Blogs

When I realised that the Indian government was planning to make the recently concluded Bharat Mobility Global Expo an annual event, I was aghast.

On Sunday, September 03, 2023, I got a call from my friend and a senior photo journalist Mohammed Shafiq informing me that Deepangshu Dev Sarmah was no more. He was at that time working with Mobility Outlook, a B2...

What’s with journalists these days? Has journalism changed from being a noble profession to one that is ignoble? It seems that it has become a profession of jokers, extortionists, political stooges and spineless boy...

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...

Many decades back, much before I joined the newspapers as a journalist, I remember reading the book titled ‘Iacocca: An Autobiography’. The bestselling book was co-authored by William Novak and was originally publis...

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 ...

What began as a personal interaction platform of sorts has taken on an extremely complex form, more elaborate then Chinese whispers. I call it a ‘FILTY’ world. So what exactly is this world? It’s just a word I coi...

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...

“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...

Capt Jayant Joshi along with Lt Col AS Batth was doing a routine practice exercise in their Army Aviation Rudra Advanced Light Helicopter at the Ranjit Sagar Dam near Pathankot when it crashed into the deep waters o...

Circa 1988: Remember the slow old days when things happened at the speed of an Ambassador car? For today’s generation it may actually sound as though we lived in a “slow motion” age! Among the several valuable posse...

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-...

In the good old days, some of us used to pick up the morning #newspaper to read the latest news, whether it was on #politics, #sports, local development or #business. The more voracious readers amongst us spent thei...

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...

But all the talk of “Atmanirbhar Bharat” makes no sense if it does not bring in the moolah for the investor. In the early days of post Independence making moolah was very difficult because of the “red-tapism” and co...

There are some names that will always be remembered with a lot of fondness. Pappu is one of them. I grew up in a middle-class locality in Delhi and as a young lad, I had lots of friends. They were not just from a ...

Getting hooked on #narcotics substances can be very dangerous. They destroy lives, minds and souls. The sale and consumption of illegal narcotics are rampant across the globe. The first time I had a narcotic substan...

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...

I saw the #socialmedia tsunami coming but could never fathom its intensity. It was around 2004-2005 when platforms like #youtube , #twitter , #facebook , etc were born. Much later #instagram came into being. #tiktok...

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 days of yore, #journalists were simple in their outlook, existed on meagre salaries and were there on a mission to bring out the truth. In the 1980s and early 1990s before the television boom, business journalism...

In Part 4, I explained what it means to deal with the “Paapi pet ka sawal hein…” issue. After all, journalists and PR pros are humans too. They have to survive.

Many of us would have heard of the Hindi phrase “Paapi pet ka sawal hein…” In essence it means, eventually it’s all about feeding ourselves, it’s about our stomach… Yes, we all work hard because we want to put food ...

Are #journalists different from #PRprofessionals? I really do not think so. Both jobs call for a lot of hard work, patience and self-respect. I have often referred to these professions as two sides of a coin. Throug...

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

For more than a decade from the 1980s to 1990s, I was a business journalist working in different newspapers. #Journalists at that time were known for their ethics, self-respect, high moral standards and their vast k...

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...

Journalism is getting murkier by the day and so are some journalists...or should we call them journalists? People ask me as to why I do not want to attend press conferences (PCs) and I tell them it’s getting more an...

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...