Halo ed Cars

I usually hate marketers, they always twist facts and if you are at the receiving end of it, you are sure to be screwed (e.g. how they made me join ABS) but I am very grateful to them because of creating a term called Halo cars. Halo cars are those models that are developed to create positive associations to a brand. Companies tell their pot-smoking engineers to go nuts and develop something so berserk and impractical that car nuts like me would drool over it and have wet dreams.

And look what it created, the Sergio Scaglietti-designed 250GTO! That’s one beauty(the red car) that just oozes passion. There are several others too, like the 250LM, 288GTO, F40, F50, the Mercedes 300SL gull-wing, Ford GT40, Aston Martin db5, Jaguar XJ220, Lamborghini Miura, Diablo. More money was made from selling merchandise of these cars than the cars themselves.

These cars were downright bonkers. The gull-wing Merc had the dubious status of frying your balls, literally, it was that hot inside. The Miura for instance, asks in its manual to actually open the door and sit sideways to look outside to reverse it. All of these cars always put up tantrums. If it was out in the rain it won’t start, if you haven’t driven it for a week, it won’t start, if it’s not the right fuel it won’t start, if someone else drove it with a heavy foot, he would have probably messed up the timing and that’s a visit to the mechanic. It would also kill you, if you did not treat it properly. But, I would have loved every moment of it.

The Japanese then came along with their halo cars, like the very iconic ‘Nismo-Nissan Skyline GT-R’. These things were crazy, they had tons of power and handling ability all this with Japanese reliability. That meant you can burn rubber at the track and on the way back pick up the kids from school. Sure, they weren’t anywhere as pretty as the Italians but the GT-Rs started filling kid’s and dorm room walls.

The Italians then embraced the ‘vulgar’ electronic aids and developed some pretty interesting cars. The latest of the crazies are the Ferrari FXXs (the black car; the glow in the front wheel arch is the semi molten disc brake due to immense braking friction) and the Merc 722s, both cars push the boundaries so much that it creates new ways for you to die. It has so much grip, that if you get over zealous at a turn, the g-forces could snap your neck like a twig.

Oh! God bless the marketers!

Breakpoint

What’s eating China and Pakistan? Why do they hate us Indians? Did we, by chance, make fun of their really small wieners or is it that they aren’t getting any. It’s a bloody mystery.

Last week, when we inked a deal to promote free trading to ASEAN countries, the bloody Chinese acted like a bunch of third graders. A Chinese ‘scholar’ from a state-run ‘university’ declared in his infinite wisdom that India was a “Hindu Religious State” and that Hinduism is a “decadent religion” and that apart from annexing Arunachal Pradesh and working with countries such as Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan to secure the separation of Assam and Bengal from the Indian Union, should encourage Tamil separation and divide the country into 20-30 nation states. That’s not all; they have been spreading such ‘insights’ to countries which we trade with thereby trying to erode our ties with them. The cheeky bastards

During the dreadful 26/11 acts on Mumbai, Jiabao picked up his cheap Chinese-made phone to called his frat buddy (in the small wieners club) Giliani, to extend his support. While the world sympathised with us, these bastards were thinking of breaking us up. No points in guessing who was against extending sanctions on Jammat-ud-Dawa, the Chinese again. They have also been constantly upping their naval presence in the Indian Ocean and also been very cooperative to enhance the Pakistani fleet.

You know what, fuck them; I challenge the yellow bellied assholes to do as they please. We won’t take this lying down. I know one thing for sure; they are shit scared of us, otherwise they wouldn’t go for such underhanded tactics. I know, we Indians have our differences and can’t stand each other, but when it comes down to the shits we are a bloody force to reckon with.

Identity Crisis

My previous post sucked. Yes, sucked per se. After some painful reviews, I realised what I have done. I went out of character.

On the trepidation of losing my readers, I decided to understand my blog. I reread all my posts and my first thoughts were that it was a manifestation of an angry young man lashing out at the savageness of this world.

No, it was too clichéd! This ain’t the freaking 80’s! Nobody likes a freaking one-man-against-the-world plot. These are the years of the sweet-talking metro-sexual and I know for the fact that I’m not one. I still think mousse is something you eat and not for your hair. I still believe in treating women with respect and not slapping them around (strangely they seem to like it).

