The Adventures of Baṇṇagāra

A Contemporary Short Story

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or real events is purely coincidental.

Act I: The Morning Coffee and the Lunchroom Banter

Anand reached the consumer electronics service center on time as usual. He pulled up the pending repair orders on his screen—mostly blown circuit boards from high-end home theater music systems—and decided he would grab a filter coffee before starting his day.

While waiting by the coffee machine, three front-desk sales representatives walked in, loudly discussing their weekend.

“Haa macha, last night full scene aaytu guru,” one rep said, waving his hands. “We went to that new pub, but entrance block mādiddru. Full boring night, totally waste of time!”

Anand sipped his coffee quietly, keeping his face blank. In his mind, he thought in flawless, pure Kannada: ‘Mārgavarōdhavaḷḷa, raste bandu. Samaya vyartha ennabāradē? Ee taraha bhāṣeyannu raddallu māḍuttiddāralpā.’ (It is not a block, the road was closed. Can they not say time was wasted? They are turning the language into garbage.)

At lunch, Anand opened his stainless-steel tiffin box filled with traditional lemon rice. The same sales reps sat across from him, opening plastic takeaway boxes.

“Hey Anand, what is the special today?” the first rep asked cheerfully, peeking into his box. “Ah, Chitranna! Classic. But man, you never join us for burgers or pasta. Always sticky local food.”

Anand smiled faintly. “Nange namma oora oota thumba ishta, macha.” (I really like our local food, brother.)

“No doubt it’s tasty, boss,” the second rep chipped in, laughing. “But your lifestyle is so old-school. Even your Kannada sounds like a 90s Doordarshan news channel. You need to upgrade, mix in some English, otherwise clients will think you are totally outdated and from some village!”

Anand felt a familiar pinch of frustration at the casual disrespect for the language, but he kept his composure. He packed his half-eaten lunch, stood up with a calm smile, and said, “Nange kelasa ide, dharisikoḷḷi.” (I have work, excuse me). He managed to escape the room before the banter could pull him into an argument.

Act II: The Discussion with the Sister

Later that evening, Anand walked over to the bus stop near a local engineering college to meet his younger sister, Kavya, who studied there. She hopped onto the back of his scooter, and they headed toward a quiet local eatery for coffee.

As they sat down, Anand told her about his ordeal at the office and his deep concerns about the city’s changing tongue.

“Every day, Kavya, it gets worse,” Anand said softly. “Even the guys at work think speaking clean Kannada makes you look uneducated. People don’t use real Kannada nouns or verbs anymore. They just wrap English words in Kannada endings. It feels like our identity is being erased by pure laziness.”

Kavya listened intently and sighed, agreeing with him completely. “I know, Anna. In my college, if someone speaks clean, proper Kannada, people mock them and call them ‘local’ or ‘village type’. It is so sad. Honestly, someone should make a strict rule against this misuse of the language. There should be a penalty for ruining it.”

Anand stared into his coffee cup, watching the dark liquid swirl. “A rule,” he murmured to himself. “Yes. A penalty.”

Act III: The Room Project and the First Midnight Strike

For the next four nights, Anand turned his small bedroom into a secret laboratory. His desk became a chaotic mess of discarded electronics collected from the service center’s scrap bin—broken home-theater speaker cones, a burnt-out megaphone amplifier, a laser pointer, and a high-capacity lithium battery pack.

Every night after his family went to sleep, Anand worked under the dim light of a table lamp. It wasn’t easy. On the second night, the amplifier circuit shorted out with a spark. On the third night, the audio beam was too wide, vibrating the window panes of his own room. He patiently re-soldered connections, tuned the acoustic frequencies, and adjusted the ultrasonic transducer chips to perfectly focus sound waves into a razor-sharp beam—like a flashlight of pure audio.

By the fifth night, the silent directional weapon was complete, mounted neatly alongside a pressurized air-capsule launcher on a modified frame.

