Jacqueline Fernandes

Miss Sri Lanka, debuting in Hindi movies with Aladin this Friday. A beauty indeed!

Premier Rio

PAL is back to hawking outdated passenger cars. This time it's a 1st generation Daihatsu Terios shell imported from Zotye of China, powered by a detuned version of Peugeot's TUD5 diesel (that PAL received as virasat from it's doomed collaboration with Peugeot in the mid 90s) & going by the name Rio.

At a starting 5.25 lakhs, it's appealing, & looks kinda cute, but the company's reputation & quality issues will be serious challenges facing it in today's car market.

Mahindra Gio

India's ugliest commercial vehicle .... by far. But at 1.65 lakhs for a 0.5 tonne capacity, it's surely gonna sell well.

Mahindra has one-upped Tata's Ace with this one.

Trip report

This trip was interesting for more reasons than one. Some observations ....

- my 1st ever instance of ticketless travel .... on a superfast .... & neither the TT nor passenger turned up!

- my love for 'home' remains undiminished

- Vinnie's transformed into this amazing, inspiring woman ... I'm very impressed

- there are still places where you get the chills after sundown .... the dread near that isolated level-crossing was something I hadn't felt in a long time

- the telecom revolution has penetrated right down to the smallest of towns

- highways in JH are horrible

- the Innova is a very capable vehicle .... loved the responsive engine and pickup

- I'm not flying SpiceJet again

- got very good deals on the prepaid taxi to & from the Kolkata airport ... a nice change from usually getting ripped off

- my 1st Hummer sighting

- my 1st Tata Nano-on-the-road sighting

Windows 7

It's out today. I'm looking forward to an upgrade next year.

Honda-fication

Bade papa took delivery of his new Honda Civic yesterday. That makes it 2 Hondas in that family adding to the Honda City that Vinnie drives.

Then there's Chhoti's City ZX. And Archana too moves around in a City. It seems the Maruti era in the family (when just about everyone gave up their Padminis & Ambassadors for assorted Maruti models during the late 90s-early 2000s) is coming to an end.

I think I'll contribute further to that next year.

At work on Diwali evening.

Bump!

I have to hit ~ 26 speed bumps & face 4 traffic signals on the 10 km commute to work everyday. One way.

Tariff wars & the Indian mobile market

DoCoMo's launch in the Indian market 3 months ago was a big surprise. The option of per second billing saw people buying the company's SIMs in black. Tata followed it up with a per call billing plan from it's CDMA arm, Indicom.

Needless to say, they've run away with the most new subscribers in GSM & CDMA over the last few months in the world's fastest growing telecom market.

Then the baniya company decided to get in on the act. Reliance, through it's GSM arm launched a 50p per minute billing plan - regardless of STD/local or SMS to any & every kind of phone across circles, countrywide! The rationale given was that the market had moved from being competitive to cut-throat & now it was a case of who could bleed longer, in order to garner more connections in the short term. And we all know the kind of cash reserves the R companies have.

Not that I am complaining. I remember paying Rs 2.30 a minute for STD calls when I first started using a cell about 7 years ago. This was soon after incoming calls (which are still charged in markets like the US, by the way) became free & cellphone purchase in urban India exploded. And has remained so from then onwards.

It seemed unbelievable 2 years ago when STD tariffs dropped to 1 rupee a minute. But that was then & this is now .... they cost me 50p since last Sunday (yes, Vodafone launched it's own scheme & also gave me validity till 2021 as a bonus). Thus, the customer is ruling the roost in the Indian mobile market. But somehow I get the feeling that things just took a turn for the worst .... competition moved from being healthy to downright brutal. Which is something that might not necessarily be good in the long term.

The metros already have about 100% teledensity. And the other cities will get there soon enough. And with companies like Telenor, Etisalat & SingTel planning on launching their operations pretty soon, things will get murkier as growth starts to plateau. There will most likely be a much needed round of consolidation & mergers.

The market though, still has lots of potential. Teledensity countrywide is not yet up to the 50% mark.

Whatever happens, it's gonna be interesting.

Tata Indigo Manza

The Indica Vista's sedan cousin is out & it looks very Camry-ish ....

.... from the side profile. Which is much better than the previous generation.

The interiors ....

.... are very appealing. Looks like Tata is transferring lessons learnt from it's J-LR takeover to the IDM (hah!) production.

What takes the cake though is the prices .... ranging from 4.8 to 6.8 lakhs ex-showroom! I'd put down the deposit on one instantly.

During the last few hours ....

BMW unveils ....

.... the Z4 coupe starting at 59 lakhs.

The 1st good looking Chevrolet in India ....

.... the Cruze is here. Comes with a stonking 2 L 150 bhp diesel; push button start/stop & a very appealing interior .... all ranging from 11 to 12.5 lakhs. Civic & co better watch out.

And yes, David Coulthard drives the Red Bull F1 car at 260 kmph ....

.... on Bombay's SeaLink, breaking the 100 kmph speed limit.

Never a dull moment on the Indian automotive scene.

Gulaal

Another good one from Anurag Kashyap.

Everybody's acting is spot on (how many movies can you say that for?), especially Abhimanyu Singh (as Ransa), Deepak Dobriyal (as Bhati) & Ayesha Mohan (as Kiran). It drags in parts, but the direction & climax compensate.

Kawasaki Ninja 250R

Launched today by Bajaj at a whopping 2.69 lakhs ex showroom Delhi. You could get 2 Nanos for that price.

Chivas & the homecoming party

The bottle of 12 year old Chivas Regal had been lying unopened ever since Arni came back from the US last Monday 'cause Sid was in Jampot for the Puja holidays. Well, Sid returned today & got about planning for Arni's homecoming party .... proper.


Mutton was on the menu while Anu, Soumya & Ajay were the distinguished guests & this short conversation summed up the evening ....

Arni: (looking at his glass after 2-3 swigs) saala bahut strong hai!
Sid: (pointing to the Chivas bottle) ye 12 saal se bottle ke andar g**** nahi maraa rahaa tha.

heh heh heh

Porsche Panamera

Porsche's 1st(?) 4 door car was launched in India today.