Ok Ta Ta: Part 2

I must admit that I have been very pleasantly surprised by the TATA Nano. Priced at a 100,000 rupees or $2500, this is the cheapest car in the world and it looks nice as well. The 'people's car' was finally unveiled at the 8th Auto Expo and the world couldn't help but applaud Mr. Ratan Tata.

click to enlarge

There were many cynics who gave up on this and I must confess that I started doubting the existence of this mythical four wheeler myself. I was rude and also dedicated an entire post here called Ok Ta Ta but now things have changed. What impressed me most was a simple statement made by the chairman of Tata Sons; about the price being Rs. 100,000, Mr. Tata said it was difficult but 'a promise is a promise'. This is something that the other, flashier and hipper, head honchos of India Inc. should understand that one can still be a profit making outfit and continue to think about people.

Finally the Indian newspapers have done a little googling on Tata Motors and the news that the auto giant bankrolled a French auto designers ambitious plans to invent a car that runs on compressed air has finally made it to the newspapers. I have already blogged about that here (is there something that I don't blog about...?)

If Nano made the world sit up and take notice world sit up, be ready for a bigger surprise when the gas car called Air Car rolls out.

Image Courtesy: www.boston.com

Breaking News

While flipping through our news channels you’d either hit upon an advertisement selling underwear or pens or catch the anchors begging people to SMS Yes or No in response to some no-brainer of a question. The other day Times Now updated me about the love blossoming between Yuvraj Singh and Deepika Padukone, as if I need to know that. The newscaster actually said, ‘the prince of Indian cricket and the IT (information Technology) girl’ instead of reading the copy as the ‘it’ gal considering Ms. Padukone is a hot favorite of everyone and their aunts!

The other usual suspects weren’t far off. CNN-IBN and it's Face The Nation, featuring an uber-hyper Sagarika Ghosh, actually had an entire show dedicated to Sachin Tendulkar and why shouldn't he be awarded the Bharat Ratna!!!??

What?

Why?!

Well some consider him the greatest cricketer ever and he has done India proud for 17 years and oh yeah he has finally managed to break the ‘jinx’ of getting out on 90 seven times? And this is a guy who refuses to pay taxes for a luxury car that he was gifted. This is the biggest thing a national news channel can come up with for a prime time show? Why can’t the editors exercise some discretion when it comes to deciding topics of discussion? Perhaps these guys are yet to recover from the shock that Narenda Modi actually won the Gujarat elections!

Don’t even ask about the Hindi news channels for they are a class apart. According to Star News nothing worthwhile happens in the world during the one hour they have a hideous show called Hasoge To Phasoge wherein some really strange looking people in the grab of stand-up comedy crack jokes. India TV has a mean Shani Baba resembling some photograph, infused with life, stolen from the most wanted board from your neighborhood police station. Aaj Tak (actually its English cousin, which is as bad if not worse) has one Mandeep Beivi who presents an hour-long take on showbiz called Entertainment News and only Salman Khan or her poodle can understand her accent. How do I know she has a poodle- one look at her hairstyle and you might mistake her for poodle!

There so many things that a news channel can change and it’s not as if they haven’t done their fair bit but is a little maturity too much to ask? I was watching BBC and got to know that by mid 2008 an Air Car, that’d use compressed air as fuel will soon hit the markets, Indian as well. The car will run at a top speed of 109 kms/hour and will run almost 200 kms on a single recharge. Though the price of the car isn’t confirmed refueling will cost less than 100 rupees!

I don’t recall any Indian news channel reporting this ever. Why am I talking about this? For one the car’s engineer, Guy Negre, has been researching for almost a decade now and had almost given up on the idea when someone bailed them out and funded the research. It was our own Tata Motors!

Why am I so angry? After all isn’t it that they sell what sells and perhaps we get what we want for if it wasn’t wanted why’d they sell it?

Yeah right!

I think we all love non-sense. As a matter of fact most of the times we go the extra mile to ensure we get non-sense. Where else can so much non-sense amalgamate? Flip through channels and you'd see the point I'm trying to make here.