My Conversation with a bulgarian cabbie

One thing that has not changed about me since my childhood is my habit of getting late. Back in school days i used to catch the bus once, or if I am lucky, twice a week. On other days i had use a Rickshaw. in my 11th and 12th my very dear friend 'Piyush Singhania' can testify what a moron i was making him wait for me as i was getting ready. His bajaj scooters horn was like adrenaline to me. It used to increase my speed many folds. So today was nothing different. I rushed to the hotel reception and handed over the keys, asked them to call a cab and quickly gulped down a glass of orange juice for my breakfast.
One thing Particular about Bulgaria is there language. Very very few people speak English here. I mean it’s like If you know English you can get a veyr good Job here. You cannot expect a Cab driver to speak English. I had learnt this in the last 30 days of my stay here. But today when i boarded the Taxi the driver was staring at me. I gave him a cursory look and told him my destination was 'Kukush Street'. As the Taxi started moving i took out my Creative Mp3 player and started listening to 'Yeh Delhi hain mere yaar'.

To stike a conversation the Taxi Driver said... "Indian Songs??". I was sure my player was not loud Enough for him to be able to hear it and he was only guessing and i nodded yes. And he started. "India ... super"... " i know India"... " tukka India"... i smiled .. yes yes. He said "Suresh ... me chauffer"... for "3 years..." i was amazed. I thought talking to him would eb better than listening to songs. He continued ..." Indian movies... super"... “Suresh... brother ... ramesh .... Super...” and i was laughing. I understood that he might have worked for some Suresh as a chauffer for 3 years and now he knows something about india.

Bulgaria has very thin population of immigrants. Primarily because there is a big language barrier and secondly Its a developing country and people dont find it lucaritive enough to settle here. The Driver started making some strange gestures to me. he wsa like showing me some kind of a Trunk... an Elephant Trunk... and started saying... friend .. Friend... : I said "Haathi mera saathi".. and he statred laughing loudly... "yes yes ... Raj Kapoor".. i knew it was Rajesh Khanna but i skipped that part... Then the most funny thing happened. He said " bhen@#$%" .. i was shocked... and he gave a wicked smile... he said he knows swearing also in Indian.... I was laughing out loud on whoever this suresh guy was.

He explained in his sign language... "Dhanyawad", "Namaste" and "bhai".... I blue toothed him a few recent songs from my cellphone. I was a great trip trip to office after a long time and the driver surely deserved a handsome tip. :)

Tata Nano Booking Reality Part 2

Below are the details of Tata Nano Booking Loan from Major Banks. The loan is being given out to Tata and hence no income proof is required. Its just the "interest" that everybody is "interested" in.

Bottom Line: Do not take a loan for the Booking amount. If you have some extra spare cash and do not know what to do with it ... please park it with Tata for some charity. Coz i guess if you have that extra cash in hand you are not the one looking for the worlds "cheapest" car.

Scheme Details

Model	Booking Amount financed by Bank Ltd.(in Rs.)	Bank Booking Charges (in Rs.)	Break up of Bank Booking Charges (non-refundable)		Documentation Fees (in Rs.) (non-refundable)	Tata Motors Application Form Fee (in Rs.) (non-refundable)	Total Amount Payable (in Rs.) (non-refundable)
			Interest Amount (in Rs.)	Processing Fees (in Rs.)
Nano BS 2/3	95,000	2,999	1,999	1,000	100	300	3,399
Nano CX BS 2/3	120,000	3,499	2,499	1,000	100	300	3,899
Nano LX BS 3	140,000	3,999	2,999	1,000	100	300	4,399

Please Note:

1. The booking charges paid to Bank and the application form fee of Tata Motors Ltd. Is NON-REFUNDABLE. Even if you are the "choosen" one to get the Car. thanks for telling that...!!
   
2. Financing of booking amount by the Bank does not guarantee sanction of subsequent car loan upon allotment of Nano car. Nice one I should say. The loan is being provided on the credibility of Tata as they are the ones who will return the money in case you are not allotted the car or if for some reason ( note getting Car loan) you don't want to buy at a later stage. For the Bank their money is safe in Tata and they are earning a handsome prepaid interest from the customer. So in case you are booking your nano on the click of a button please check in case you are alloted the car but you dont have the money what are your options.
   
3. The booking charges paid to Bank are towards interest charges, processing fees and documentation charges for the booking amount financed, for a 65 day period only. Read this one very very carefully.
   
