Petrol vs Diesel: Which Car to buy?

If you are amongst the many urban dwellers making a beeline to book a diesel car ‘before it’s too late’ to save on Fuel cost, please STOP!

Did you ask the quintessential question ‘Kitna Deti Hai?’ before making up your minds on which car to buy? I am 100% sure you did.
Did you do the math on the per km running cost to decide which fuel should power your car? I am 60% sure you did.
Did you then assess your annual usage (in kms) to understand the recovery period for the extra capital expense in buying a Diesel car? Hmm..now I’m just 40% sure you did..
And now, did you also factor in the cost of Interest on the extra Capital expense for buying a diesel car? I’m pretty certain most of you didn’t!


Anyone with moderate MS Excel skills and about 10 minutes to apply it would figure that Petrol cars are in fact a better option. In fact, for those of us who plan on funding our diesel car through banks, chances are you are never going to recover the cost of extra capital expense.


Current day cost difference between a Petrol and Diesel variant of the same model is about Rs.1.5 Lacs. A car giving a mileage of about 15kmpl will have to be driven almost thirteen thousand kms each year for the cost to be recovered in 6 years.

But if you consider the extra interest you pay on the Rs.1.5 Lacs, the recovery period shoots up to 19 years! Yes you read it right!

Well, what can I say.. the government isn’t so stupid after all.. your choices are limited between giving your money to the oil companies or to the bank :)


PS - Leave your e-mail ID in the comment section if you want me to mail the excel sheet to you.

At Last The Maharaja Grew Balls!

I am not a fan of Air India or it's management, but I loved the fact that they did not shy away from taking some firm steps in showing the striking Pilots the doors.

The book 'Freakonomics' authored by economists Levitt and Dubner carries a whole chapter on the economics of a 'Job'.
Loosely reproduced, they say that how much a job pays depends on:


- How scarce or abundant the resource pool is of talented people wanting to do the job.
- The nature of the job itself, in terms of difficulty and criticality
- Stigma and distress associated with the job. For example a prostitute's job might not be the most difficult to carry out but the stigma attached to it, might make it more lucrative than similar easier jobs that are perceived to be 'cleaner' by the society.

Going by this, I think Pilots are the most overpaid bunch of people.
It's an awful lot of money to pay someone just to get the damn equipment off the ground and back down without breaking it.
As if that weren't enough, they need a partner to help them do it.
And might I add this whole process of taking off and landing takes about 10 minutes for each flight.. Everything between is usually done by a bloody machine called the 'Auto Pilot' while our 'Human pilots' are busy sipping martinis!


I say get these fuckers to tally the book of accounts in their idle time..

It's obvious these Pilots are just using our lack of knowledge on the subject and hyping up the whole flying thing. It's a Commercial Airliner for God's sake! It's not as if you are trying to dodge a Surface to Air Missile or an F-16 on your tail! Infact, you've got a bunch of hardworking guys who are clearing the road for you down at ATC!
And whoever said, pay them well coz the lives of the passengers depended on how the pilots performed!!
Well...the life of the Pilot too depends on how he performs, so he bloody well make sure he flies the damn plane right!
All the management has to do is take away the pilot's parachute.

And if getting killed in an accident was such a big worry, we should be paying the cab driver a helluva lot more, coz statistically we are more likely to meet with an accident on the road than in the air! And the cabby doesn't even have someone clearing the road for him!

Besides, there are so many aspiring pilots passing out of Flying schools.. Waiting in the wings... about time they get inducted into this trade at reasonable salaries!

Someone needs to THINK!!

The Rise and Rise of the Indian Dynasty!

I’ve wanted to write about this topic for a while, but I could never come around to making the time for it. It’s the recent celebration of the UP poll results that gave me the impetus to put pen on paper and express my views.
 I thought we had shunned the centuries old system where a son has to take on the same trade as the father, and then pass it on to his son in due course. It is true for most parts except for a few protected fiefdoms, all of which, instead of being booed down are being celebrated by all sections of the society.
 The first fiefdom is Politics. While I haven’t spent a lot of time in researching the number of politicians who were born in a political family, I can prove my point by asking the readers to quickly give me 5 names of MPs younger than 50 who are not from a Political family… I can’t think of too many.. Get the point?
 So I wonder how we call our self a democracy, when our options are limited to choosing our leaders from members of about 50 families in India, like the Gandhis, Yadavs, Reddys, Thakrays etc.
 The other field, even more popular and even more unwilling to let an outsider in, is the Film Industry. Does being born a Bachchan, make you a good actor? Or are Kapoor kids fairest of em’ all? Why then don’t we see more success stories like SRK and Akshay Kumar? (By Success Stories I don’t mean their movies, I meant their own careers)