The following midnight, near a bustling tech-park gate on the Outer Ring Road, a corporate worker stepped out of a cab, yelling into his wireless earbuds.

“Haa macha… nānu ivāglē log off mādde. Manager full torture guru. Naaḷe presentation ide, nanagantū full tension āgtide!”

High above, hidden on the steel rafters of an under-construction pedestrian skywalk, Anand shifted in the shadows. He wore a dark khadi hoodie and a plain black mask. He raised his device, lined up the laser pointer, and locked his target.

Thwip!

A capsule of organic crimson ink exploded dead center on the worker’s laptop bag.

“What the…!” the guy yelled, stumbling back.

Instantly, Anand flipped the switch on his custom directional speaker, firing a sharp beam of audio directly into the guy’s ears. No one else on the street heard a single vibration. The voice was crisp, clean, and terrifyingly clear:

“Kelasa mugisi horaṭe ennabāradē? Mēlādhikāri tondare koḍuttiddāre ennabāradē? Nāḷina sabheya bagge ātaṅkavide endu saraḷavāgi hēḷabāradē?!”
(Translation: Can you not say ‘I finished work and left’? Can you not say ‘The boss is causing trouble’? Can you not simply say ‘I am anxious about tomorrow’s meeting’?!)

The guy gasped, looking around wildly. The sonic beam dropped into a low, echoing warning:

“Kannaḍavannu kannaḍadallē hēḷu. Illadidare mundina baṇṇa mukhakke.”
(Translation: Say Kannada in Kannada itself. Or the next paint hits your face.)

By the time the panicked worker managed to wipe the wet ink from his bag, Anand had already melted into the darkness.

Act IV: Scouting for Impact and the Atrium Ambush

The first strike was a success, but it was too quiet. The tech worker had simply run home in a panic, leaving no trace online. Anand realized that targeting random corporate employees in dark alleys wouldn’t start the massive cultural shift he wanted. He needed maximum visibility. He needed to strike at the source where Kanglish wasn’t just spoken out of laziness, but aggressively marketed as “cool.”

On Friday evening, Anand found his perfect target.

A prominent Radio Jockey—known across Bengaluru as RJ Ricky—was hosting a live promotional event in the central atrium of a massive, crowded mall in Whitefield. Ricky was famous for his high-energy, hyper-accelerated Kanglish vocabulary on his morning radio show.

Anand arrived at the mall early, carrying his disassembled tools inside a regular black backpack. Posing as a shopper, he walked up to the third floor, finding a perfect, unmonitored blind spot behind a pillar directly overlooking the bustling atrium stage below.

Down on the stage, the neon lights flashed as Ricky screamed into his wireless microphone, pacing the stage in front of hundreds of shoppers.

“Okay Bangalore! Full hot event ನಡೀತಾ ಇದೆ ಇವತ್ತು! Next up, we have a super-exciting game. ಯಾರಿಗೆಲ್ಲಾ ಸ್ಟೇಜ್ ಮೇಲೆ ಬಂದು ಫನ್ ಮಾಡ್ಬೇಕು ಅನ್ಸುತ್ತಿದೆಯೋ, ಜಸ್ಟ್ ಕೈ ಎತ್ತಿ! Come on, show some energy, guys!”

Anand stood in the shadows of the third floor, looking down. This wasn’t just language erosion; it was a deliberate corruption broadcasted to the youth. He pulled out the customized capsule launcher, locking it securely onto the scrap-built directional sonic barrel.

Anand lined up his sight, tracking the hyperactive movement of the RJ below. He didn’t target Ricky’s clothes this time. He targeted the expensive, glossy corporate banner right behind the RJ’s head.

Thwip!

A high-pressure capsule of dark, indelible crimson ink burst directly onto the white logo of the main sponsor on the banner, right next to Ricky’s face.

Ricky jumped back, startled by the sudden wet splash of red. He froze, looking at the dripping ink. Hundreds of onlookers gasped, and dozens of teenagers instantly pulled out their phones, recording the scene.