4. In case of allotment, applicants will have to complete the formalities of settling the booking amount financed, before end of 90 days from the date of closure of booking period, which will be before July 25th, 2009. Now lets match this clause with the clause in Tata Nano Booking terms and conditions - "In case there is a delay in processing refund beyond 90 days from closure of booking window interest @ 6% per annum will be paid to all applicants" Wow..!! so in case Tata is unable to refund the amount for some reason they will give 6% interest but the banks want there money back. so what do u do... pay them from somewhere or else take a personal loan at an extra cost or else... hmmm become a sub-prime defaulter :D:D. Why shouldnt tata pay the applicable interest?? where is customer protection. Is everybody busy in elections and IPL???
   
5. In case applicants choose the option to retain the bookings with Tata Motors Ltd. for the second round of allotment(beyond the first round which will be for 100,000 cars). The applicant then will need to settle the booking amount financed by Bank before the end of 90 days from the date of closure of booking period, which will be before July 25, 2009. Again Tata is ready to pay8.5% and 8.75% to the loyal tata cutomers who are ready to pay 2 years in advacne for there beloved Car. But hey the Banks want there money back...!!
   
6. All correspondence related to this booking will be to the contact details as given in the application form. Hence please ensure that the same are filled correctly. This is one good thing about the whole process. If you take a Bank loan for the Booking the banks will ensure that they fill the correct refund account details. you need not bother :)

Tata Nano Booking Reality - Unethical

Just to clarify a few things before u read the entire post. I agree it might be a case of 'sour grapes ' for me as i was not able to buy the Car given the Booking terms and conditions. So may be this post is out of my frustration but that is for you to decide.


Booking for Tata is like buying a very Expensive lottery Ticket. Even if you apply for the base model you shell out 95k as the booking amount. Since when do we have to give the entire amount at the time of booking??? Of if you are thinking its just 2850 are mistaken by the the Marketing jargon. Welcome to the real World.

You can of course book the Nano for 2850 by taking a Bank loan for the booking amount. Even after the credit crunch Banks have not learned their lessons. Bank loan for a Booking amount of the worlds cheapest car. Just imagine the "sub-prime" customers that the banks will be attracting!! Coming to the point you take a 95K loan at an interest of 10%pa. and shell out only 2850 for the booking. what does it mean for you?? The 2850 is not actually refundable in case you dont get the car. It goes as the interest for the 3 months which will take to declare the lottery results and processing fees of the bank. So thats why i said its a expensive Lottery Ticket. Rather you can buy a Rs-10 lottery ticket from play2win promising you a 1 crore prize.


The online form will cost non-refundable Rs 200. Save Paper seems to be the moto of Tata; but it comes at a cost. Why should ther be a charge for the online forms when a person is comminting 95k as the booking amount. yes you got it right. Its like the MBA schools selling admission forms to prospective students and making money out of it. so as expected if there are 5 lakh bookings and out of this even if 20% are online ( e-commerce is booming) Tata will rake in a whooping 2 crore and 12 crore out of the paper forms a net income of 14 crores from just the sale of forms. huh!! and they say GM and Ford need Bailout packages. They just need a nice marketing guy ;)

So This is the Deal. People take loan from banks at an interest for the "people's car" and give it to Tata for 3 months at no interest. yes 0%. As projected if there are 5 lakh applicants Tatas will be able to generate 5000 crore. This is nearly half of the Reliance Power IPO. Tatas earning from the interest alone will be 150 crore. This money Tata will use for financing the worlds most expensive car 'luxury brands Jaguar and Land Rove' ( okie not the most expensive). What an Irony!! Cheapest Car to support the luxury brands.

The company will also charge a processing fee of Rs 500 on every application submitted. Banks will charge an additional processing fee. For instance, SBI will levy Rs 124 as processing fee. So much for the worlds cheapest CAR. So i think its all a fraud and its a way of cheating middle class indians out of their hard earned money. Why a lottery. Give it on a first-come-first-serve basis. or wait till you ramp up your production. Or else fine do a lottery but dont take a moolah for the booking amount. what do you think Guys?? is this fair??

Do we need multiple time Zones in India??

