Motoring: Days of Thunder

I pull a wheelie as part of my 'work' at Motoring, as Shumi, who was then head of two-wheeler content at the magazine, looks on. The pic was clicked by the indefatigable Param

In an earlier post, I wrote about moving on from TechTree to join Motoring, an automotive monthly magazine which was, at that time, published by the Business Standard group. The story continues here...

On my very first day at work with Motoring, the team was heading out for a photoshoot of the Mitsubishi Pajero, an old-school SUV powered by a 2.8-litre diesel engine. The hulking vehicle was parked outside the Motoring office, which is on PB Marg in Lower Parel. Editor Bijoy handed over the keys to me and asked me to drive. There were other cars parked one inch ahead and one inch behind the Pajero and I slowly, carefully, manoeuvred it out of the parking slot, silently cursing the morons who had parked their cars so close to the Pajero, leaving almost no space for the massive SUV to move either forward or back. Thankfully, after a lot of twirling of the steering wheel and inching the vehicle forward and back, I was finally able to get it out of its parking slot. The team trooped in and off we went to the photoshoot location. My first drive/shoot for Motoring went off without any incident and we were back in office by afternoon. After a quick lunch of sambhar and masala dosa at a nearby joint, I spent the rest of the day just sitting around and talking to the team, trying to understand how Motoring functioned and how things worked in the office.

The Mind-Boggling Complexity of Buying a Phone in 2024

Last week, my phone died. It had served me well for a long time, so no complaints there. The only problem is, I hadn’t realised just how complicated it is, in 2024, to choose a phone if you’re buying a new one. Well, I guess it probably isn’t that complicated for the very rich. In that case, you either buy an iPhone 16 Pro Max that currently retails for Rs 1.45 lakh (if you’re an Apple fanboy) or a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra (if you’re an Android loyalist) that’s currently priced at Rs 1.22 lakh. And that’s it, you’re done, you get the best of everything at a price that’s completely unaffordable for the rest of us.

Bicycle No More

That's me, riding my Avon Buke from school to home, in Lucknow, sometime in the mid-1980s

When I was younger – in school, during my early teenage days in Lucknow – I had a bicycle, an Avon Buke, and I used it to get around everywhere. It wasn’t a fancy bicycle – it was a basic, single-speed bike, like the kind most kids used back then. It did not have a zillion gears, which seems de rigueur these days, but that did not make it any less usable – when you hit a steep incline, you just pedalled harder. No suspension, but you could always pedal around ruts and potholes instead of going through them. And no disc brakes either, but the regular brakes – essentially bits of rubber that would rub against the wheel rims when you squeezed the brake levers – were adequate for the rather modest speeds that my bicycle could do.

Marking Time: My Fascination with Watches

Buying one is well beyond my means, but I do love mechanical Swiss watches. Thankfully, companies like Timex, Seiko and Citizen are also making some really cool watches these days that are vastly more affordable than those high-end Swiss watches

I currently don’t own a watch and haven’t actually worn one for quite some time now. And yet, one of my favourite pastimes is looking at watches on the Internet; watch manufacturers’ websites, used watches websites, Amazon and Flipkart. In fact, I especially enjoy looking at watches on Amazon and Flipkart and my ‘process’ for this is always the same. I first search for ‘men’s watches’ or ‘watches for men,’ and then use the filters provided to fine-tune the results. The filters are everything, they help you separate the wheat from chaff. You can choose which brands you want to see. Band material and colour. Case size and shape, dial colour, display type, movement type. Price range. The permutations and combinations are practically endless.

Book Review: Flying Blind - The 737 Max Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing

One assumes airplanes are safe. As in, totally, completely safe. In recent decades, air travel has become so commonplace, so mundane, we never ever think we might be at any sort of risk when flying. Given the number of accidents that happen every single day on roads – involving cars, motorcycles, trucks and buses – flying seems to be so much safer. And for the most part, it is. Things don’t go wrong too often, but when they do – when planes crash – those who are in those planes don’t usually walk away. Almost inevitably, lives are lost. Sometimes, these accidents in aviation do happen by chance, a freak occurrence, something that nobody could have predicted or prevented in any way. But some do happen because of sheer negligence and/or shoddy engineering. Peter Robinson’s book, Flying Blind: The 737 Max Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing, is the shocking story of how things went wrong at Boeing, an American icon and one of the most respected, trusted aircraft manufacturers in the world.

Driving a Ferrari 308 GTSi in Lonavala

Mr Fali Dhondy's Ferrari 308 GTSi, which I drove in Lonavala back in 2003!

I had dreamt of driving a Ferrari ever since I was a schoolkid and my first shot at piloting a car produced in Maranello came sometime in 2003, when I was working with Motoring magazine, which was at that time published by Business Standard. Srini, the classic cars specialist at BSM was going to Khandala for one of his drives/photoshoots and I offered to tag along. Little did I know then, what was in store for me that day.

A Dream That Came True: Riding the Kawasaki ZX-12R Ninja

The Kawasaki ZX-12R Ninja, one of the fastest, most powerful bikes I've ever ridden!

‘Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly,’ said poet Langston Hughes. And while I don’t think he had motorcycles in mind when he wrote this, it certainly does apply to bikes as well – dreams of riding insanely fast bikes that are, on the face of it, well beyond your means. Let me explain.

Pet Shop Boys: Still Rocking after 40 Years

Everybody will Dance was released in August this year. It's the 1980s all over again

I first listened to the Pet Shop Boys sometime in the late-1980s when their second album, Actually, was released. The album cover – whimsy and eccentric – was what attracted me in first place and I guess I must have paid something like Rs 35-40 for the cassette, which I must have then played on repeat dozens of times over the next few months. I especially loved the songs It's a Sin, What Have I Done to Deserve This? and Rent – all of which I still listen to, to this day, 35 years after I first heard them. The Pet Shop Boys, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, sure did have one hell of a talent for creating electronica-disco. And the best part is, the duo are still at it, still rocking, still creating music that has the power to move fans of 1980s-style disco. Just listen to Everybody will Dance, which was released in August this year as part of a five-track digital bundle.

Everything about music itself and the ways in which people buy (or not) and listen to music has changed in the last 3-4 decades and the 1980s seems like a faraway place in a distant time, on a distant planet, at least in the context of music. And yet there’s Pet Shop Boys, still making music their way, still weaving their old magic, still making people dance. Making everybodydance. More power to them – may their music never stop.

Jargon Buster: Know your Watch

Ready to splurge on your first expensive watch but intimidated by the barrel of complications thrown in your face? If you don’t know a Tonneau from a Tourbillon, have no fear; this jargon-buster, where I explain 50 terms that are commonly used in the world of high-end watches, will help you go hammer and gongs against the next snooty watch salesman you come across!  

Analog
A watch that displays the time via physical hour and minute hands, which are powered by an automatic or quartz movement. So, unless your watch’s primary display is a digital LCD, it’s an analog watch.  

Automatic
A mechanical watch that does not require its crown to be wound up manually. Instead, the movement of the wearer’s wrist moves a counterweight (also referred to as a rotor), which then powers the mainspring, which in turn moves the gears that power the watch’s hands. Unlike quartz watches, there’s no battery here.

Aviator Watch
An aviator watch, also called a pilot watch, was originally designed for aviators and featured a large, easy-to-read black dial, triangle marker at 12 o’clock and a ratcheted, extra-large crown. While the Cartier Santos, one of the earliest aviator watches, was square shaped, post-WW1 military specs have demanded that aviator watches must only be round.