‘I call my dad Maithreyan only. And my mother Jayashrichechi (chechi is elder sister in Malayalam). They are not legally married. Rather, I call Jayashri chechi’s father and mother as dad and mom. I lived with them till I was 15. In a very conservative atmosphere. Maithrayen and chechi lived two houses far.” Kani remembers it with a smile in her small house.

This daughter is also in a different path as her parents. Started acting in plays since 15. Kani acted in movies when she felt it was not enough to live.

”There is only one thing Maithreyan and Chechi told me, don’t respond if you are asked about caste or religion. None of the school certificates have my caste or religion.”

Your father and mother seems different?…

Certainly. They have given me all the freedoms. In our country when a girl has to ask so many people for permissions even when choosing a frock. I’m not saying that is bad. But, there won’t be a place for that girls wishes.

But, it is not like that in my case. Even if I feel like smoking a cigarette, I don’t have to ask anyone. That doesn’t mean I believe smoking cigarette is a bad thing. But even that wishes I don’t have to let go.

Maithreyan and Chechi will tell about its bad effects. but, they never push their decisions on me. I’m not saying there is no difference of opinions. We criticize each other and get angry. But, only for a small time. If I feel like doing something, they only say ‘do it if you like’. But, suppose I do something on my own. If there is a problem in that, they won’t move aside saying, ‘you decided it, you deal with it’. They will be with me.

Are you also opposed to marriage like them?

I have not decided anything now. My dad and mom won’t say ‘you are this old, why don’t you get married’. They will say live with anyone you like. It is my choice.

How did you get into acting in plays?

I used to participate in Sanskrit festival in school. I used to act Kavalam Narayanappaniker’s plays.

Even before that, feminist movement in Thiruvananthapuram ‘Sakhi’ organized many street plays. When mom and dad goes for that, I used to go with them. I was studying in 5th then. I did not have any reluctance to act like this, then.

I learned about requirement of a girl actor in ‘Abhinaya’ theater research center of Thiruvananthapuram when I was in 10th.

By then I had a feeling that play is good. Then, as I grew up, I became very body conscious. I was not in a state to decide anything. After seeing my state, Jayashri Chechi said, ‘you just go and check there. Don’t act if you don’t like. I started liking plays when I reached ‘Abhinaya’. I thought I can make a it my profession.

At last, I went to study in Thrissur school of drama. I acted in one or two plays. it was then that play director Abhilash Pillai came to take ‘Khasakinte Ithihasam’ (History of Khasak). He told me about ‘International school of Jacques Lecoq‘. So I joined a one year course.

I learned more about acting when I went to France. Perspective about life also changed a lot. I only wanted everyone to talk good about me. I even moved aside even small things I wanted to do. But life in France changed all that.

Here we do even things we like secretly saying it is against culture. A small example. I go to a public space. Boys can drink there openly. But if any girls drink at all? It will be a big problem. Earlier I used to give up even if I wished to do it.

But, after that I occasionally drank as part of socializing. But, I don’t drink now. I don’t like its taste, that’s the reason. I don’t think there is anything bad in drinking.

In short you became a rebel after coming back from France?

I don’t think living as one wish is rebelling.

There was a letter from Maithreyan, recently. It read like this, ‘you also have a right to smoke and drink like anyone. Smoking cigarette is comparatively bad. Because, it affects others too. There is nothing wrong in drinking socially. But please don’t drink like it is bad in secret.

I don’t compromise on things I like. I am careful to create a space for that always. Suppose when I travel at night and someone try to grab me. I will try not to provoke him by saying ‘I don’t like anyone touching me’. There were many experiences like that. When traveling at night, one or two men come to me and ask ‘where are you going this night?’. I say something like ‘Aiyyo, sorry brother, I came here by mistake’ and leave.

When you decided to try a hand at movies?

When I was back from France, Shankar Ramakrishnan asked me to act in Island Express in ‘Kerala Cafe’. After that I did ‘Cocktail’. It was the role of a prostitute. Then, Naxal girl in ‘Shikar’ (Prey), then small roles in ‘Karmayogi’ and ‘Urumi’.

Do anyone come with you in film-play sites?

I go alone wherever it is. I didn’t feel girls are not safe be it in play or films. So, if someone likes me physically. When I say I’m not interested, I have seen only people who say ‘ok’ and leave, in both fields. Nobody behaved badly with me.

Name also seems different like the person?

Maithreyan and Chechi named me Kani. When I was enrolled in school, Principal asked, ‘What is her initials?’, so Chechi added an initial just like that, ‘Kani K’. When I reached 10th, teacher asked me, ‘I need expansion of your name.’ When I came home and narrated this, Maithreyan and Chechi told me ‘you pick anything you like.’ So I chose ‘Kani Kusruthi’. (Kusruthi means playful in Malayalam). My passport and all has that name.