And can someone please explain how on earth Sonakshi Sinha gets to be in Movies?
 I am glad that Cricket did not go the same route as Politics and Movies, and I would think it is because of Media intervention and the brutal transparence of sport.
 The least popular of fiefdoms, but still the most appalling example to me are Indian Businesses. I am amazed at the number of big corporations who are still being led by members of the founding family. I seriously expected the Tatas to break away, but they didn’t…


After centuries of being ruled over, I think the Indian gene is so used to dynasties that we don’t mind them at all. In fact, we have started liking them. Take the case of Rahul Gandhi.. the uneducated lot (a majority in India) went head over heals crazy when he took to rallying for the Congress! Same scenes in Mumbai when Aditya Thakray was ‘Launched’ in a mega event attended by thousands of people (who had nothing better to do)


I can remember many friends wanting to watch a movie just because ‘Amitabh ke bête ka launch hai yaar’.. makes me sad!


Now compare that to the west! Rarely heard of political dynasties in Europe and I don’t compare this with the United States, because they are not the benchmark for good governance.


If you want to compare with the United States, try and list out Hollywood stars whose parents too were in the motion picture business..not that easy huh? And what better example than the Americans when it comes to delinking ownership and management of businesses. I can’t think of any listed company which is being led by the son or daughter of the person who started the enterprise.

I personally don’t like Dynasties because they are in contradiction to our constitutional belief that all men are born equal. I am announcing my war on Dynasties by committing to


• Not to watch an Indian movie starring a Star Son / Daughter


• Not to vote for a candidate who has a political lineage!


• Not to buy stocks of a company run by kin of the founding family


Are you with me?

Occasionally Your's

To start with, I don’t consider myself an authority on ridding substance abuse but I am going to dispense some tips that helped me immensely. Read on. I’m certain some of you will find some of this quite useful or at least intermittently entertaining!

So, my first smoke was back in the year 2000 at my college hostel in Chennai. That was one cigarette shared with 6 others. The scarcity of funds during college days necessitated that a dozen of us pool our funds to procure a cigarette and share it till the last flake of tobacco turned to ash. Those were the humble beginnings… and like most other smokers, ten years down the line, I had graduated to smoking a pack or more a day without much strain on the wallet. Talk about Rags to Riches stories…..

Anyway, circa 2009 and I was to be part of our departments soccer team in the intra office football tournament. I don’t watch football, let alone play it, but I figured I could make myself useful by running after the ball and stop the opponents from having a free run. After all, running was my forte.. I had won medals when in college.. What I lacked in skill I would make up for in stamina… or so is what I thought..


As soon as the game started, I executed my plan of running hard after the ball trying to intercept passes. After 3 minutes of running, my heart was pounding, I was short of breath and my ears couldn’t hear a thing of what the noisy spectators were hollering! I felt like Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan. Blank. My brain told me to kick the ball that was a mere 3 feet away, but my body just wouldn’t respond. I felt like I was going to die right there! There I stood on the pitch, palms on my knees, trying to catch a breath, which is when I realized that all the smoking had taken it’s toll!

This was the trigger. I had to stop abusing my body. I had to figure out a way to quit smoking.

I had read somewhere, that if you want to develop a habit you had to consciously practice it for 21 consecutive days. I figured that if consciously practicing something for 21 consecutive days could develop a habit, not doing something for 21 consecutive days could also break a habit.

When I returned home, I decided that I will not wait for the New Year to make a resolution. I started immediately. My target was to NOT smoke a cigarette for 21 consecutive days.

Many times in the past, when I had attempted to give up smoking FOREVER, within 3 or 4 days I would be filled with questions like ‘Till when can I do this’ ‘What’s the use of this futile exercise, when I know that I WILL smoke again SOME day’ etc. My weak will power would give in to these reasoning and I would start smoking again.

But this time, my target was not to quit smoking FOREVER, but only for 21 days! It seemed achievable.

At the end of each day I would proudly count to my wife the number of days I hadn’t smoked and she, like a gym instructor giving a count down would encourage me with “C’mon 10 more days” “Shabhash! 7 more days to go.” To incentivize my effort she would put a Rs. 50 note (the cost of my pack of smokes) in a small box everyday. In hindsight, I realize how important it was for me to announce my intentions to my wife and narrate the small wins to her… Had it not been for her egging me on, I might have lit-up before reaching my 21 day target.

