Kiran Jonnalagadda’s Blog

The Films for Freedom 2004 festival. Details at jace.

A beggar on Brigade road.

Am I the victim or the offender?

Mobile Life 7.0.

If you’ve been following the Films for Freedom 2004 festival, you probably know that various right-wing Hindu groups have been trying to disrupt the proceedings. They first successfully managed to prevent ticket sales, and then rallied against the screening of several sensitive documentaries—particularly Rakesh Sharma’s Final Solution on the Gujarat carnage—on the grounds that these do not have a censor board certificate. What is conveniently ignored is that the censor board has been dragging its feet for several months, assumably under the influence of the same groups.

Since screening a film without a censor certificate is indeed a legal offence, the uncensored films will now be privately screened at a different venue (public screening laws don’t apply to private screenings). Entry is by invitation only.^† The address is:

AITUC, No. 6, Shirur Park Road
Sheshadripuram (behind Natraj Talkies, entrance from Sampige Road)
Bangalore. Ph: (080) 2344 6497

The screening starts at 10 AM on Saturday and Sunday. Please show your support for the right to free speech in this country.

† Feel free to invite yourself.

I was riding down Jayanagar’s RV road yesterday when a bunch of cops flagged me down—way too many of them for a regular random check. As I stopped, one of them got on behind and the others goaded me to start riding again. The cop asked to be taken to the next signal. Was he taking a lift without bothering to ask if I wanted to give him one?

Then I see other two-wheelers with cops sitting behind, and my cop insists I go faster. I’m pushing 70 kmph in 6 PM traffic but he doesn’t think it’s fast enough. Was he pulling a fast one on me? Was he going to make me stop at the signal and fine me for breaking the law? Another cop on a Kinetic Honda zooms past. Were these chaps having a race for the thrill of it? “Enu saar, race-a?” (“What sir, having a race?”) I ask. He doesn’t reply. Were they testing the speed limits in rush hour traffic? Could I expect to see a road sign tomorrow declaring 70 kmph as the new limit?

The cop chants “vehicle light, vehicle light” and points ahead. I don’t get it. It’s 6 PM and the middle of the summer. There’s at least an hour to go before people start turning on the lights. He’s too preoccupied to explain. He squeezes my shoulder when I approach a clot too fast, wails when we have to stop at a crossing and the engine dies because I tried to start in second gear, screams obscenities at vehicles that don’t move out the way fast enough, and in general waves his arms and chants “light, light” a lot.

When we get to South End Circle, the light is green and the cop on the Kinetic zooms through, so I too follow. My cop points at a vehicle ahead, and I suddenly realise that maybe all these guys are chasing a truck that dared to enter city limits in daytime. But as soon as I overtake it, he points again and says “Tata Sumo.” When I get close, he screams at the driver for taking too long to get out of the way. We finally stop for the Lalbagh West Gate signal and both cops get off, run to the head of traffic, and apprehend a guy on a scooter.

I didn’t get to see what happened after that. The signal went green, so I turned around and headed back to Jayanagar for my meeting.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet my candidate for the dumbest registration scheme on the Web: the Living Digital magazine website. Here’s a sample page from their site. Disable Javascript and open the page, and you get to see the content. Enable Javascript, and the page insists the content is available only to subscribers.

Where did they find a programmer to cook up such a scheme?

The baby giggling guy is at the right in that group. One of his friends has a Nancy Ajram song for a ringtone. sriniram, it’s your favourite song.

One of these guys has an SMS alert tone of a baby giggling.

This bill says we ate a gopi.

Rocker woman.

The Dubyastan(d).

Of all the ways you could possibly have a breakdown.

Best scene in the movie.

Watching balloonman: the things one does just to hang out with friends. I’ll take a free private screening to a paid public screening any day.

Rear-view mirror on an Amby.

And here they are, the innards. Can you see those two squares with spots on them? Those spots are the cavities left by the explosion.

HDFC Bank ATM security at 1:20am. The dude slept through all the sound I made.

My phone crashed while typing this, so I ended up waiting for something like five minutes on the roadside waiting to post this. No one mugged me. For those of you whining about the roads being unsafe at night, get over it. Bangalore’s a very safe place.

In the spirit of that old saying, my laptop power adaptor is dead. Long live my laptop power adaptor.

Kishore had to saw it open and it was all cooked inside. I don’t know where he’s kept the missing half. He’s asleep and I can’t find it.

The Rs 4538 bill is going to keep my pocket smouldering for a while.

Interestingly, while my dead adaptor was assembled in India (and sold in the US), this one’s from Thailand.

Private screening, for real this time.

Private screening at PVR.

The numbers on this bag don’t work. Time to call the retailers and ask for the price. Even if the adaptor can be fixed, it may be a good idea to keep a spare for the next time this happens.

My occupation for the day, now that I’ve been rendered powerless.

The insurance companies deserve a kick up their collective arse. None of them will insure a laptop because they consider the risk of a claim too high. What’s stopping them from charging a higher premium or using other means to reduce the risk? Of course, BESCOM is deserving too. Far more deserving.

It’s dead.

Option 1: Go to the Apple store and pay them a ransom of $100 30% Apple India tax for a new adaptor. That’s hoping they keep spare parts.

Option 2: Get Kishore to look at it and pray that the busted component will only cost 50p to replace.

The mosquito repellant wars are just as interesting as the toothpaste wars. Mortein’s latest gimmick is a hexagonal coil that they claim gives a boost at every corner. If you look at this picture carefully, you’ll see that the lighted tip has jumped a corner: by the time I wrote this, one turn had burnt itself loose.

And also while I typed, the downstairs tripper went out again. Looks like a second spike came down the line even before power was restored.