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The Hindu : Virtual mechanicCar and bike questions? We have the answersI want to buy a car and my budget is Rs three lakh. I have short-listed the Maruti Alto and the Chevrolet Spark. Which of these is better with regard to mileage, safety and maintenance? Also, please suggest other options besides the ones I have mentioned.SureshWe would suggest the Spark over the Alto. It has a better design, is spacious and does most things better than the Alto. Maintenance wise, the Alto may be better than the Spark. But overall, the Spark would be a good choice.Ever since the Logan saloon has been launched, I have been awaiting the claimed seven-seater MPV from Mahindra. Earlier, I had heard that it would be launched by mid-08. Is this true? Are there any good MPVs available for me now? How is the new Rhino?SatishThe MPV from Mahindra is expected only in 2009. Right now, the Innova is the top dog in the MPV segment. If you want something that’s a little less expensive; there is the Tavera and now the new Sumo Grande, which is also an able performer. We will not recommend the Rhino simply because the dealer network is not as big which means servicing could be a problem.I want to buy a diesel SUV and have a budget of Rs 20 lakh. I have short-listed the Ford Endeavour and Pajero. My friends feel that the Pajero looks outdated. What other options do I have?Chitty RajaYes, the Pajero CRZ sold here is an old design; it is the second generation Pajero. The latest Pajero is being sold as the Montero but unfortunately, it is out of your budget. The Endeavour is a good choice for off-roading, but the back seats aren’t very comfortable due to the high floor and the ride is bumpy because of its leaf spring suspension. Alternatively, you have the new Chevrolet Captiva, which…More

The Hindu : Cellular booksPenguin Books India all set to reach out to mobile users in partnership with Mobifusion to make content available on the mobile platform.The partnership that will begin with a focus on the Indian consumer base will look to a global roll-out in time, expanding to include Penguin’s global brand and an array of international products.The Penguin-Mobifusion partnership will begin with content from three Penguin books – “The Joy in Loving: A Guide to Daily Living with Mother Teresa” complied by Jaya Chaliha and Edward Le Joly, “The Path to Tranquillity” by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and “The Book of Prayer” edited by Renuka Narayanan – being made available on mobile platforms.Visitwww.penguinbooksindia.com…More

The Hindu : Tata promised the world a car that would cost Rs. 1 lakh and it gave the world just that. Owing to media hype, every corner of the world is now aware that the Tata Nano is the cheapest car on the planet. Now, following the Nano hysteria, Tata has once again launched the cheapest-of-its-kind product, the Tata Indigo CS (Compact Saloon); this is the cheapest saloon in the world. With a splendid, tempting price tag of just Rs 3,79,000 (ex-showroom Mumbai) for the base model, the new CS is a remarkable Rs 91,220 cheaper than the regular Indigo’s base variant. In fact, the regular Indigo will continue to be produced and sold alongside the CS.Advantage customersIn a clever move, Tata has placed the CS in hatchback-land therefore, created its own spot for it in the market. The new Indigo was launched at the Auto Expo held at Delhi in February this year. Owing to the chop of boot, the Indigo CS qualifies as a small car and therefore it can take advantages of the small car regulations that specify that if a car is less than four metres in length, it gets an eight per cent tax reduction. The Indigo CS is 3988mm long and can benefit from this regulation. The upside is that Tata was generous enough to pass on this financial advantage to the customer. And in a market where the customer is value-conscious and prioritises value-for-money over most parameters, getting the price right is highly imperative for any manufacturer.The first time we heard rumours of the fact that Tata was going to chop the boot off the regular Indigo and make it smaller was around a year ago. Actual work on the Compact Saloon only started soon after the Indigo XL was conceived. And logically, it all makes sense; if a car can be stretched and go from being a regular Indigo…More