Future endeavors?

There is a famous theatre group. Footsbarn. I’m with footsbarn for 2 years. Go inside and outside India with play acting. That is my plan.

Originally appeared in Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi

Actually, you’ve lost. You’ve lost this war, because you… along with everyone else in this half-decayed republic of ours, allow a specific hot button issue to cloud your judgement and allow public sentiment to be unanimous concerning one specific topic.

Pedophiles.

You may be wondering what the hell Pedophiles have to do with Internet Censorship. The answer is; Everything. You cannot win, you are going to lose your internet freedom. You will be monitored, you will be followed and every act and idea you commit to the web will be logged and archived in the halls of Government.

All because you’re afraid of Pedophiles. If you aren’t, then maybe I am using the Royal “YOU” to comment on the public at large; the ignorant Baby Boomers who don’t understand the interwebs, the vacuous youth who haven’t learned the hard way that real opinions don’t make you many friends and often alienate you.

The sort of “YOU” that cannot argue that Pedophiles, just like Homosexuals, have a right to Exist.

It’s that “YOU” that is responsible for the death of the internet.

“But Wait, Heretic,” You might say. “The Net isn’t DEAD yet, we beat SOPA! We Beat PIPA!”

Wrong. You’ve insured your defeat. Consider the following;

http://investmentwatchblog.com/threatening-new-bill-worse-than-sopapipa-this-bill-entitled-the-protecting-children-from-internet-pornographers-act-of-2011-is-a-bill-with-overly-broadened-language-that-greatly-threatens-all/#.Tx0xqPk8d8G

No no. Follow the link. Copy-pasta if you must. You read it. You understand it… and realize that it is from the same corporate schill that propose SOPA and PIPA.

“What is this thing?” You might ask. Well if you’re part of the vast illiterati, I’ll explain you the thing (Bad grammar intentional).

H.R. 1981 is titled “The Protect Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011″.

It is a bill that requires the following; Your real, legal I.D. name, personal home address, IP address, browsing history, search terms you’ve searched and the complete details of your online habits are to be made trackable and must be logged by all ISP’s.

“Wait a second!” You might argue, “That has nothing to do with Children!”

At this point in the discussion is where I typically chime in with; I told you so.

For the last twelve years of my life, I’ve been arguing rationality in the face of rampant, frothing at the mouth hatred concerning Pedophiles and the various scaremongering news articles that are propogated and proliferated across the news media services and sites.

I recognized that this one topic, out of any topic, is where people lose any sense of proportion or reason; people cease thinking or functioning when a discussion starts involving, “People that diddle children”. Or people that might, hypothetically, because of pornography they look at, decide to diddle children.

“That’s monstrous, Heretic,” You might say. “Why would you defend people such as this?”

The answer is I am defending you. I am defending humanity, because if you allow a portion of humanity to become classified as sub-human, you allow the Government to abuse that concept for it’s own gain.

I am defending Pedophiles as human beings, because if I don’t, someone will be next. And then another. Who would it be? The Furries? People into BDSM? Japanese Hentai fans with their schoolgirl fetishes?

It turns out, no. They didn’t just move on to other fetishists and people with peculiar or abnormal paraphilias. They skipped them and decided to bilk the public.

Oh, fat surprise.

This bill will pass. It will pass because nobody in the Congress or House will vote against it. They won’t vote against it because it’s to protect children from Pedophiles.

And there you have it, folks. Because Pedophiles are universally reviled by society, you have your reason that all of your freedom gets to be stripped away.

Not because you are guilty, and it certainly isn’t because you might have child pornography on your computer.

H.R. 1981 isn’t for pornography, it’s the mechanism of control. It is the perfect tool to combat piracy, to punish the public and to create… as some writers would term it… Total Criminality.

You’re a criminal because you’re on the internet.

Who is to blame for this? You are. You are because you didn’t defend the most reviled people in society, did not argue for their rights, did not protect them from having their human rights stripped away.

You can blame yourself for the death of the Internet, because you never put yourself on the line to take the stand nobody else would take.

But I’m sure it’s fine. I’m sure you’re okay with this, because after all, some of you MIGHT be pedophiles.

So when your children ask you when the internet died, you can look them straight in the eyes and tell them it was murdered by everyone who couldn’t stand to think of Pedophiles existing on earth, and how the very idea of such a thing was enough for us to hand our betrayers the keys to the house.