During these 21 days I consciously did not attend parties and get togethers where I might get lured into taking a drag.

Believe me, once the 21 days were through, the urge to light up no longer existed. Voila!! It was gone! I felt in control. I could resist a cigarette at work, during parties after dinner and at all times.

Knowing myself, I felt that this quitting FOREVER thing was not going to work for me. I had to give myself some concession for this to work.


So that I don’t get hooked again, I set myself 2 concessions that I stick to:


• I may smoke when I am more than 100 km away from home. Since my job doesn’t require much travelling this scenario is applicable mostly on vacations (which are meant to be enjoyed)
• I may smoke when I meet old buddies after a long time over a drink. This too is a rare event.

I am glad to report that for the past 2 and half years, I have been a rare occasion’s smoker. Smoking has become more of a half yearly activity. I consider this to be a big and sustainable win and I’m immensely proud of myself. Unlike before, my throat isn’t congested every morning. My teeth are whiter and my lips aren’t chapped. I can swim 5 laps and run a mile without huffing and panting, and my wife still adds Rs. 60 (inflation adjusted) in a box. I just wish she’d bought ITC shares with that money all this time 

In short if you too want to try this out:


• Capitalize on a strong trigger.
• Target Quitting for 21 consecutive days.
• Announce your intention to a close relative or friend who’ll help you along
• Set yourself some concessions if you think you might not be able to sustain*
• Remind yourself of what you’ve gained Physically, Emotionally and Monetarily.

Go on. Kick the habit.


*These are my personal experiences and there would be people who have quit smoking for good and forever. This article is not meant to promote occasional smoking, but to help you drastically reduce your consumption of cigarettes if not completely stop it.

Sport and the City!

This Indian team touring the West Indies is said to be the future of Indian cricket. From what I could gauge, the future of Indian cricket appears bright. Very bright! But the one thing that seemed to catch my attention was the fact that the team did not have much representation from Mumbai. In the patriotic frenzy of cheering for India, one would be pardoned for not having noticed something as trivial as this, but being a Mumbaikar; I couldn’t stop myself from asking why.

As a natural reaction, I felt the blame should lie squarely on the national selectors. How else could you explain no representation from a team that has won 39 Ranji Trophies? But this seemed too shallow an explanation. There had to be more to it than just poor selection.

When in Delhi, I saw kids playing cricket with the “Leather ball” in the ground adjoining their homes. The same was the case in many parts of Punjab and UP. This is when it dawned upon me, that these parts of India offered something to it’s talented children something that Mumbai never can. Vast expanses of land. Land where they could play cricket the way it was meant to be played… With a leather ball on a pitch made of soil in a circular ground with no inhibitions!

One is not likely to see any kids playing Leather ball (Season Ball as we call it) cricket in Mumbai. The concrete and tar periphery of our Mumbai houses don’t suit leather ball cricket, so Mumbai kids play cricket with a tennis ball. The lack of space has necessitated that some people improvise further and play Under-arm cricket with a tennis ball. The tall buildings in the vicinity with glass windows and “cricket hating society secretaries” required that all batsmen curb their natural desire of hitting the ball out of the (proverbial) park, and thus, was born Under-arm-Box Cricket with a tennis ball.

While these forms of the sport are great for entertainment, it would be naïve to expect a Tendulkar to emerge from these gully variations of the gentlemen’s game. To complicate matters further, the saturated public transport system has also discouraged parents from letting their children travel to far flung maidans in the heart of the city, where the game can be played the way it is meant to be played… With a leather ball on a pitch made of soil in a circular ground with no inhibitions!

It is obvious that with challenges like these; posed by the city infrastructure, the pipelines of cricketing talent from Mumbai are running dry. I can only hope the sport loving people of the city find a game they can lend their talents to and get some acclaim for India… Just like Bhiwani did for boxing and Haryana did for wrestling. But alas “Playstation” is not an Olympic sport!

I had once heard someone say; that the best gifts one can give to his child are ‘Wings’ to help him fly and ‘Roots’ to keep him grounded. Assuming I managed to give my child both, will Mumbai’s skyscrapers let him fly and would the concrete let him grow roots?? I guess, I’ll give my child “Fins” at least he’ll have ample opportunity to swim in the monsoons! Howzzat?

