Kiran Jonnalagadda’s Blog

November 2nd, 2005: I wanted to pray.

(Nov 4) Wherein I compete with the street-side Polaroid photographer: Where is my sense of humour? Why didn’t I offer to click and mail them the pictures? Why refuse outright? With those two staring at me, why didn’t I just click instead of putting the camera away? I came here to learn to connect to people. They attempted and I rejected them.

(Nov 2) I’ve been here before. I’ve gaped at these idols. I’ve photographed them, even been happy with one of my pictures. Yet, on seeing them again now a year later, my first sensation was of being overpowered. Weak in the knees, except it wasn’t in the knees. Secure. Powerless, yet secure. Needing no guard. Safe. Like I could spread my arms and fall back, and know that I needn’t worry. That all my worries would be taken care of. I felt like I had to do something to deserve this. I wanted to pray. Now this is a very curious sensation since I’m an atheist, non-religious, don’t believe in reincarnation, don’t recognise a higher authority. Who or what would I pray to? Why prayer, of all the things I haven’t felt the need to do before?

Go to Bylakuppe before the tourists run over the place and the Tibetans end up having to enforce security or shut off access.

“Aha! A drum! Let’s tap it!” seems to be the universal reaction of people walking in. Then they walk past, see that the other one has a banner on it saying “DON’T TOUCH”, and turn around to notice this one has the same, feeling whatever it is that they feel on having such a realisation. They don’t touch it again.

This monk comes up to me with an old towel and wipes away the water spill I’ve been sitting by for at least a couple of hours. I had knocked my bottle over accidentally, ignored it for a second thinking the cap was on, and then realised it wasn’t.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he says smiling faintly, finishes wiping, and walks away.

(Nov 4, 4:15 PM) Why am I so lonely? So wanting to run back to the comfort of home? What am I missing here? The hardest moments are when waking from dreamy sleep, waking to find that they are all gone, that I am alone in a foreign place with no friends and no activity to look forward to.

No friends and no activity.

I came here to learn to connect to people. I’ve discovered I also need to learn to plan. I’ve done neither yet. Which probably explains why I so crave the comfort of familiarity. If I go back now, will it be defeat? Or will I go back at least knowing what it is I lack? If a mere three days here are being so hard, how will I manage a full month travelling alone? I have the coming week to use wisely. Should it be here? Should it be elsewhere?

Walking lets one look to the sides at sights off the road. Riding does not afford this.

The canteen at the monastery is a good social spot. It’s dingy, seems unclean, but has a very friendly air to it. The manager is always smiling. Her joy invariably transfers to anyone walking in. The waiter, one of two or three who emerge occasionally from the kitchen, is from Orissa and speaks Hindi. He shares a certain intimacy with the monks. They pat him when they come in. He taunts them in return, bearing a large grin, questions them, hears their tales. The manager’s smile erupts into a happy laugh.

(Nov 3) This white woman sported a Lowepro backpack and a Canon SLR. Digital. Her two girlfriends, also white, hung around while she clicked. I wanted to tell her that this was a bad time to be shooting. The sun was far too high in the sky, far too bright. She’d get bad highlights where it reflected off the gold, or if she metered for it, the rest of the area would be in shadow. It seemed a good thing to start a conversation over. Go up and tell her she’d get a good shot if she came early, before 8 AM, and maybe if she stood at this particular spot, she’d get a good angle on Buddha Amitayus. (I like the picture I got last year.)

I didn’t tell her. I took out my camera, flashed it where she could see, hoped she would notice and start a conversation, but didn’t go up and talk. Then to my disappointment, she and her girlfriends walked out. I did too, hoping to speak up at the footwear stand, but all three were walking away by the time I got mine. I didn’t see them again.

The next day (4th) I came back at 8 AM and found it was still too bright. The problem wasn’t the angle of the sun. Yesterday it was better because of the cloud cover. It had rained all night and continued to drizzle into the morning. The sun didn’t come out until 10 AM (9 AM?), which was when I, sitting inside, had watched as the statues got noticeably brighter.

