One always expects such things to improve over time, but it was not to be. The approach road remains pathetic. The entry or exit on a four wheeler is nothing short of a nightmare during weekends. The parking facilities remain bad and to think that they have actually given up some of the land that was previously used for parking to an upcoming Benetton showroom! With respect to audio, they have some kind of noise cancellers installed now, but it is still far from satisfactory when you consider that you pay almost the same/more than what you would pay at the Forum Mall or Inox Multiplex. They still have no offers running. They have no electronic or for that matter white board display of the status of the movie ticket sales and you have to resign to wait-and-watch-and-pray. The ticket salesman/woman also are far from courteous, comparatively. The bucket of woes is never ending when you consider that there is so little “value for money” at this place.

The theatre continues to do good business though. My guess is that the people living in and around the place want to save on fuel or the traffic pains of going to the center of the city and live up with such costly mediocrity. I had long stopped going to this theatre and I unfortunately ended up there today and all the bad memories just came alive! Desperately waiting for the IDEB Venture (includes a multiplex) coming up on the Marathahalli-KR Puram outer ring road stretch. :-(

There is a yearly non-refundable deposit of Rs.100 that needs to be paid upfront. This amount is on a per vehicle basis i.e. if you have 2 vehicles that you would like to be covered by this service it would cost you Rs.200. The membership renewal cost is Rs.100/year. They will be providing you a card and a T-Pin number than will be used to cross verify your identity before sending a person over to come and help you.

This could be a useful service if our roads remain pothole ridden. :-)

There was also some discussion among media on the usefulness of splurging money on events like a marathon. Does this do any good? Couldn’t the money be used to directly help the poor to have better living conditions? etc. On the face of it, it does look like the money could be used elsewhere, but the city also needs to represent fun. There are charities involved with the marathon that are more directly helping the needy and that should offset some of the disgruntlement. Also, there are some intangibles that cannot be quantified, like patriotism, and city spirit is one such thing. Events like the marathon help rekindle and strengthen this spirit and the good that this does can only be felt over a period of time.

.. and lest we forget, everybody deserves a break, our city does too! :-)

With this kind of apathy and lack of action towards the guilty, no doubt the common man takes a leaf out of the politician’s book and does some cut&paste job of his own!

This was/is seen on the service road near the Marathahalli flyover that leads towards KR Puram. How difficult can it be to call the number of the culprit, which the culprit himself has so graciously provided and fine him a couple of thousand rupees and make him clean up his artwork?!

1. BPCL Pump,
No:2 Residency Road
2. Ramachandra Pump
BPCL,
Mysore Road
3. Sri Venkateshwara Service Station
Near M.E.S Office, New Town,
Yelahanka
4. Varadaraja Service Station
Indian Oil,
Rajajinagar
5. Arunodaya Filling Station
BPCL
J.P.Nagar
6. Indian Oil,
Banashankari
7. Engrads Gasoline Station
IOC Pump
Opp. BHEL, Mysore Road
8. HPCL
Mahadevapura P.O
9. Kaveri Service Station,
IOC Pump.
80ft Road, Koramangala

If you are out looking for a new car and saving money is a criterion, here is a choice. :-)

1. Why would anyone give anything for free?
2. Why do people work on something that doesn’t make them money?
3. What about the maintenance of free stuff, would anyone care?

The answer to the above is usually quite simple, Some people like money and some like power. Open Source folks like power! And along with the power is the pride of having created something good and hence also the interest to maintain it.

Now, wouldn’t it be great if we could have our bureaucracy or the political setup go Open Source? Imagine if they were to work for free, imagine if they were to work for pride! Let them have all the power they need and being practical, let them have their salaries too, but at the end of the day, they should do good! We would then have a cop who catches someone for jumping the signal and actually writes a receipt down rather than hinting at getting some money. We would have the clerk sitting in the R.T.O office actually help you understand the roundabout process of getting a license and not discourage you so bad that you think of going through some driving school(legalised bribe collectors and distributors). We would have the PWD road contractors not wait till the rainy season to repair the roads, but do it at the peak of summer! Is it too late or too insane to think of such a community coming through in our city or have we started heading in this direction?

The Malayala Manorama group along with Bangalore Arts brought “Vasantha Ragam” to Bangalore. Featuring some of the best playback singers of South India, Chithra, Sujatha, Madhu Balachander, M Jayachandran and more, this musical evening was worth witnessing. The tickets were priced Rs.500 and Rs.1000 and it was worth the money. The evening started at 6:30PM and went on till around 10:00PM. The event was well organised and the auditorium in Christ College was just fantastic! The evening was also special as this was the first time that two legendary playback singers, Chithra and Sujatha sang a Malayalam song together on stage for the very first time!

Three and a half hours of enchanting music, what else could one ask for before “Just another manic Monday….”. :-)