Just to put the size into perspective - India is the seventh-largest county by geographical area and measures 3,214 km from north to south and 2,993 km from east to west. In terms of the longitude we are locked between 68°7' and 97°25' east. This means we cover almost 29 degrees of the entire 360 degree sphere of the earth. Now just to refresh the mathematics involved the entire earth is divided into 24 hours ( i wish they were less) which means for each degree out of the 360 we have (24 * 60) / 360 = 4 minutes per degree. ( had you studied your geography lessons properly u would have remembered :P)

29 degrees and 4 min for each degree this means the difference between the time the sun rises in Ghuar Mota and kumki is exactly 2 hours. What a waste of time i call it. at one end sun rises at 5 am and people are still sleeping as they have nothing to do at the other end sun rises at 7 am and people have to wake up before sunrise. Since we have a Single time Zone offices all across india start at same time. All Banks , Post offices, schools, business centers etc all start at the same time wasting valuable morning hours.

What Does multiple time Zones means for us? It means 1 hour of extra productivity for us. It means we wake up with the sun. It means we have enough light when we drive out of our offices and head home. It means less accidents and more visibility. It means less use of Energy and electricity. It means less pollution and more SaveEarth. It means our call centers now can support 1 hours more from different time zones ( common it means 11.11% considering 9 hour working). There are a host of benefits which people have talked about and other nations of the world are realising. USA extended its DST in 2007 to save 0.5% of its electricity usage as less artifical lighting is required. Forget DST we can atleast implement what is constant throught the year.

The most important point raised by critiques is that we are a poor, illiterate nation and we should focus on other important issues. I say this is our chance to show to world that india is changing and had chnaged quite a lot from the past. We are smart intellegent people and we realize what is good for us. GMT+530 is not even a time Zone. We can have GMT +5 and +6 and it will not only inprove economic activities but also give the north-east states their due. Seperatist movements in Assam and other NE states is because they are always totally ignored. If we realize that how important is there time and economic activities to us we can take them into mainstream india.

Ofcourse there will be Railways , Television and Flights disruptions initially but the rest of world has done it and coped with it and so can we.

Further reading : excerpts from an article that appeared in the Indian publication of CURRENT SCIENCE, 298 VOL. 93, NO. 3

First-Time Experience at an European Football Match - landed at the wrong stands

You go to see your first soccer match in a stadium with live audience and you land up in the wrong stands. what a pity. It happened to me.

Bulgaria Vs Cyprus , 6:00 pm , 1st April , National Stadium Sofia... and we had heard the Manchester United Ace - Mr Dimitar Berbatov is also going to be there we decided to but the tickets. There was a Cypriote in our office and we decided to support his team ( our first mistake to support the visitors). We got our tickets for the games for Gate - 20 meant for the Cypriotes.

Reaching the Stadium at 6 was another story, i would skip that , office day , lots of traffic , cab blocked to go near the stadium etc etc. we finally manage to reach at 6:30. The Cyprus guy had already left with another friend so we were 3 of us. we somehow managed to find gate 20 and showed our tickets and entered shouting Come-on Cyrus .... Buck up... bravo Cyprus.. and when we looked around we saw everyone was staring at us. They were all wearing the Bulgarian Flag. I thought what the heck happened. I quickly called up my Cypriote collegue and he confirmed that the visitors had been moved to gate 24 due to unprecedented crowd. We were scared to death.

Just have a look at the pic in the left. The small crowd cordoned by multiple layers of policing and buffer zone are the visitors. People in Europe take their football game very seriously. We quickly realized the situation and started laughing and shouted .. Bravo Bulgaria... buck up Bulgaria.. and voila Bulgaria scored at that very moment. huh God saved us. The Excitement of the crowd can be seen in the below video. They would have killed us if Cyprus would have scored.

For the rest of the match we just smiled and clicked some photos uploaded at orkut and facebook. It was a damn scary Experience and Berbatov was injured so he didnt even play.

I came to know about a tradition in which the hosts create a fire and smoke near the visitors goal-keeper so as to obstruct his view. It was a great experience overall. We had gone to cheer cyprus but ended up cheering for Bulgaria. For the record score was 2-0. It was actually good that Bulgaria won or else i would not have come out alive.

We headed for a pub after the match and my cyprus collegue was able to join us after 1 hour. when we called him he had this to say. "The police is not allowing us to leave. They are saying after the stadium is clear of all Bulgarian fans and the streets look empty only then it is safe for you to leave. it might take us more than an hour to join u". You can imagine what situation i was in.