Memory Loss and Thought Control !!

One can understand it takes a lot of creativity to keep a news hungry population well fed 24x7. Creativity because, there isn't enought actual events occuring that can qualify as news. So, what the news channels have to do is pick a topic or personality that the people can connect with and magnify a seemingly trivial matter to an extent that it becomes a national issue. Some weeks back, lady luck presented the scribes with an opportunity they couldn't say "I'll pass" to.

Shahrukh Khan stood up for the Pakistani cricketers; yeah, the same ones he chose not to pick, and then made a couple of statements that were no longer important to anyone. The crouching tiger of Maharashtra (in desperate need for mileage) pounced.

In all fairness, the above sequence of events deserve no more than 120 seconds of air time; but the 4th estate dropped everything else there were doing and whipped up a story so big that every ticker on every bulletin only ran non-stop updtes on the Sena's demand for a retraction. With so much media attention the Badshah Khan't really let discretion be the better part of valor, can he? So he quipped back and what followed was absolute pandemonium.

Now let's take an objective view of what happened. The actual events were and would have remained mere sparks, had it not been for the media Stoking the fire. But it wasn't to be. Now my TV set is full of images of dumb people alleging their support to the actor and explaining to me that how "elements" like the Thackerays are bad for the Nation.

What baffles me is how come no news channel; while interviewing the public bumped into a person who thought that Thackeray was right in his anti-pak stand. Isn't it the same public that took to the streets post 26/11. Isn't it the same news channel that ran a campaign called "lest we forget." But when a politician tried to rein in an amnesiac actor, we all termed the politician the Bad guy.

Let me ask you this, if SRK had said he wanted Pakistanis to play in IPL on 30th September 2008 (4 days after 26/11), would his thought find resonance in your head??

Moral of the story : Don't let the media color your thought.

PS - A week after I initially wrote this blog, Pune got bombed and the controversy saved MNIK from bombing at the box office.

DOWN NORTH

I woke up an hour too late only to read a ticker stating "Match abandoned due to poor pitch conditions". But the match was being played in Delhi not in a far flung non cricketing venue like Gangtok. Come to think of it, wasn't so much of a surprise, was it?

Over a period of time, owing to my habbit of following current affairs, I have started realising that the Northern part of our nation is in the news for all the wrong reasons. Didn't notice it? Turn on the TV, switch to a credible news channel, and when I say credible I mean English News Channel, what you see will make you believe; that there are more kids trapped in bore wells than there are in schools; that kids who don't get trapped in bore wells are mowed down by buses on their way to school; that kids who manage to get to so called good schools (Read DPS) end up getting murdered or are caught on camera sucking at wrong things!! Ok. So I am exaggerating. Not all Kids die young. Some grow up (atleast physically) and fall in love and get married... to a person from a different caste... nothing wrong with that, except that I am not from the North, which leaves me at a disadvantage of not understanding the absolute necessity of "HONOUR KILLING". Here I go again. Ok, not all North Indians subscribe to Honour Killing; some of them are just content killing women in discotheques and up class restaurants! I won't delve into the innovative uses of Tandoor as illustrated by an affluent Northerner some year back nor do I want to disgust my readers with abundant stories of rape and molestation! Why oh why dear Northie? Can't you live like civilized human beings?

The culture of a place can be fathomed by the way people treat their women and children, and you certainly aren't fooling me by merely putting women in charge of the state, a prison or a good for nothing political party.

What the North needs is a crash course on civil behaviour, lesson or two on the importance of being humble, a stint at the rehab for all I care. What it needs is a cultural overhaul. But all this would come by, only when the avarage North Indian gets used to living without the generous helpings of the Ego massage doled out every hour by the person below him in the pecking order. It's not as important as "Roti Kapda aur Makaan". It is not important that you recite the names of all your influential Taayajis and Fufajis each time you are stopped by the mundane traffic cop. The DJ can't always play your (Punjabi) song, so put the gun away and wait your turn. But alas, all this is a tall order and can't be fulfilled anytime soon and certainly not before the CWG.

The powers that be, seem to have realised some of the things I have tried to emphasize upon, but their counter measure in the form of "DILLI KI BITIYA" is too little too late. As far as the games go, there isn't an iota of doubt in my mind that we are about to witness the worst organised event ever. What can you expect from a city that couldn't flatten 22 yards of soil even with crores of rupees riding on it. In the meantime I'll just hope that "Bitiya" stays clear of runaway buses and stray bullets.