A flat thirty-two floors above Bengaluru. Ten residents, if you count properly: two humans, one very small human, six cats and a balcony that behaves like a tenth. chai, patti aur cats is the reel account. Hummingenesis is where the reels stay, and a home where these residents live.
Divya is a researcher and the author of published scientific papers, an environmentalist, and — the part that decides most of her week — a rescuer. She works on what needs help: the wetlands that get filled in quietly, the insects nobody counts, the animal at the side of the road that everyone drives past.
She is also mum to a fifteen-month-old and to six cats, one of whom cannot use her hind legs and gets around anyway. Rescue is not a side project here. It is the reason the flat looks the way it does.
The reels are the light end of all this — tea, leaves, cats being unreasonable. The writing is the other end. 43 pieces in the Journal are hers, on the things that are disappearing while we are not looking.
Piggy came first. She was rescued from the streets of Koramangala, and everything since has followed from her. Her favourite place to sleep is on your chest, curled up and listening to your heartbeat.
She is mother to Kudru and Tingmo, and she is the one you need to keep an eye on: Piggy likes to make a run for it.
Lutfi was the second to arrive, and she is the gentlest of the six, and the prettiest. She is a mother to all of them without being anyone's actual mother.
Late at night she gets the zoomies. About food she is extremely vocal.
Also Tungu or Chaudhary
Tingmo is one of the gingers, and she has been Rambo since the day she was born. She has her father's face and his voice, and looks so much like a tom that people take her for one.
At home she answers to Tungu, or Chaudhary: when a fight breaks out, she is the one who steps in and settles it.
Kudru finds most of the world alarming. What she does like is pitti-pitti on her bum, and she will take as much of it as you are offering.
She is also the unannounced leader when it comes to food: the first to come and nag you for it, and she keeps nagging, continuously, until you serve them all.
Tainy is the only male cat in the house, and he meows in a whisper. He is a mama's boy, and he always knows how to get his mama's attention.
He also always knows when the doorbell is about to ring, and escapes to his secret hiding place before anyone reaches the door.
Also Poppy
Poppins, or Poppy, is the colourful one: strange, playful and loving in roughly equal measure.
She was rescued after a spinal injury left her paralysed from the waist down. It has not slowed her much. When she runs, she drifts round the corners like Steve McQueen.
Between them they decide which windowsill matters this week, supervise every watering, and appear in most of what gets filmed. Their series is here, and each of them has a page of their own.
A balcony garden thirty-two floors up, in Bengaluru light and Bengaluru rain. Some of it thrives, some of it does not, and the failures get filmed too.
Bulbuls, bees, the occasional kite riding the thermals at eye level, and a sky doing something different every evening.
Rescue does not stay on the balcony. Dogs get fed, treated and rehomed; the ones who need longer stay longer. None of that is content, and most of it never gets filmed — but it is the reason the flat runs the way it does.
The same balcony, four different evenings.
Instagram is where the reels are made, but Instagram is not an archive. Reels get buried, accounts get locked, apps change their minds. So everything posted to @chai_patti_aur_cats is copied to two places that outlast a feed: YouTube Shorts, and this site.
A reel goes up on Instagram
Nothing changes about how the page is run. Post as usual.
The connector notices
A scheduled job checks the account a few times a day through the Instagram API, using the account owner's own access token.
It becomes a YouTube Short
The video is fetched, checked for the vertical, under-three-minutes shape Shorts needs, and uploaded with a title and description built from the original caption.
And it lands here
The reel gets its own page on this site — a link that works for someone with no Instagram account, and one that will still work when the feed has moved on.
Every video and caption here belongs to @chai_patti_aur_cats. The connector reads the account with its owner's own access token — it is a mirror the page keeps of itself, not a scraper.
Start with the reels, or read what I'm doing now.