Maybe that’s it. The blog has an old-worldliness character to it strewn with a newfangled attitude toward issues. Its like ‘The Hindu’ and ‘DNA’ (the newspaper) coming together with soft porn and economics on the same page. Maybe that’s what my readers like.

I hope this self-diagnosis hit the sweet spot and I promise that I’ll never lose sight of the character again.

Reinventing the Wheel

“In business, you have to reinvent the wheel every day; once you stop doing that, you are finished” said an acquaintance of mine. Considering that he started from scratch and now owns 18 golf courses, there must be some truth to it.

Fundamentals in business schools are just generalisations of the real thing. An entrepreneur is required to learn, evolve and customise business processes, often learning important lessons on the way.

The above mentioned gentleman was a regular at my brother’s hotel. His insights into business were marvellous. I often used to share a bottle of wine with him, during which we would discuss a business opportunity and how to go about it, scribbling on a piece of paper while doing so. I would have to say that those pieces of paper have given me more insights in running a business than I have learnt in the past one year at Alliance.

We would also come up with a plan to do some cost cutting or utilise some resource more efficiently in our respective businesses. Something as trivial as getting a better deal on the disposable cups for the coffee machines or getting slot machines were discussed at length often scouring the yellow pages and doing phone calls, justified by saying “Every penny counts”.

Lessons lie in the rough, obscured by the annals of banality. Understanding it and implementing it requires skill and fortitude.

Coming Out of the Closet

A landmark judgement by the Delhi High Court striking down Section 377, which criminalises consensual sex between two individuals including same gender(for the perverts, goats are still a No No), was the cause for a bittersweet moment for me. It was actually like watching a kid growing into adolescence; you are happy for him growing up but sad because he would lose his innocence.

India is finally growing up, accepting certain facts of life to which it was in deep denial. Don t get me wrong, I believe gay sex is as unnatural as Michael Jackson’s face, both creeps the shit out of me, except for lesbianism (wink!).

This verdict has changed everything, the truth that homosexuality is no more a closet truth and the sheer number of people involved puts a new perspective to an otherwise naive and innocent India. On the other hand, I am proud of India being mature enough to take such a decision. I view this as a step towards becoming a country that values freedom and faces truth than deny it.

I just hope the fanatics, that this country is so famous for, grew half a brain and join the programme.

Adieu to MJ

MJ passed away. I mourn for him. Like all great artists, he is more remembered for his scandals than his achievements. A misunderstood soul, he always tried to come to grips with his life by outrageous acts.

In his life time he has achieved unprecedented worldwide fame and recognition, every kid in the 80’s knew who he was. I remember jumping on the bed to his tunes, the Van Halen solos that he interlaced with his high energy performances, just brilliant.

I will remember him along with the greats Jimi Hendrix, Freddie Mercury, Jim Morrison, Cliff Burton, Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain, Tom Fogerty and others.

I mourn for him.

Beauty

I hate painting beautiful pictures with words, because the beauty we conceive is not true, it ceases to be true when we alter life to make it so.  I revel in the intricacies of life, the innate gestures we take for granted and the ones that spawn out of innocence. So to me, a child smiling at the prospect of getting a candy has more beauty than a well toned model with features that even god didn’t have a hand in making them.

Naturally so, I was a little perplexed on the issue of later stage abortions (for the naive few, its aborting the child after 20 weeks of conception; the foetus is almost formed and is declared alive by US law).  It’s appalling, I know, killing a child because it’s not formed properly. Are the stereotypes of babies propagated by media the benchmark in deciding how yours should be? If everybody looked like that where would individualism figure in our list of priorities? Several disabled people live happy lives, sure, they may be ridiculed in society and be looked upon in pity all their lives, but does that give anybody the right to kill, who are we to decide? I am starting to sound like a fear monger selling a dystopia to the inexorable public.

Then I heard the plight of a couple, their story put a different perspective on the topic. They have been trying to conceive for years and when they finally did they were elated, painted the kids room, bought everything they could get their hands on, did everything prescribed in every pre-natal care book. Unfortunately, after 22 weeks, a scan revealed that the baby’s brain was filling up with fluids and he would be born without any brain function. They were distraught, they took as many second opinions as possible but they all concurred. So they had an abortion. Are they justified in doing so? Did they in doing so, reduce the agony that the child would have lived through and also the parents agony?

Like all debates, we can never conclude on anything, we just compromise between the two and hope that our conscience figures out what’s right.