If, on the other hand, you aren’t okay with this bill… I encourage you to fight against it. I say this while laughing, because good fucking luck; the entirety of the U.S. super-ego will crush you into a fine powder rather than hear anyone object to a bill protecting kids from Pedophiles.

Oh, and if you do want to fight the destruction of the internet, why don’t you share this with everyone you know. Print it and give it to your mum, pass it out to the elderly and the infirm, read it to your teenage children, make people understand.

Though I don’t have much hope of THAT happening.

This has been your Heresy of the Day.

Note: Repost of a diaspora update by The Heretic Of Ethics

अधिक जानकारि के लिए http://piratepad.net/18octpune देखे।

PS: Thanks to Sandeep for spelling and grammar help!

NMAMIT, Nitte

Just back in Pune after 4 days in Nitte in between Mangalore and Udupi in Karnataka state. The best part was the awesome food we had every single day! I never liked Sambar in my 3+ years in Bangalore, but it was so awesome here! (I don’t know how many times I can use the word ‘awesome’ in a blog!) I still think the “Mangalorean Pomfret Masala” was bliss!

Of course meeting awesome people is given, for any Free Software conference, so I don’t have to highlight that Chandan had interviewed Jonas Smedegaard and it was excellent – both questions and answers! The best question was “what is your message to Canonical/Ubuntu?” We had to cut the interview and let him think about an answer. He said “When a kid leaves their home, we just say best of luck with whatever you do. Ubuntu is like a kid leaving home to debian – so best of luck!” It was so thoughtful and graceful, at debian ubuntu has always been a strain – how do we deal with it? It looks like most people have swallowed the bitter pill and adjusted to Ubuntu being more popular. Jonas kept telling Ubuntu is also a debian user and we have made an oath “Our priorities are our users and free software“.

There is much more to write, hopefully I will find some time to write more later.

With mobile phones and internet becoming more prevalent, collaboration has become easier. Wikipedia, Free Software, Free Maps etc are examples of this. Collaboration of large number of common people now have the power of beating wealthiest corporation (Free Software communities can beat Microsoft today). Also use of twitter, facebook and other social media tools in Middle East and North African uprisings shows the power of these tools in effecting social change. Frantic efforts by governments to curtail free speech on the internet is another indication of its effectiveness. I believe it is right time to take this to as many fields as possible.

Currently we cross-subsidise diesel and natural gas (cooking gas) with higher prices for petrol. The thinking behind this move is that, diesel and natural gas affects common people and also its price has a big impact on prices of commodities. But SUVs and luxury cars run on diesel and that picture is changed now. But still the price hike poses questions about government’s spending priorities. There is also a green demand for spending more money on renewable energy sources like solar and wind instead of continuing to subsidise polluting and dangerous energy sources like coal, nuclear etc.

We are doing a cycle rally in Pune coming Saturday at 5:00pm from Deccan Corner. Join in and register your protest. It is organised by Lokayat, an activists collective fighting against all injustices in our society. Visit lokayat.org.in to know more about Lokayat and get involved.

Petrol price hike: What do you think should be done? – story by Rediff.com

The highlight of the event was that it was a zero budget event. MES College of Engineering provided us lab and hostels, every one paid for their own travel and food. I hope to see more such events – small interested audient, less burden on organisers, more interaction and effectiveness. Instead of less big events, let’s start doing more small events.

I really liked the enthusiasm of the participants and we made sure those who completed a step helped others to complete. We proceeded to next step only when every single person completed each step. This is something I usually focus on wherever I take classes, but it is not effective with big audience. That is one reason I like small audiences. Normally only the brightest gets to follow everything and those who have less exposure feels left out. This time even if one is smart and completed a step, he/she has to help others if they want to move on.

First day we focused on different problems and complaints people have about Free Software and GNU/Linux. Instead of normal focus of a Free Software event on features of Free Software, we focused on what is not working in Free Software. Our focus was not in selling Free Software to the audience, but to make sure Free Software will become popular if we fix these problems. Normally audience just have complaints and speaker is always defensive. Here audience had to analyse the problem with the speaker, find out the root of the problem, and plan how to fix it.

One common complaint we always here is about dependencies and software installation. So we focused on two parts to solve that problem. First was lack of good internet connection, so apt-on-cd and keryx needs to be popularised. Second one is having to install from source. We concluded that once all software is available in a repository this problem will go away. So we decided to package all available Free Software. Starting with popular software that is in demand. We also figured out it will need many more packagers too. So if you want to help out, join our packaging effort. We have online packaging sessions every Saturday. Those who learned packaging, consider teaching it to others.

