Looking back at the original people's car...

If there is one moment when India changed, when it decisively moved from one set of aspirations and mindset to another, it is when it first saw the Maruti 800. For it was virtually the first product available in India that one lusted for. I remember being transfixed when I saw my first Maruti (it wasn’t even the car, it was the van); I had never seen anything shinier,anything more radiant with bliss.Twenty-five years on, that seems difficult to believe so completely have our eyes been jaded by all the cars that clog up our roads now. But to a generation that grew up watching other people drive their Ambassadors or Fiats (Standard Herald for the less lucky ones), the dinky little bit of plastic, all shiny and red was an invitation to a new kind of paradise.

The Ambassador was the reigning deity till then. Its lines were inspired by a matron’s commodious petticoats and its interiors had the well-worn comfortable shabbiness of the Indian drawing room. It drove one with the laconic recalcitrance of the father, while offering you the familiar comfort of a mother’s lap. You sprawled inside the car when not carrying your entire brood of third cousins and their family friends to the railway station to receive or to see someone off. The car was large, solid and rounded. Nothing about its design acknowledged that it was an object designed to move.

The Ambassador squatted on the ground, embracing its own centre of gravity. It was a car that clearly believed that it was better to waddle than to race and moved with stolid disregard for one’s surroundings or one’s intent. The Ambassador was status quo on wheels, a car that allowed one to stand still even as one moved and do so with one’s entire way of life intact. It pointed nowhere and took us nowhere, which was where we wanted to be. The Fiat was a modern car in the way that a transistor was modern. It detached itself from the collective, being designed for a nuclear family and it had a shape that actually pointed somewhere. It was a car that moved, albeit with extreme self-awareness about its limitations. Like the educated Indian, mildly successful, and keen not to underline that success too much, this was a car that took a small step forward without taking us anywhere new. If the Ambassador was a pyjama, the Fiat was a pair of creased terrycot trousers worn with a nondescript shirt. The Maruti came as a plastic shock out of the blue. It was all electric compactness, bristling with impudent desire. It looked like it was made as a seamless whole by technology instead of being painstakingly riveted together by a combination of lathes and welding machines, as appeared to be the case with the older cars. If the Ambassador and the Fiat at best deigned to confer broad agreement on our travelling intentions, the Maruti leapt to our commands, converting even transient whims that barely crossed our minds into spittle-spraying feats of fierce manoeuvrability. We squeezed into our little dream machines and rocketed off to newer destinations on the road as well as in the mind.


It freed us from our life script. For most of us, who were born in the middle class only to die there, the car was a border we could not imagine crossing. Only the haves could dream of owning a car. For the rest, a Bajaj Chetak after 8 years of waiting period was the best one could hope for. The Maruti compressed the promise of consumerism in its appearance, performance and price. It flung the doors of aspiration wide open and made us believe for the first time we could escape the middle class, tyres screeching. In a larger sense, it made us experience the power of desire and the exhilaration of being in the driving seats of one’s life. We were able to tear ourselves away from a world which measured performance in terms of the thickness of gauge or in terms of hardiness of form. Mutability, flexibility and speed came to be valued as did the overtness of external appearance. We understood packaging even as we redefined the meaning of performance. Substance was no longer opposed to style, and price no longer extracted for performance.

Seen with today’s eyes, the Maruti 800 is a somewhat basic piece of machinery that seems oddly outdated. But if we have driven as far as we have from it, let us remember it was in the Maruti.



“Copyright © 2008, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved"


- SANTOSH DESAI,
The Times of India

Certain things in life are inevitable....

Sometimes, IN LIFE,

When you try, as hard as possible, to devote sometime for work over or do something you like/love, FATE wills it the other way.

The above statement could become contraversial sometimes, because, some people might argue that there's nothing called FATE. "It's you who must excise control over yourself". I neither agree, nor disagree to it.

Enough of babbling.

The crux of the whole post was to inform that I got myself disengaged from blogging, due to some physical and mental reasons ;)

Welcome back RAVI, to BLOGGER !!

Master Power..

Mind is the master power that molds and makes,
And we are Mind, and evermore we take
The tool of thought, and shaping what we will,
Bring forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills.
We think in secret, and it comes to pass –
Our world is but our looking glass.

- James Allen

What if?

What if your future is known to you?
What if you are aware of your means of death?
What if you know how long you'd thrive?
What if I resist my conscience?
What if I disagree my subconscience?
What if I meddle with my inner soul?
Where will I end up?

TERRORIZING INDIA.....

Terrorism!!

The Topic itself is Self Explanatory!!

What's the solution for this ? ? ?

Kick off @ MARUTI SUZUKI...

