Its boring!

Let us talk about Indian cars. When you look into a buyer’s guide of Indian cars you will come across endless boring shapes those seem to have been designed by a Human relations manager. Just have a look at their interiors, it is pretty much as you would expect, hopeless. We are not talking about luxury cars, sports cars, tidy roadsters, super cars or brilliant cars by any means. This is India. Here all the form follows the function. All the cars here do not perform very well, nor are they well made either. If they add buttocks to a hatch and name it an entry level sedan it will sell well, they say. Or they can even shave an SUV and name it a saloon. A box sitting on a suspension with a stupid engine and good efficiency figures is the best car for people over here. Here number of occupants is of more concern than the engine capacity. They do not worry if a car corners like a hippo. They save some money by getting a variant that is not equipped with ABS and Airbags. As a result the Indian roads look something much worse than mind-numbingly boring. There is an advertisement not to mention the firm; the manufacturer claimed the car had cruise control, ABS, traction control and parking sensors. The car was said to be loaded with technology. Some cars in eighties had these technologies. So is it the manufacturers or the customers those can be blamed? Actually both must be blamed. It is not that the engineers do not have brains, they use it differently rather. All cars sold in India are engineered to be sold at a better price, rather than be sold as a better car. Let us put it this way. If you compare a typical car running on Indian roads and a world class car, the Indian car will be half as good but will cost a third or even less. So, why not sell cars here that are almost as good as the best European cars and cost half as much as per that equation. So you get my point. Indian automobile market is brilliant in its own way. What we need to do is scale up things a bit. The reason why other Asian countries are thriving is they sell better cars than Indian companies that are cheaper than European cars. India being a beautiful country deserves much better cars than it has if not better then Europeans. All we now want is cars that are half as well engineered as the Porsches and Beemers, a third as passionate as Ferraris and Lambos, a fifth as well made as Mercedes and Nissans, a tenth as lovable as Mustangs and Astons and priced as good as the Indians. I will be the happiest man if the Indian roads become what they deserve to be.

Deluxe torture!

It was a cold night. I was sitting aside the window and was looking out. Many vehicles were passing by. I was feeling a blizzard. I heard the sound of shattering glasses surrounding me in all directions. Entire world seemed to vibrate with an irritating squeal. I suddenly felt like I will be thrown out through the window when the bus took a turn. My watch showed 00:30 A.M.

That day I had reached the bus station by 9:30 P.M. an hour earlier than the scheduled time. My uncle had reserved a seat for me to travel from Chennai to Trichy. I saw some decent buses with the word ‘Ultra deluxe’ written over them. We were waiting for an hour and then some thing different from the ultras came at around 10:30P.M. It looked horrible and seemed to be too old for the business. As it came closer I saw it was scheduled to depart by 9:25. So alongside many people I was waiting, going here and there, looking enviously at other superior buses. People who had not reserved for anything got comfy seats, damn they. At last an even worse bus came. My worst fears became true, it was the one I had to travel in. A couple of minutes after I entered the bus I found only ten people inside.

To reverse that ugly box and to move it out of the station it took 20 bloody minutes for the driver. As we started to gain momentum I heard all kinds of noises and experienced all possible vibrations. I was just happy that at least it was empty. At 1:00A.M a group of people entered. A lame slim man, an old man, a moron like well built man, a malnourished woman with two irritating kids, a dark man fully loaded with drugs, some local students with no manners at all, a pathetic family and at last a man in sixties with a young wife. Then I covered myself in a blanket;I had to escape the cold breeze.

6:30 A.M. I just woke up hoping that the torture would be over after some time. My heard skipped a beat when I read a board reading ” Chennai 194 Trichy 128″. O! shit I was still far from destination. Worst of all nature was calling me. After 90 hostile minutes they stopped somewhere near a dabha for breakfast. I was happy and soon had my meeting with nature. At 8:15 we left. After an hour we were some 25 miles away from the city. I saw a tragedy. A boy was hit by a car and died on the spot itself. When our bus slowly passed by his relatives were loudly weeping. Other lady was lying with her face on the floor and screaming. It looked terrible. Finally at 10:30 I reached the station and obviously can’t attend classes that day.

You will be feeling bad about what happened to that boy. I can understand. Forget it and be happy come on! Ok! ok! I will tell you a joke. Fine then? Hmm! They were calling that bus “Super deluxe”

Traffic manners!

“I wish India would become a good looking nation” I have heard a lot of people saying this. I also wish a cleaner India full of lambos, Mercs and Beemers. Even the highest of suspension technologies won’t help drivers in India having the bumpiest of roads in the world, sometimes it may kill you. But before blaming the environment first let’s ask a question ourselves. Do we contribute to making a neat road, free mobility of vehicles? Do we all have the so called traffic manners? Nay!

“It’s getting late!! What the…?” I just cut the telephone and started to meet my girl friend who was waiting at the town center five kilometers from then. So, I was inside my well maintained saloon struggling to resist the temptation as I can’t drive through the street faster. There are some irritating kids who play some ridiculous game, they call it cricket. After six minutes, I just got onto a decent road. When I just felt the pleasure of burying my foot into the pedal, I was bound to press the brakes hard.

If you want to see a worst driver, that would probably be an Indian owning a 100 c.c. bullshit. A lot of people like this collectively form the worst breed. All they do is to enter into the gaps and give no room for cars. Some even manage to take a U and escape the jam. We bloody car drivers can’t do that. Many such morons buried themselves into the jam. I managed to keep moving without leaving a gap between other cars. Otherwise bikes will cause a jam in the perpendicular direction also. At last I reached the top of the bridge and in that sprint I recoded a top speed of 2’’ a second. As I started to feel relieved again a block. This time ladies (we all know about their driving) in their scooters were the culprits. I don’t know why they have engines they push the vehicle with foot using the third law, damn they. Again the pain was over. I was already disappointed to let many pass my vehicle, and then I felt the height of the insult. In the hard to move traffic a 50c.c. took over me. “Hey, you don’t even have a bike idiot. Do you think you have your hands on an R1? How dare you? “Luckily he got out of my sight, surely would have created another jam somewhere else.

So, drivers please have some manners. Don’t use your sick indicators to indicate overtaking as some something does it. And don’t create jams just because of impatience. Most importantly remember you are not sitting on a super bike. Please make Indian roads look good even though this doesn’t bother me much. What does bother me is the fear of my next date too getting spoiled.