Quo Vadis?

A recent conversation with someone made me realize that when we say two wheeler enthusiasts the usual images that come to mind are the big gangs including the big boys on the Enfield bullets but there exist a set of people who are hard core fanatics of their set of two wheels and constantly upgrade to the same model of TVS mopeds. Do not get me wrong, I do not think that it is a bad vehicle; in fact it merits the same kind of crazy, inexplicable adulation given to a Bullet by its users who swear by it despite its many shortcomings that are called as its USPs. The TVS 50 in its many avatars put many people on to the road and was their first ever motorized personal transport vehicle. People in the villages still swear by it as do the delivery boys in many grocery shops in the cities. I go back to my school days in St. Bede’s AIHS when TVS was something that excited most of us in high school. Those were the days of commuting to school by bus or cycle, days when th...

I had posted on the Chennai Autos earlier . I am delighted that the Auto fare movement has succeeded at least as far as the new fares coming in. The enforcement will be a challenge as the drivers seem to have got used to doing nothing most of the time when not asking for 300% of the fare or thereabouts for every trip which they don’t seem to be keen to make anyway. The question is why must the government fix fares? Going forward why the government must fix the fares of fuel, power and others? Each time the government gets into this, it gets into a political logjam and populism precedes common sense and we end up getting into a trap from which there seems to be no exit. The government does not fix the price of gold or real estate and there seems to be no respite for buyers of either but surprise, surprise no one complains. Water which will become another scare commodity shortly is under-valued and consequently priced at ridiculous levels. To put it into perspective 1 litre ...

I came across a very funny post on Facebook about the craziness of the English language. English has united a great part of the world and ensures that you can communicate with some reasonable effect in many areas of the world. It is a flexible language where it has allowed itself to be modified, misused to suit the local sensibilities and every other day new local contributions are being added to the English lexicon. English may have its advantages and personally I prefer the Queen’s English having grown up with it, I realize that the English language has one flaw. Well it may not be a flaw it may be that the culture does not permit it to be so. English is not a respectful language and you will notice the only hint of respect is when the Queen says “We are happy…”.   As with some of our Indian languages the first person plural is used to signify respect in the English language, with “We”, “our”, replacing the commoner’s I. We are usually respectful people and so our l...

There are narcissists and there are narcissists. Oh! You do not know what narcissism is? Wiki to the rescue as always:- “ Narcissism   is a term that originated with   Narcissus   in   Greek mythology   who fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water. Currently it is used to describe a person characterized by   egotism ,   vanity ,   pride , or   selfishness . ”   By now you would have understood your typical next door narcissist. Who for boring the ear of the daughter of someone in the family or even worse the coming of age of a daughter in the family makes a huge flex print and proclaims the event to the whole world with the accompanying mug shots of the narcissists who must delight to see themselves larger than life on the roads. Then there is the narcissist who desiring to celebrate the festival of the neighbourhood deity makes a huge board and ensures that he gets enough space on the board to relegate the...

When I heard the news I was angry that nearly 30 people died on the tracks. When I read the news articles my anger increased when I heard that they were trapped between two trains without any room to escape. I was furious when I learnt that the men, women and kids were in a death trap and they were in the trap by choice . What kinds of idiots share this same sky? Promptly the enraged people burn the train, thrash the drivers and politicians jump into the fray asking for compensation and every other now expected reaction to a calamity which could have been easily avoided. What must be done to explain to people that walking on tracks is life threatening? The argument that literacy or lack of it may be a cause cannot hold water as every other day one literate idiot kills himself on the tracks in Chennai, usually the deceased will be going to or back from work. Walking on rail tracks is a crime that is punishable but the punishment is a joke in itself like every other deterre...

The other day I realized when I was looking for an umbrella that there are no more fancy shops these days. I guess for the 90’s generation this may be as alien as the “goli soda” and the “pepsi cola” among others. But for those like me they were the one stop shop for everything. What is a fancy shop? For those not aware these were the shops usually run by Muslim shopkeepers from Kerala who stocked and sold anything school kids may need from maps to junk jewellery and all in between. If there was a school requirement I would head to the nearby fancy store and the shop keeper usually never had no for any requirements that the school may come up with. If there was a social function that required a gift to be purchased again the friendly neighbourhood fancy store which also sold the wrapping paper for it along with greeting cards. Landmark and Archies happened much later and probably led to the demise of these fancy stores. Today the swanky air-conditioned gift stores are a fa...

Two movies dominated my timelines recently; one of course was Thalaiva and the other Chennai Express. One movie got derailed on the release date the other is making money by making fun of everyone and is stereotypically offensive to Tamizh speakers. Like it or hate it but I am secretly enjoying the fact that it   requires the Chennai magic to make a struggling super star succeed again and no, I am not talking about the real super star, in case you wonder.   Not sure if the same success would have come with say a Kolkota express, can it? On the note it was shocking to hear that one fan committed suicide over the deferred release of Thalaiva. Like many other news bits, it may be the tip of the iceberg and what exactly led to the suicide may have been a host of other reasons, it is sad to hear these things and that someone will die for a movie tells you the way values have eroded and how much movies have captured the psyche of people today. The fact that movie stars hav...

I find it amazing that we trust our lives in the hand of unknowns every day and we do not trust the ones known to us especially on the road. How many journeys have we made when the driver of the bus either talks on the phone, drives rashly but we remain oblivious to it all, maybe sometimes we grimace but still let it go. Cut to when somebody we know takes the wheel and the same thing happens I am willing to bet that everyone in the vehicle with an opinion will not hold back his / her opinion. If this brought a smile to your face hold that smile, it improves your face value. The point remains that in public we are willing to risk our lives for many reasons – maybe ridicule, maybe indifference, maybe faith in the Almighty, maybe we just slept through it all. How many of us are bold enough to go and tell the driver of a bus that he is endangering the lives of those inside and even outside the bus? Why is there a different yardstick for two vehicles driven by two persons one k...