Yup. It all started the way, it had to. For those of you who are still blinking, I am talking about training @ MARUTI SUZUKI, Gurgaon. It kicked off well on the 1st of July. You know what, it's a bit frustrating when the formalities completion goes on for two full working days. But, yes, voracious readers continued reading their favourite novels and other stuff during office hours to keep themselves engaged and people like me, day-dreamed the whole day.
Finally, from the 3rd of July, we have had an array of lectures for about 9 days. Department heads from various sections of the company came and addressed us. Few sessions were interesting and a few, as usual, were quiet soporific (esp. those that were held after Lunch).
Coming to the quality of food.. Coming from South India, I am not used to having Roti, Dal & Rice on all 7 days in a week. It's sometimes quiet frustrating to have the same type food on all days. But, it's all part of game and am getting used to it.

One good thing about MARUTI SUZUKI is the attire. Right from MD to Technicians, everyone wears uniform on all days. It brings in a sense of Pride and Uniformity.

Yet another good/bad thing about MARUTI SUZUKI is card punching system. One has to, at any cost, punch his/her card at or before 8:45 am, or else you better go back home and relax, because your half-day salary is already deducted. ;)

Overall, it has been a smooth start... Looking forward to the weeks ahead....

Page Cannot Be Displayed...

You know, its damn damn frustating and annoying, when you are not able to log on to your blog for about two months.
Yes! Don't know, what error it was. All I could see, when i type "j-ravi.blogspot.com" on the address bar was "The page cannot be displayed". Then, i deciphered that the problem was with my so-called "highly advanced" computer @ home.

Longing to meet all my blogger pals, once again.
Now, I've joined MARUTI SUZUKI, Gurgaon. So, I am at a new place now. Everything new. Getting settled slowly. The good news is BLOGGER works here! Looking forward to frequent blogging.

The IPL craze...

Even on the dullest of days, you've got something in the evening to relax and enjoy for 3 hours or probably 6. It's the lucrative INDIAN PREMIER LEAGUE, that has been the talk of the town for the past 35 days. With 8 very good teams (so-called) vying for the first 4 places on the points table, every single game is intriguing till the last ball is bowled.

One good thing about this IPL, apart from the whopping sum of money BCCI generates and the lump sum amount of money being offered to the players, is that the hidden skills of quiet a lot of players are being exposed in this League. Abhishek Nayar, Dhawal Kulkarni, Manpreet Goni, Yousuf Pathan, Satish Dhawan etc have become the FINDs of the SEASON. With lots of burgeoning players performing really well, the competition is getting really intense.

One sad thing about this year's IPL is/was the dismal performance of Royal Challengers Bangalore and Hyderabad's Deccan Chargers, though both being very good teams on paper. But, as we say, it's all in the game.

But there is one fear growing along with this growing intensity of this Indian Premier League. With the Indian Premier League going great guns this season, almost matching the vividness of an EPL, people, i presume, would find ODIs and Test mathces too long for them to have complete entertainment. Let's hope that the Indian crowd doesn't dwindle for those versions of the game, leave alone games/sports other than cricket.

Well Said...

"No man, who manages to enjoy his life, is a failure."

- William Feather.


Bang on! 100% yes.

TECHOFES '08 - The best in so far.

It was well said, "Proper planning bears friut". The annual Cultural Festival of College of Engineering Guindy, TECHOFES which sets the stage ablaze during MID-FEBRAUARY, stood out this year (2008) compared to the previous years. It was the best Techofes, this college has witnessed over the years.

This 4 day extravaganza featured variety of entertainment.
This event needed extensive planning, scheduling and careful execution, as its magnitude was quite on the higher side. The organising part was done exceedinglly well. It is a fest, primarily, for the students & by the students. They gave their everything, to ensure that, this turns out into a proper shape. Everything was well planned. Very Well executed.
But the days they sweated were really tough, i'd say. Bunking classes (This doesnt matter a lot to them, though!) to get hold of sponsors, inviting chief guests (This was a different attempt, this time! Well done guys!) to grace the occasion, arrangements for stage, acoustic settings, Keeping venues equipped with necessary requisites, informing the press, arranging for stalls, Using rhetoric in arguing with film distributors (Film must also be latest. Old films find scarce crowd – another feat to be achieved) to avoid fleecing exorbitant sum, informing caterers for snacks, invitations for all the staff (It must also be ensured that invitation reaches each and every staff or it’ll turn out to be problematic.), hospitality for all the participants and guests and many more…
The event was very well executed. The best ever managerial work with exuding confidence & commitment.

Coming to the entertainment part of Techofes ’08,

Day 1: "Well begun is half done." This stood justified at the end of 4 days. It was none other than maestro Elayaraja, who declared TECHOFES '08 open. He addressed us for a quiet a few awaited golden moments. One cannot have a better beginning than this! (Cheers guys! U made, even the IITians, gape this time.) This was followed by a "so-called" blockbuster miovie (Film Director will have to blamed, not the students. They did their part well) This was on the 13th of FEB.

