updates in this series:
August 2025
September 2025
October 2025
November 2025
December 2025
A hand-written and a typed-up version are both here. The written version stands as testament to how this update came to be. It was created through constraints: one page, one go at writing it.
The typed-up version is, probably, in most cases, easier to read. It is also a practice in re-reading my own writing and accepting it: without editing, without more curation.
Is it true that no two people's handwriting is the same? Is it also true that for anyone's handwriting, it doesn't even stay the same over the course of their own life? I believe these statements are true. Your pen to paper today, my pen to paper in February, are both pieces of our lives and by extension pieces of the world that can only be created once.
Start: Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India
End: Howick, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Written date: February 6, 2026
Themes: Ganges /// Delhi Metro /// Visiting Mum
Ganges
I'm writing from memory in February, and suddenly remembered that I THINK we started December by waking up at the Ganges River, ~40 km before Rishikesh. It was turquoise here, and we saw blue + brown Kingfishers. It expanded my perception of the Ganges. We followed it to Rishikesh, where there were groups rafting on it, and ghats leading down to it, where people sit, talk, take pictures, bathe, wash clothes, take some of it home in an orange little jug you can buy for this purpose.
Delhi Metro
Just speaking about my individual experience (as always). Delhi has a metro?! News to me. Best part of Delhi visit. Easy to load rupees onto the colourful metro card. Security lines at every station. CCTV everywhere (I feel icky a bit feeling comforted by that). Super-frequent trains. Super-wide, super-long trains. All over the city. Always a womens-only car, and this is strictly enforced by the people, not just even primarily by the metro staff. In the words of our homestay host, "Delhi would stop working without the metro."
Visiting Mum
I am so grateful, if I had a stronger word I'd use it, for Kari suggesting we visit Bell's mum for the holidays. I'm not ready to talk about this in a fulsome way. I am thinking of mum reading that people with "rage, rage against the dying of the light" from an old paperback of that poet's poems, as the 3 of us sat in her living room, maybe there was a fire going that night, too. <3
A few pictures from this month
Mini linkies section
the pondscum collective published two essays in December that I have thought about a lot since. I'm going to share them both:
How To Change Minds When Debate is Dead: "Nevertheless, this is the reality you operate in - if you cannot provide someone an incentive structure to change their beliefs, they will not change their beliefs. The first lesson to take from this is to never make it difficult for someone to change their beliefs. This sounds obvious, and yet without fail debate bros fixate on winning and extracting a humiliating emotional and social cost from everyone they supposedly aim to convince. What's your goal? Are you here to change minds or are you here to win status? You can be honest with yourself, you don't have to tell anyone. Perhaps you wish to earn status now to change minds later? By accumulating power you get to incentivise people directly to change! Totally valid, but very frequently one is mistaken for the other."
And How Women Came to Power: "We are stuck in a structural double-bind - men cling to a crumbling monopoly on violence as patriarchal structures become inhuman neuter leviathans of capital, while women ascend in psychosymbolic dominance but remain physically threatened and materially disadvantaged. Without a shared language of vulnerability, this threatens to metastasize into a collapse of trust, symbolic war and patriarchal guerilla violence."
Finally, the 3rd linky for this month is Search for a new name by Amruza Birdie. This was a window into how names impact our lives and relationships. Of course I think of my partner Bell and her name change (to Bell, and also, any future name changes) and the power and process of going through something like this. At the same time -- this story reminded me that name changes are certainly not the exclusive domain of trans folks. It's something that's an option for all of us. "There’s copious evidence and brain research that illustrates how hearing the sound of your name activates your brain more than almost any other input. Most people love hearing their names, but I’ve hated hearing mine my entire life – even from my closest family members."