Archive for December, 2003
And The Winners Are…
And the winners are…
Niret Alva… More than vintage stuff. Photo: S. Arneja.
NOT SO long ago, buying a car used to be like building a house. All your life you plan for your dream house and as financial circumstances would have it in most cases, you succeed wee bit ahead of your retirement day. The same used to be true while buying a car, one could usually save money for buying one vehicle in one’s lifetime. But, as the producer of the well-known automobile show on BBC World, “Wheels” would say, “the so-called EMI syndrome has changed it all now and quite fast too.” True to it, now a person with a small pocket can also hope to buy a car “following his heart than the head”.
And adding spin to the customers’ choice and “also as a kind of guideline”, Niret, through the platform of this one-hour programme, has come out this past week with yet another edition of Wheels Awards, naming names of India’s best cars and bikes in 2003 along with a Viewers’ Choice Award. And as this suave, on-the-ball car enthusiast states, “The chief criterion of more than half of the awards categories is pricing”.
“As car loans are easily available, I often get calls from viewers asking for suggestions as to which car to go for. In most cases, their prime lookout is pricing. However much we focus on technology, a common man does not care much about it. The concept of value for money still works for him,” says this chief of Miditech Television Limited, which rolls out the country’s first-ever car reviewing show. He says, looking at the awards list, “many in the automobile industry are surprised as it is absolutely customer-driven.”
In total, the awards given away for the second consecutive year, has 10 categories, the added one this year being the Viewers’ Choice Award. “We received about 1,50,000 hits on the mail box from viewers in the Yahoo site for the award. Then the results were picked up by a computer,” he informs. Also, appreciating the tremendous viewers’ participation, a lucky draw was picked, the winner of which won two tickets to Kuala Lumpur to witness the Malaysian Grand Prix in March, 2004. Besides eight awards assessed by price range and that of the viewers award, there is also one for the Best Bike of the Year.
Besides labelling cars and bikes for the last five years, Niret, along with brother Nikhil are also in to chasing “The Lions of Gir” to doing Commando!, a reality show on BBC World to scripting “The Great Descent”, filming an international white water expedition down the Brahmaputra, and now the serial “Saara Akaash” on Star Plus. “We will next be seen on The National Geographic doing a programme on wild life”, Niret informs and then tags on, “We are also talking with Discovery for another show”. Well, must say, this is some channel surfing!
SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTY
Hindu On Net
When The Postman Knocked
When the postman knocked
S. S. VASAN (Madrascapes, November 26) continues to bring in a host of recollections: of how khaddar veshti, shirt and angavasthram were his trademark attire wherever he went, of how he took every opportunity to play bridge at the Mylapore Recreation Club, of how he entertained Stephen Spender at Movieland and of how “Chandralekha” cost him Rs. 35 lakhs and not Rs. 30 lakhs I mentioned. That Rs. 35 lakhs, given the free floating exchange rate of the time, made it the first million dollar film to be made outside the U.S. Reader T.M. Srinivasan recalls being told how happy Vasan was when a film magazine run at the time by a young film fan, T.T. Vasu, described it as “a million dollar Indian extravaganza”.
* A motor car buff, T.T. Raghu, writes that another early owner of a Rolls Royce in Madras (Miscellany December 1) was Annie Besant who enjoyed driving the large limousine she owned, a Silver Ghost, he thinks, which was meant to be chauffeur driven. As for “Thiruvengathanam Chetty, of the Perumal Chetty family, a special feature of his Rolls was its high roof, presumably to accommodate him and his large turban”. Ethiraj’s Bentley, reader Raghu adds, belonged to that vintage when Bentley was owned by Rolls Royce and was “every bit a Rolls under the skin or, rather, behind the radiator”. And of this era there is the tale of an Invicta, a sports car that was “the Jaguar of its day”. There was only one in Madras, owned by an Englishman, and the moment Dr. Rangachari in his Rolls and the Englishman in his Invicta spotted each other, usually on the Marina, off the mark they went racing each other.
* And finally I caught up with Christopher Penn who’d been sending me messages about his ancestor, Albert Penn the Ooty photographer (Miscellany October 27). After a brief stop in Madras, my visitor was on his way to Ooty to catch up with Cranley Cottage, Cranley Lodge and Farington, which Albert Penn’s wife Zillie ran as a hotel from 1905 to 1911. Back in England, Christopher Penn writes that he had seen the annual formal photographs of members of the Ooty Hunt at the Ooty Club, and spotted the signature of his ancestor on most of them between 1870 and 1910. From 1911, the signature is that of Willie Burke who “presumably succeeded Albert Penn as the court photographer”. Christopher Penn is busy trying to catalogue as many pictures by Albert Penn as he can find and hopes they’ll make a book like Omar Khan’s “From Kashmir to Kabul” (Miscellany, December 8, 2002), which documented the work of Willie Burke’s father, John, and his partner William Baker between 1860 and 1900.
S. MUTHIAH
Hindu On Net