This place is overrun by tourists. Not so many as to be a security concern, but still too many. How can one possibly sustain a non-material monastic life when faced with an endless parade of the latest fashions in clothes and cameras? One monk gave me a suspicious stare yesterday in the canteen. Perhaps he was bothered I, a tourist, was invading one of the last few remaining spaces? That I wasn’t eating at the tourist restaurants like I should be? Or is that my ingrained paranoia speaking?

I visited Sara Je and Sara Mey yesterday. They are the real religious centres. The monks there are unaccustomed to tourists running around the place. Neither structure is as impressive as the Golden Temple, which also appears to be a more recent construction. The core Tibetan settlement is around Sara Je. There’s an entire village there. A monk inside the Golden Temple said it was painted six years ago. That means the structure itself can’t be much older.

Why was it built? Did they realise that their religious centre would be taken over by visiting tourists? Perhaps they built it expecting that? Built it knowing that the inconvenience caused would be easily offset by being able to spread the message of their faith and their cause for a free Tibet? Perhaps everyone who is involved, every monk, has his or her own explanation for it?

(Jan 12) Do they even care for a free Tibet anymore? They seem comfortably settled into their lives here. Is “Free Tibet” a cause that gives them something to talk about but not one that spurs them to action?

(For Zee, currently away seeking her own.)

About the BTM Layout flyover:

Bannerghatta Road is having unusually heavy traffic this week, an increase that can’t be explained away by a new complex coming up and residents moving in over the weekend. Today I learnt the reason: Hosur Road is closed for widening to ten lanes and all the traffic to Electronic City is being diverted through Bannerghatta Road via Anekal.

The first two kilometres of my daily commute now take half an hour! If work on Hosur Road goes at the same pace as the Bannerghatta Circle flyover, it’s going to be like this for the next three or four years. I’m so fucked.

I upgraded my website and opened a new blog there that I intend to use for my professional interests, so LJ isn’t cluttered with them. There’s also a new photoblog. Check it out.

The two are syndicated on LJ at jacefeed and jacephoto.

I’m not sure I want to have a blogroll. The people who influence my daily thoughts deserve an acknowledgement, but I used to have one and the effects of PageRank were all too prominent. Linking is politics.

Why do you link to someone? Because they’re your friend, or for the quality of their content? If the former, why scratch backs in public view? If the latter, how do you explain to your other friend that she’s making an admirable effort, but isn’t good enough to get a link? How do you explain to someone that they no longer feature in your roll because you no longer agree with their political stance, when you would have otherwise silently unsubscribed? How do you win the rapport of that reader who sees your roll everyday, wishes she could be on it, but feels like an outsider among your circle of prominent friends? Would you have the energy to maintain your blogroll once the initial enthusiasm wears off?

Much as I think they’re a fundamental necessity to blog-hosted conversation, I can’t think of a fair way to maintain them. What do you think?

The Petronas Twin Towers dominate Kuala Lumpur’s skyline. Unlike the skyscrapers of Manhattan, the towers stand alone, as giants on the skyline from anywhere in the city. When I stepped out of KL Sentral Stesen, I could see them in the distance. They appeared just around the corner. Later that day near Sham’s house at the other end of the city, they still seemed just around the corner.

The towers were once the tallest buildings in the world, but that is a disputed claim, largely revolving around what is being measured. They were the tallest if you consider the spires as adding to the structure’s height. If not, the Sears Tower in Chicago held that title. The Sears Tower also has antennas on top extending beyond the Petronas’ spires, but by accepted standards, antennas are not part of a building’s structure. The Taipei 101 now holds the title by both measures. Wikipedia has a nice summary of the situation.

While skyscrapers of the future could conceivably be much taller, that is not as likely. In his 1999 book Faster, James Gleick noted that elevators are the primary obstacle. Because of the difference in air pressure between ground level and the building’s top, if the elevators go any faster, people will have to spend time in a decompression chamber before being let out. The Economist in June 2006 also carried an interesting feature on skyscrapers, focusing on issues of economic feasibility and physical limitations.

beatzo’s got a… err… fanclub: lootbeatzo. Please affirm your fanhood by registering your membership.

