Thirugadadu / Walking

Walking/wandering is a way of knowing the world. It is not just to be on the ground, immersed in the world at eye-level. Thirugaadadu, in Kannada, means roaming, wandering. This is walking through a milieu or ecotones that is simultaneously moving and dwelling.

 

Walking is strolling, smelling, stepping, pausing, listening, touching, resting, attending to the non-human, familiarising even though it will change – and familiarising again, and again, over time, developing an understanding of a shifting temporal ground.

 

For me, walking is a method of exploring and experiencing places, doing research and activism. Walking is a fundamental practice, a meta-practice of being in the world. My research is driven by my own movement, and my movements shape my research, in turn, slowly cancelling out the two terms, where walking is simultaneously research and activism in fragile ecologies.