My New Ride: Mahindra XUV 5oo

My requirement from a new car were fairly simple, it should be a SUV (Pseudo will do), it should be big, it should have seating for seven occupants.  The last requirement was not actually a requirement, as my family has 5 members including me and there are very few instances of us travelling together.  I think this was more do with a latent desire to do a road trip with friends, though there is an anti climax to this with my final selection of car.\

I had a budget of around 1.5 Million INR tops  There are hardly any choices in the net of this combination. I even tried deviating a bit from my original plan and included few sedans in bouquet of selection but these were eliminated at theoretical stage only. At this point I would like to add that this process of research, the whole anticipation of buying  something new is far more enjoyable compared to actual occurrence of the event.  I am sure most of you will agree with me on this point.,this budget and my requirement s don’t make for a great combination.

After doing lots of calculations at my end, spending endless amount of hours online on research, I finally zeroed upon Mahindra XUV 5oo, Tata Aria, Innova Crysta, Mahindra Marazzo.  I was not keen on the last two as their form factor is very MUVish. The Crysta was included into equation as my wife somehow likes it. I was somehow already sold on XUV, it is big, brute, has seven seats and has maximum amount of features out of all the shortlisted cars.

Out of the shortlisted cars I test drove only XUV and Crysta. Crysta was fantastic, the power delivery was something else even with smaller 2.4 engine option. The major drawback was high sticker price even for bare-bones model which was way beyond my already stretched budget.

So now the only thing to decide was the variant and color. I opted for W7 Variant, this is the mid variant comes equipped with all major safety features and only skips on ones like Sunroof, Alloy wheels etc.

Booked Silver but subsequently opted for White, my 2014 Terrano is also white, so I thought they would look cool together. It has been around 5 months, 7k+ kms. The car has the presence of a big car; interior is a pleasant place to be with all the features and nice ambiance.

Though after sales experience have been average at best, the car had a play in the steering column and there was constant rattle noise on bad patches. The part was replaced under warranty after a series of tweets to few concerned twitter handles. The car brings lots to the plate but I feel that few things could have been better, suspension for one. The car has the ability of make a shake of your internal on the bad roads. The car already has few rattles and I am sure that it won’t age well. These were few irritants on an otherwise decent wholesome package. I am learning to live with these.

Please feel free to ask in case you have any question regarding the XUV, I would be happy to help.

Movie Review, Not really.

Yesterday a random plan was made to saw the movie Aarakshan. I was not really gung-ho about the movie as I never found the trailers interesting enough to pay a visit to movie hall, but lack of good options and keenness for watching a movie resulted in "me watching Aarakshan".

Now let's get over with the introduction part and let's start discussing the movie. The topic as the name suggested is about the Reservation policy prevalent in our system. The matter is very sensitive and I was pretty sure that a film maker of Prakash Jha's stature will do justice to it. The movie started at a good note but lost the track somewhere in middle and started talking about parallel education system, public v/s private education system etc etc. Then to make the matter even worse it started portraying the personal rivalry of two main male protagonist Mr. Bachhan and Manoh Bajpei, but mind you I was enjoying every second of it, its just that movie was not really doing any justice to its title.

As far as the performance of actors are concerned Big B stole the show with his power packed performance, Manoj also did a wonderful job of portraying the role of power, money hungry professor. I felt there was nothing much to do for Saif and as far as Deepika is concerned she should stop acting right away, but if she is dead bent about becoming an actress she should try being heroine of other kind of cinema, I hope I am clear.

The final question, 'was it a VFM watch'? The let me answer with PVR's 50 rs weekday ticket any movie will be.;)

“Invention is the mother of necessity.”

“Necessity is the mother of invention.”

This is precisely what you and I have learnt during our existence on this planet earth. But things are changing and the above statement no more hold true in the modern world scenario. The forces of market has made it read something like this “Invention/innovation is the mother of necessity.”

Every single day sitting in front of my TV of a slim kind I see advertisement of Flat LCD television which offer picture in million & zillion of colors, and honestly I am tempted to buy it. And this despite of the following facts 1, my current television is doing its duty very well. 2, my very human eyes can’t recognize more than 10,000 let alone those million & zillions of color. So I hope by this small example you have got the drift that what I intend to discuss here. There is no necessity, there is no need but still I want to buy one and television is just one example, there is a very long list Mobile phones, laptops, cars, cameras, clothes and what not.

So why it is so, why I want all these things? There should be some reason behind this, there have to have a logical, rational explanation. So let’s try to have one.

“Invention is the mother of necessity.”

And this is the answer, just because a multinational corporation has come up with a not so useful product, they want you to buy one. Means they want you feel the necessity of the same because they have invented or innovated something new. And believe me they will make you believe that if you are not watching your faviourate show on a HD television you are a big time low life, if you are not using their even more complicated touch screen 3G phone you have no right to talk. And this is not just the case with commodity market, service market is no different.