I have been told
not by one but two of my lovers
that I've got a heart of gold
but I'm unable to share it with others
They call me a poet who'll never have a poem
a tiger with no taste for bone
I'm the wonderful, wonderful wizard of waltzing alone

— The Guggenheim Grotto, Wonderful Wizard

I came to Lalbagh West Gate to pick up brainz but his bus was delayed an hour two hours, so went walking in Lalbagh.

This place is so awesome in the mornings. No families tugging kids and their toys along, no couples looking apprehensively like you’ll disturb their privacy, just utterly fit people, all in action. It’s inspiring.

I wish I lived somewhere near enough to come daily. Heck, I think I’m moving.

Bangalore has some amazing public places, but they’re available only to people who live near enough. You can crib about how crappy your corner is, or you can move. I’m moving. Really. I think.

Some kind souls have put online maps of Bangalore and Delhi. About time!

Today I stumbled on eMusic, yet another music download service. This one has a subscription model: $10 per month for 40 downloads, which works out to about Rs 12 a song. That’s thrice as expensive as All Of MP3, but on the plus side is still cheaper than audio tape, appears to have a wider selection of independent artists, provides DRM-free 192 kbps VBR MP3s, and has a really nice download manager (Win/Mac).

I’ve signed up. Let’s see if I can find 40 tracks worth downloading each month.

All Of MP3 allows choosing desired quality, charges by file size (at 1¢ per megabyte or something ridiculously low like that), and also delivers DRM-free MP3s. The average track is Rs 4. Nearly a year later, I still have balance left from my $10 signup charge. I wouldn’t be looking elsewhere if the selection weren’t so limited.

See all 77 pictures »

I took several pictures at the Fête de la Musique at the Alliance Française de Bangalore last week. I’m not done uploading all yet. The performances were great. What we could do with now is some event like this every weekend or two.

Scott Beale has some energy, man.

Two schools operate in the buildings neighbouring ours. This one has no playground. Kids come up to the terrace for their exercise periods. There is a ground along the next lane, but they don’t go there.

Because no one pays attention to road safety signs, they’re now getting graphic.

The Konica photo studio nearby provides several services such as passport photos in minutes, restoration of old photos and digital scanning. The last item is most curious: “Remove unwanted person from group”.

The new Nokia 6708 appears to be an S60 device, but has no app menu or navigation keys. That means no older apps will run on it. The new large screen E61 also likely breaks apps, as does the widescreen 7710. Nokia’s getting themselves in a mess, breaking backward compatibility so often. If app developers have to upgrade their apps for new platforms all the time, that’s time not spent on fixing bugs or improving functionality.

Like, you know, getting a really neat haircut that’ll scream “high society!”, so you don’t have to sniffle to show class.

According to today’s Deccan Herald, this kid is the world’s youngest CEO at 19, registered his company in the US because he was underage in India, and now has heads of state across the world falling over themselves to give him an office in their country.

We must learn the secret location of this Ankit Fadia factory. A fortune awaits whoever takes control.

This Mangalorean restaurant claims the Chicken Kori Roti is Aishwarya Rai’s favourite dish. No other celebrities grace the menu. They sure must be proud of ‘their’ star.

Do you know any small or independent mobile phone software developers based in India? Given the explosive growth of the medium, it’s becoming increasingly ridiculous to say “That’s a nice idea, but I don’t know anyone who could build it for you.”

The few I do know are not into custom development; they’re fully occupied with internal projects. There ought to be an employment exchange sort of listing for this sort of thing.

World-Information City, Bangalore was held in November 2005 as a direct counter to the parallelly held World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis. WIC hoped to bring attention to issues glossed over by WSIS such as with software patents and DRM. The Alternative Law Forum coordinated the event’s staging; they recruited me as official photographer and webcaster.

Due to poor response from the press — only the Indian Express showed interest — we resorted to putting up billboards and posters and running advertising vehicles around the city. We followed the poster people one evening to record the act of sticking up posters in Shivajinagar. Their act was unauthorised but not uncommon: their regular income comes from movie and election campaign posters.

Some of my pictures made their way into local newspapers. Despite our efforts however, only a trickle of people turned up at the exhibitions and conference, with a medium sized crowd gathering only for the closing session with star guest Arundhati Roy.