Day 2: One cannot imagine a better Valentine day celebration than this. Just imagine, you've got somebody like Shankar Mahadevan, 100 m away from you, singing the best of his works. How different could you react other than having a goose flesh all over your body & getting frenzied the whole evening? This was what happened. It was Shankar Mahadevan, at his best, on a beautiful valentine day evening, who with his horripilating melodies, made us transcend our limits of entertainment. This was on the 14th of FEB.

Day 3: This day’s morning featured with lots of trivial fun. Quizzes, right from India to Harry Potter to biz to everything. Evening's agenda was a good Variety show. It was a fine performance. Lots of colleges in and around Chennai had come ‘all the way’ to our campus and enacted a good show. This was on the 15th of FEB.


Day 4: Choreo-nite set the evening stage, of the final day, ablaze. A pyrotechnic experience. Profusely gifted dancers from various colleges did their part exceedingly well. Judges were at a crossroads as to whom to be awarded the first. Choreo-nite was a fitting finale to end the unprecedented Techofes '08.

The event, tout ensemble, was a great success. United effort of my pals, patient and dedicated execution of an ingeniously planned programme, finally, bore FRUIT. This fest, Techofes '08 has left a good impression for the successors to follow and will be remembered & cherished for years to come. Cheers guys! College of Engineering, Chennai rocks!

"As you Think"

Here's what JAMES ALLEN has got to say:

"As we think in our hearts, so are we. Good thoughts can fetch you good results & bad thoughts bad results. The dishonest person is not totally corrupt & the honest one is not entirely virtuous."

P.S: Lines from James Allen's 'As a man thinketh'.

I go with him. Wat abt u?

An EXCERPT.....

"I do not care for liberation, I would rather go to
a hundred thousand hells, 'doing good to others
(silently) like the spring', this is my religion.

- Swami Vivekananda

Sports getting scary?

What is happening all over!

Have you ever seen Federer sweat out so much in his third round in any Grand Slam? A '10-8' scary win in the fifth set is something beyond imagination. Is Fed out of spirits these days? Is the Serb, Tipsarevic, a future FED?

It isnt over here.

What happened in Perth? What? Did India win 'Oz' in 'Oz'ie soil? That too in Perth? Why surprise? The only team that keeps haunting Oz's domineering attitude, I assure, is India. That's India for you. That will remembered as one of the greatest victories in the History of Indian Test Cricket. A total team effort with Kumble leading from the front aplomb, made India a prouder country. Let's hope for a 2-2 square off in Adelaide.

It isnt over here.

What's happening with Bhajji? 'Cricket'ism or Racism? A bloodbath in Sydney. Bhajji is never a racist!!!!! We all stand for that. But Australia, certainly, lacked Sportiveness that day. Navjot Singh Sidhu's out burst on NDTV would have been like honey flowing into the ears for many. He was at his peak. I loved him criticise the Aussies ;) And, i feel, Aussies got what they deserved.

It isnt over here.

What's happening to Umpiring these days? Sydney match - No one can forget. No need to describe. All Indian cricket fans will know it. But, coming to Perth, there were still quite a few umpiring errors, though it was a far far FAIR match that the one that took place in Sydney. Umpiring needs Rennaissance.

It isnt over.

What's happening with DADA? Why not Ganguly (the man in form) for ODI tri-series against two big-shots of World Cricket, Oz and Srilanka? And Rahul Dravid - the man who led India to great victories in the past? For want of a Young Indian Team who can "field" well? So, Has BCCI found out anybody Superior to Dravid, who can sweat it out for India with his Bat and who is a legend at Slips? Or has BCCI carved out somebody superior to this ambidextrous all-rounder who has been really consistent in the recent past? Clueless!!

An event unforgettable....

Our inter-college tech fest Kurukshetra featured a crowd-pulling event called The Dalal Bull event (A virtual stock market event, the highest registered event at Kurukshetra ‘07) for which I was one of the event coordinators. We used 20 interconnected (through LAN) computers for the event. Each computer was fed with registration details and all data pertaining to shares. There was one main server computer. Trading was planned for a 10 o’clock start. Trading started sharp at 10, went on smoothly for about an hour. More & More people started pouring in. It was around 11 am, to our panic all the computers displayed “Page cannot be displayed” page. LAN connection had incurred some problem. Trading stopped. We, the coordinators, stood stupefied & so were the traders who started making profit. Crowd dwindled. Criticism poured in from all ends. It was later diagnosed that LAN connection had some loose contacts. Lessons learnt from this: Stitch in time saves nine. The problem should have been diagnosed well before start and should have been rectified. It was our carelessness. Every component borrowed from outside must be checked for its effectiveness before putting them into use for big events like this. But one good thing was, we fixed that problem. And we had great days ahead, with lot of participants pouring in. At the end of the day, our event won the heaviest of applauds.

Entry into 2008...

Wishing all my blogger pals, a great 2008.