Before the security guards on the ground floor could react, Anand flipped the heavy toggle switch on his backpack battery. He aligned the acoustic lens perfectly with Ricky’s ears. He pulled the sonic trigger.

A razor-sharp, deafening wave of focused audio blasted exclusively into Ricky’s skull. While the crowd stood in confused silence, Ricky felt the voice vibrate through his teeth:

“Vēdikeya mēle bandu tamāṣe māḍabēku ennabāradē? Eṣṭondu utsāhavide endu hēḷabāradē?! Kāryakrama vishēṣavāgide endu saralavāgi nudiyabāradē?!”
(Translation: Can you not say ‘come on stage and have fun’? Can you not say ‘how much energy there is’?! Can you not simply state ‘the program is special’?!)

Ricky dropped his microphone, clutching his ears in pure terror. His face turned pale under the stage lights. The crowd whispered, filming his bizarre, silent panic.

The directional speaker delivered its final, chilling blow right into his eardrums:

“Kannaḍavannu kannaḍadallē hēḷu. Illadidare mundina baṇṇa mukhakke.”
(Translation: Say Kannada in Kannada itself. Or the next paint hits your face.)

Anand instantly shut off the power, packed the device into his backpack, and calmly walked into the emergency exit stairwell, blending into the mall crowd within seconds.

Act V: The Viral Firestorm and Final Evolution

By Saturday morning, Bengaluru’s digital landscape exploded. Multiple high-definition videos of RJ Ricky’s sudden stage panic and the mysterious crimson ink splash went viral on Instagram, YouTube, and X. By the afternoon, news reporters and local television vans flocked to the radio station headquarters in Indiranagar to interview a visibly shaken RJ Ricky.

“I didn’t hear a loudspeaker,” Ricky told a microphone-shoving reporter, his hands still trembling. “It was like… a ghost was standing right next to my ear, whispering flawless, heavy Kannada. It told me to stop using English words on my show. It’s insane!”

By prime time, every major local news channel launched a heated live debate. Over the next two weeks, the city witnessed a wave of tactical strikes that kept the media in a tight grip. The first new target was a prime-time news anchor who routinely mixed English phrases into local news dispatches, followed three days later by a popular cinema actress ambushed outside a luxury hotel while giving a casual interview. With every major media house now running 24-hour coverage on the phantom, the news channels officially came up with a definitive name for the elusive figure: Baṇṇagāra—The Colorer.

At the consumer electronics service center, the daily atmosphere shifted completely. Anand’s sales colleagues behaved with extreme caution around him, no longer using their usual mocking tone. They watched their words carefully. From across the room, Anand overheard two of the front-desk representatives whispering to each other.

“Hey, did you see the evening slot for that local language academy near Jayanagar?” one whispered, typing on his phone. “I think we should enroll in their weekend Kannada course. My vocabulary is terrible, macha. If Baṇṇagāra hears us talking at the desk, we are completely finished.”

Anand kept his eyes on his lunch, suppressing a triumphant laugh.

That evening, Anand met Kavya at their usual quiet eatery. As they waited for their coffee, she pulled up a local student forum on her phone, her eyes wide with amazement.

“Look at this, Anna,” Kavya said, showing him the screen. “It is absolutely unbelievable how effective this Baṇṇagāra has been. In our college, the students have completely come in line. No one cracks lazy jokes or mocks clean language anymore. Someone actually stepped up and made a real impact.”

Anand took a slow, deliberate sip of his filter coffee. He looked out at the bustling Bengaluru street, where people were walking by, talking with a newfound consciousness about the words they chose.

A small, wicked smile crept across his lips. He leaned back in his chair, already calculating the battery voltage and ink capacity needed for his next prototype device. The city was finally learning to respect its tongue, and Baṇṇagāra had no intention of stopping his adventures anytime soon.