Blogs

The year 2022 has come to an end. The second half of 2022 had its own share of road accidents, some of them extremely fatal, some of them tragic, horrific and scary.

Author Elisabeth Foley has rightly said, “The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.” And that is precisely what Vikram Kirloskar and Toyota have demonstra...

I love it when a random auto journalist in India writes in his column that a high speed car needs to be driven on a race track. Auto journalists are typically that breed of professionals who “run with the hares and ...

Cheer girls have an entertaining task before them. In fact, cheerleading is defined as an activity that involves participants (usually girls in skirts, waving colourful and glittering pom poms) swaying their hips an...

Just the other day a leading English newspaper came out with a report quoting a data released by the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB). It said that road crashes in India claimed 426 lives per day or 18 every hour...

“Gurinder is no more you know? He died of gunshot injuries a couple of years back. I was informed about this a few days back when I met a journalist from Punjab,” Shafiq told me. I was aghast. How is it that I misse...

It’s been several months since I accepted a car or bike “review” invitation. Yes, I miss reviewing new cars and bikes. There is no denying that fact. OEMs continue to shower journalists with free air travel, free 5-...

As I was growing up I loved watching Hindi movies. During the 1980s and 1990s, and perhaps before that too, there was a “Bahadur” character in every other movie who always responded to his master by saying, “Jee Sha...

Yes, I know auto journalists and the organisations they work for are not rich in the real sense. Auto journalists cannot travel all over the world and drive fancy cars and bikes by spending their own money. No media...

As a B2C auto journalist, I was exposed to the world of glitz. Almost every car and bike launch, besides first drives and rides, meant free five star stays, free flights, free food and wine and at the end of the d...

OEMs are basically manufacturers of cars, two wheelers and other vehicles. I have often asked myself, are OEMs like the Pied Piper of Hamelin in the poem written by Robert Browning. And are we journalists and influe...

Everybody in the auto journalism world had to adapt to new rules of social media, its charm, its pluses and minuses and its absolute ruthlessness amid the excitement and opportunities it offered.

A couple of decades back, #journalists were kind of independent when it came to reporting and they never had the management breathing down their necks to get moolah for their organisations. And even if they wanted...

In the past I have talked a bit about #journalists, but what about #PublicRelations boys and girls? Who are they? What is their mandate?

Every time the Auto Expo is held in India, the components players have an Asli Naqli pavilion which displays spurious components along with real ones. The purpose is to educate the consumers of the rampant availabil...

They say IITians are smart and savvy and they are good at what they do. Look at what one IITian professor did to the Delhi traffic with his silly Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor plan. After spending hundreds of cro...

It’s easy for any tribunal, whether green or blue, to put a ban on vehicles. Earlier, as per the Motor Vehicles norms in the country, a vehicle life was put at 15 years, beyond which the vehicle needed to be get a f...

Jeremy Clarkson. We all know that this man working for BBC and who hosts the show ‘Top Gear’ has a huge fan following. So does Sunny Leone and Pamella Anderson, at least when her silicon implants were in good order!...

With BMWs, Mercedes-Benzes and Audis getting popular, the need for speed on roads is understandable. These are fast cars and are safe and stable too. But no matter how broad a road you get to drive in India, you sti...

Every day we hear someone or the other, thinking of ways to replace the traditional human driver from the car, thus removing driver error from the equation all together which seems like a good idea…in theory. But...

Ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a clarion call to make India clean (Swatch Bharat), there has been a flurry of activities, both genuine and fraud, trying to heed to his call. Some have honestly taken up...

How was it before the internet became popular? Very simple, people read newspapers and magazines, watched the limited news on television and listened to radio. Then came the internet bomb. Why bomb? Because it almos...

A new trend going around these days in the auto industry is a feature that goes by the name of ‘driving mode’. This option of a driving mode started with the German luxury manufacturers and is now tricking down to t...