You get yourself the best possible option of DTH services available in market but next day you feel heartbroken, you feel robbed because the same provider is offering a better option, and they want you to buy this one also and believe just to keep your ever growing ego you will get this one too.

These are few classic cases of how New Inventions are causing new needs which technically never existed.

And with the passage of time even we are developing habits which supports this phenomenon. The urban families have growing tendency of visiting the malls, and the aftermath is they visit different shops and end up buy this thing or that thing, and the bottom-line is they really don’t need any of that stuff.


This particular phenomenon finds it roots in the fact the market is highly saturated, the very survival of MNCs depends upon the repeat buyers and to turn a buyer into a repeat buyer they need to come with new products, which in most cases are just marginally better version of their existing products and services.

Ad subsequently through different means of marketing/advertising they manage to develop a need of the same in targeted customer group. This subsequently results in this new world modern saying “Invention is the mother of necessity.”

So can we point a finger on someone for this?

No, we can’t, this is a vicious circle and there is actually no looking back.

PS: The article is written keeping consumer point of view in mind.

A Book Review: Two States-Story of My Marriage

I am back at it; yes, I am doing a review once again. No its time it’s not a movie this time its book. The book in question here is the latest release, number four to be precise, from one of the most successful (at least commercially) modern writer of recent times, yes you guessed it right I am talking about none other than Mr.Chetan Bhagat. “Two states-story of marriage” draws inspiration form the real life story of Mr.Bhagat’s marriage, I don’t know this writer told so. Moreover, I have no reason not to believe so. I have a confession here I didn’t like the last book of Mr.Bhagat “Three mistakes of my life” (add relatively here). Therefore, with this book, Mr.Bhagat has a mammoth task of retaining a losing fan and he should feel happy that he managed to do so. Mr. Bhagat I am a fan again. The book has a marvelous flow, once you start reading it there is just no looking back. I was just hooked to it, I just became a part I wanted to know what going to happen next. I know I am making it sounding like murder mystery, but this is the beauty. I read this book just after finishing a typical James Patterson novel but it didn’t have the same effect. A simple story is been told in a great manner. I will give full marks to Mr.Chetan Bhagat for this one.

PS: Go grab your copy at the nearest bookstall, its money well spent.

Lets keep this alive.

It has been a long time a wrote anything here, as a matter a fact I didn’t wrote anything anywhere. I thought that it would be fairly easier to maintain a small blog-spot of yours, but take my word its not, at least for me. Hats off to all you people who manage to maintain a flow of continuous writing on your respective blog-spots. When I started mine, I thought that I will keep filling in this space with this thing or that thing or something but was I wrong. Yes I was. I failed and I failed miserably.

So what now, what do I do now?

Oh I didn’t notice but I have posted something to my blog-spot J.

Now lets the fingers rolling (On Keyboard).

My Photogenic Miniatures

I have few hobbies to name, one is collecting automotive scale models and another newely developed hobby of mine is photography. I will talk about these and my other hobbies in detail some other time. Now i just wanted to show that what heppens when my above mentioed two hobbies come into each others company.

Camera Used: Canon Powershot S3 IS.

Love Aaj Kal: A Review

My Very First Movie Review:

Love Aaj Kal:

I really don’t remember when it was the last time when I saw a movie on the very first day of its release. And frankly speaking I am no big fan of Deepika padukone or Saif Ali khan which could have made me do otherwise in case of Love Aaj Kal, its just happened. My dear wife showed interest in watching the movie and there we were.

So what you managed to understand from the title and promos of movie, what I gathered from these that it about what love used to be in yesteryears and what it has become today.
And at the very onset of my review I will make it very clear to the readers that Imtiyaz Ali, the director of the movie has done a fantabulous job of doing so.

Love is the purest form of human emotion. In past love used to be a chaste feeling devoid of any worldly and practical angles. Expectations were not sky high as these have became today. It was the last thing in the world that can be categorized under symbiotic relationship of give and take. But world is changing, we are seeing rapid growth, everything is changing some for good some for bad but changes are there nonetheless. In between all this Love has failed to manage to safeguard itself from getting corrupted. People has come with their very own definitions of love, they mould it the way they want it to. No. I won’t be getting into minute details; you are no fool so that you can’t understand what I mean. So what the conclusion is LOVE, the real love, is history? No its not. It still exists in its purest form here there or somewhere in the corner of heart of some. And It will remain so, LOVE is immortal, it will exist till the end of eternity.

This is no movie review, these seems more like my POV on the topic of love. I know that’s precisely what you are thinking. But the thing is I completely identify with the basic plot of movie, that love was here, love is here and love will be here.

And Movie is good, go catch it at the nearest movie hall at the very first given opportunity. And I should mention that Saif and Deepika have played their parts with complete élan.

Oh wait a minute the movie talk a about a new concept too, “Break Up Party”.

That’s all from my side.

Please drop a comment or two that how you liked or disliked my very first not so extensive movie review.

Pic Courtsey: Internet