Rocking in the Free World

The Tata Nano will arrive later this year. Cheap guys are already rejoicing, as are the Tatas and all those that have set aside a lakh rupees or more as conveyance purchase budgets, for the Nano will make their dreams come true.

When booking starts, there will be a greater rush to pick a Nano up, than you would see in Somalia when they’d be distributing food packets, or when free playboys would be given out at the CST in Mumbai.

I am being a doomsday prophet, but I am honestly scared of what will happen on the roads when the same bozos that now ride around on Pulsars, Karizmas, Unicorns and other two wheelers (Enfield Bullets not being placed in the list, for once you ride a bullet, you’d rather not want it replaced. Same with Yezdi Classic 1974 models.) are behind cars whose value is just a few thousands of rupees over their current (or future) investment.

Imagine having a Nano overtake you from the left when you have very little space to move, and then swerving in alternating directions, or a Nano running over hapless pedestrians on the sidewalk. Having had the misfortune of walking among these specimen, I can say with complete honesty that I would not be exaggerating while making the aforesaid claims regarding their proven lack of driving skills.

You’d have a retarded techie, the likes of yours truly (but with sensibilities that would offend far more people, if that is ever possible) wanting to buy it on EMI basis even before receiving payment of his first salary, and the roads will be choc-a-block with these cars.

I admire Ratan Tata and co. for their venture to make a car affordable to all and sundry, but I think that lowering the price of a car and increasing its accessibility would have more cons than pros.

With increasing traffic, reduced parking spaces, a major population growth rate nd more people destroying the gene pool with their subnormal IQs running amok all over the place, its with a great sense of pathos that I look towards the launch of the Nano.

In order to protest the inevitable, I propose to arm myself with a bicycle, the best one I can afford, complete with some eighteen (?) gears and all that, in order to ride around the city at superspeed, while the rest of the city watches me, in their brand new Nanos and other already present space occupying behemoths, with their fingers itching desperately to switch to the second gear atleast once along their drive to work/college/date set to start in three hours with one of my many ex-girlfriends and/or back.

Harithekid, the cheap guy turned pseudo-environmentalist, on the other hand will ride away into the sunset on his shiny bicycle! (in all probability to the tune of ‘bike’ by Pink Floyd playing in his ears. heh)

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PS – hopefully, need to buy a tandem bicycle will present itself by then. Only time will tell.