Food was really good, I was happy to get puttu (rice steam cake), beef curry and ghee rice. Lime juice was very good too, I miss it in Pune, where most places give old lime We stayed in their hostel. Bhushan, Abhishek and Ranjan came from Magalore standing in a train! Their enthusiasm cheered up everyone. I planned my vacation around these dates so that my travel expense would not be an issue. We missed Pavithran as he had fever and could not come.

Second day we had more people joining. This rarely happens in any conference, most of the time people drop out after first day. Last year we had a tough time manging a crowd of about 200 on the first day, but almost half of them did not turn up on second day. First day I explained debian release process and I made sure every on understood the process by asking each of them to explain it. I was happy to see most of them got it. Second day I asked Sajjad to summarise discussions on first day and explain release process. He did a pretty good job of explaining various concepts. Sooraj’s explanation of dependencies by taking example of average depending on sum and division was very good.

Then Jishnu started explaing control file and we asked every one to refer debian new maintainer’s guide. The whole day was spent on creating these files. Most of them were not used following a document and doing it themselves. Many times I have to ask them to read the document again when they make mistakes. Most of them made mistake about standards version, they used upstream version. Explanation of sections is a bit mis leading in new maintainer’s guide and most people ended up choosing main. I explained it and asked them to read the whole paragraph. I felt new maintainer’s guide could be improved a bit. We will try to send some patches.

Over enthusiasm resulted in a few RFPs being filed for lekhonee-gnome. We told them just create a text file, but many already sent RFPs! I told them how to close a bug and all of them closed it. Though it added a little bit of noise to BTS, I hope it has helped in the long run, hopefully these over enthusiastic folsk would help close more bugs!

We skipped copyright file as many wanted to leave. We just created a blank file for copyright and moved ahead with changelog and rules. Both these files caused bit of problem with formatting. Many did not have dch installed and they eneded up figuring out extra space or character causing error. Whitespaces instead of tab caused rules file breakage. We fixed all of them and I was happy every one had a working deb at the end of the day. First day we were explaining anatomy of a binary package most of them saw the control file, I think it would have been a rewarding experience for all of them when they opened up the binary file and saw their names inside it.

Third day was coordinated by Vasudev Kamath online. I had to leave for Sujith’s marriage. I have to mention about Sajith sir here. It was really encouraging to see a lecturer sitting through the whole session. I was happy to meet Raju sir after a long time. I remember two of my previous sessions at MES. I am sure we will see more contributors from MES. Anish and Sooraj had come from Thiruvananthapuram. Manu was running around fixing proxies all the time. I was happy to meet to aethiests there – Aneez and Nakul. Aneez was calling me agnostic I remember few more names – Shuvaib, Jasir, Muzafir, Jamal, Sunaiba. If you don’t see your name here, sorry, please shout your name as a comment Overall it was a really memorable experience. Now looking forward to Mini DebConf India tour stops in Mangalore, Pune and Ahamedabad.

Update: Jishnu told me there were about 12 students on third day. Ershad complained that I missed his name Ershad was playing with GNOME 3 release party balloons with every one and took pictures too. He has uploaded photos on diaspora and facebook, I will link it here once I get net access on my computer (now using my mobile and wifi sharing is too slow that only ping works and even that takes 5000-6000 msec for response).

HTML5 Video

Flash Video

Chale chalo dilo me ghav leke bhi chale chalo,
Chalo lahuluhan pao leke bhi chale chalo,
Chalo ki aaj sath-sath chalne ki jarurate,
Chalo ki khatm ho na jaye jindagi ki hasrate.

Jameen, khawab, jindagi, yakeen, sab ko batkar,
Woh chahtehe bebasi me aadmi jhukaye sar,
Woh chahtehe jindagi ho roshni se bekhabar,
Woh ek-ek karke aab jala rahe hai har shahar,
Jale hue gharo ke khawab leke bhi chale chalo.

Woh chahtehe hai baatna yeh jindagi ke kafile,
Woh chahtehe baatna yeh jindagi ke walwale,
Woh chahtehe hai khatm ho ummid ke yeh silsile,
Woh chahtehe hai gir sake na loot ke yeh sab kile,
Sawal hi hai aab jawab leke bhi chale chalo.

Woh chahtehe hai jatiyon ki, boliyon ki phoot ho,
Woh chahtehe hai dharm ko tabahiyon ki choot ho,
Woh chahtehe hai jindagi me ho fareb, jhoot ho,
Woh chahtehe hai jis tarah bhi ho magar yeh loot ho,
Siro pe joh bachi hai chav leke bhi chale chalo.

“We have come to the conclusion that Julian Assange of Wikileaks is royally screwing us. People believe and respect him. We have to break it.

We need to trap him in some rape case and get rid of him. Once our propaganda succeeds he will lose his credibility.”