Breaking News?

You will have to take my word on this, well Ani's since he translated for me, but this breaking news caption says "Amitabh Bachchan catches a cold."


I thought 24-hour news channels were bad in the US in declaring news as breaking. It's even worse here. One reason may be the absurb number of 24-hour news channels. There are at least 10 channels in Delhi, if you count both Hindi and English channels, and the struggle to find stories to fill the airtime.

A few weeks ago, we saw a feature of "possessed piano" complete with haunted house sounds, which was just a self-playing piano, the type we often see in malls in the US. But a news channel turned it into a 20 minute story that was repeated throughout the apparently slow Sunday afternoon.

In any case, an aging actor catching a cold is not newsworthy. Not at all.

Security?!?!?

Ani and I just returned from a few days in Goa. We took two flights and stayed in two different hotels, but our ids were only checked once, in the cheaper beach hotel in Goa. All of this in a country that claims to be under a constant security threat. All hotels are supposed to check ids for all guests. I'm not sure why, but this is more stringently enforced for foreigners. Doesn't seem that logical. And of course airports are supposed to be secure places, right?

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Last year when we went to Goa, Ani's ticket had the wrong last name. I don't think anyone even noticed that his name was not Sharma.

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Sure, I have to go through metal detectors at the movie theater and provide photo identification to set up a phone or tv connection, but no one bothers to match the name on my ticket with my passport?

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Craziness, I think. Anyways, Goa was lovely and I will write more about it when I have more time and once I've downloaded the photos from my camera. More to come.

Veggies

One of the things I love about my apartment is it's promixity to the Defence Colony Market. Although the apartment could be better, its location is great. I’m close enough to the market that I can easily walk there, but not too close to be disturbed by all of the noise and traffic.

On weekends, I usually head to the market to pick up groceries. If I’m feeling particularly lazy, I will pick out my items and then have them delivered to the apartment a few minutes later.

I always stop by the same vegetable stand to pick up the Indian necessities - red onions, tomatoes and green chilies. It’s hard to make any Indian dish (I’m getting pretty good!) without these.

So here’s my collection of vegetables from this weekend. Only 30 rupees! That’s about 75 cents. Not bad for ½ kg of tomatoes, 100g of green chilies and 4 carrots. The cilantro was thrown in for free!

And just like that...

Winter is gone. In a matter of days, gone. There was neasy transition over a few months. It went from the 50s one day nearly 80 degrees the next.

The weather this weekend as been beautiful. The days are warm and sunny and the evenings are pleasant. It would be perfect, if only it would stay this way. But I know it won't. Spring only lasts for a few weeks, if you are lucky. Most Delhiites are happy with a few days before the heat sets in.

For weeks I had been complaining about the chilly weather. And now that it's gone and the scorching is on it's way, I wish I could go back in time and enjoy the cool weather for just a bit longer.

The Book Fair and Zoo

On Sunday, Ani and I took Sheren and Suhani to the Book Fair and the Zoo. Sheren is 5 years old and was obviously more interested in the book fair. Suhani is only 2 years old and she was definitely more interested in the zoo. Nonetheless, I think both girls had a good time at both places.

By the end of the day I was wiped out. I think that was thanks to repeated ice cream/juice breaks, unscheduled bathroom breaks, and tired little bodies that required carrying.

This monkey was NOT in a cage, but just hanging out in an enclosure with deer.

More on the Tata Nano

There are a lot of jokes about how the Nano will actually do on the market once it's released in October. Indians are INCREDIBLY brand and image conscious and people often joke that they would never buy the car because people would know they only spent $2,500 on it.

In fact, used cars (or should I say pre-owned cars), don't do that well here because someone else owned them first. In general, people would rather own a new, lower model car than a used, higher model car. Maybe this notion will help the Nano afterall.

The New Nano

I'm referring to the car not the ipod. At the Auto Expo in Delhi in January, Tata Motors, one of India's oldest and largest car manufacturers unveiled its One Lakh Car, the Nano. One lakh is 100,000 rupees or about $2,500, making the Nano the cheapest car in the world.

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With work, I've somehow managed to work on several automotive proposals over the last few months, so I've been following the developments around the Nano very closely. There a lot of talk about the Nano before it was unveiled, both positive and negative. Many doubted that it could be done and there was a lot of spectulation that the market price would be much higher than 1 lakh. But as Rata Tatan, Chairman of Tata Group, said, "a promise is a promise," so he delivered a one lakh car.

At the unveiling, Ratan Tata also referred to his personal dream to make automobiles more affordable to the common man and he kept in mind the image of a family of four riding on a two-wheeler - a sight common to anyone who has traveled to India - when envisioning and designing the Nano. The goal is to make cars more affordable and replace two-wheelers with passenger cars for a large part of the population. And now India and the rest of the world have "the People's Car."

A family of four on a motorbike - a common sight in India

If you thought the first family had it bad, at least they are not on a bicycle!

In addition to making an incredibly cheap car, the car meets Indian and global safety standards for crash tests and emissions. And the product was developed entirely in India by Indians, a huge accomplishment for Indian R&D and manufacturing.

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The full impact of the Nano is still unknown, but used car prices are already down in India as people wait for the car to be available on the market in October.