The Hindu : The benefits of weight training may appear so obvious that they need no emphasising, but many people are still hesitant to enrol in gyms. Some keep away because of the attitude of ill-informed trainers, who push their clients too hard every single workout.This is not to say that workouts should be so easy as to be totally painless. What one has to realise is that training with all-out intensity seven days a week all 365 days a year should be avoided. Even world champion bodybuilders do not train that way.Three-time Mr. Olympia Frank Zane says that he splits his training into three or four phases every year. Each module has a specific goal: putting on an inch of muscle on a select body part or losing a couple of inches around the waist and so on. The regimen that immediately follows the world championship (Mr. Olympia) would be a moderate one.Founder/director of the International Sports Sciences Association Fredrick Hatfield calls this the ‘periodisation’ technique.Several research papers have pointed that periodisation guarantees results, irrespective of whatever your goals are – losing a little fat, training for better sports performance or building massive muscles.According to a recent issue of the Strength Conditioning Journal: “Inadequate recovery interferes with force-generating capacity of the muscles and training adaptation. Periodisation uses a variety of sets and repetition ranges, and rest intervals between sets. It also juggles the amount of weights used in each phase. This ensures optimum recovery and trains all types of muscle fibres, ensuring better development in muscle strength, tone, performance and mass. The ideal combination of exercise and rest depends on the goal of the programme and the adaptability of the athlete (the ability to make gains from weight training).”By keeping each module different, every three months’ workout routine places a different kind of demand on the body. This ensures all-round improvement. Talk to your trainer about your…More

The Hindu : The man is what his music is – humourous and snappy. Baba aka Harjit Singh Sehgal, Indian rap king, is also as unfussy and affable as the lyrics of his songs. “I want to put rhythm back into the life of today’s burnt-out souls,” says the electrical engineer turned rapper. “I realised connecting with people, not connecting wires, was my calling,” he laughs aloud.Baba made rap popular in the Nineties with hit albums such as “Thanda Thanda Pani”, “Dilruba”, “Main bhi Madonna”, “Manjula”, “Dil Dhadke”… But he feels that this genre with its rhythmic and rhyming wordplay has not been exploited well in our country as in America.A net search reveals rap is sometimes claimed to be an acronym for “Rhythmic African Poetry”, “Rhythm and Poetry”, “Rhythmically Applied Poetry” or “Rapping About Poetry”.“Rap became a rage since it borrowed words from the man on the street, spoke about his life, problems, places… tongue-in-cheek. It emerged from the party culture, where the MC would cheer, greet, crack jokes…to keep the tempo even as the DJ played the songs. Over time, his conversations were peppered with beats and tunes, became more stylized, and danceable too,” says the dapper-rapper, sporting chic coolers, earrings and a thick metal chain around his neck.He was in Chennai recently to hold an art show with his curator-wife Anju. Talking about his affinity towards southern film stars, he says, “Wish we could have invited Mr. Rajnikanth to inaugurate the show.” Baba is grateful to A.R. Rehman for the “unforgettable” ‘Rukmani Rukmani’ (from “Roja”). “It proved I could sing and not just blabber as many perceive rap to be.”He has a good following in Andhra Pradesh and has been doing a lot of work in Telugu. “Thanks to friends such as Nagarjuna.” A few days ago he was in Chennai to record a song for “Jalasa” (Pawan Kalyan’s film). “My song ‘Roop tera mastana’…More

The Hindu : Regional rock is often a rather troubling proposition for Indian listeners. After all, the space is usually peopled by bands and artistes that are self-conscious or over-proud of their vernacular status. Every so often, however, one comes up againsta band that effortlessly and unpretentiously fuses the disparate sensibilities of rock music and the vernacular. And when the result is as good as Malayalam rock band Avial’s self-titled debut, released recently across the country by Phat Phish Records, it’s worth the effort of wading through the unloved bulk of the genre.Of course, at first glance, the idea of Malayalam and rock music together doesn’t inspire much confidence. And yet, they fit and fit so well that even listeners who cannot understand the lyrics (this reporter for instance) would find themselves singing whatever scraps they can pick up.“Malayalam is a difficult language to work with, and spoken Malayalam would never have fit in,” explains Tony John who does vocals, turntables and synth. “We’ve worked with more traditional folk forms of Malayalam because folk forms have a raw feel to them. And it’s the same with rock music, it’s raw and out there.”In singing in Malayalam, however, Avial proves more than anything else that language isn’t really a barrier for good music. It’s fitting that most of the fans for this experiment in “Alternative Malayalam rock” (as the band refers to its music) are global, catching onto the video for the band’s powerful first single “Nada Nada” on Youtube. “Language is really not an issue because the sound speaks for us. It is only the sound that matters,” says Tony.And what a sound it is: a lush mix of good old classic rock with interesting progressive touches and a folk sensibility that goes beyond merely the Malayalam lyrics. “Over the years, we’ve been listening to everything from the 70s, 80s and 90s, and our music is a mix…More

The Hindu : History will surely stare at us one day, and ask unanswerable questions.Director and playwright of “Lucknow ’76” Abhishek Majumdar thus leads his note in his play’s brochure.“Lucknow ’76”, staged at Ranga Shankara, supported by Black Coffee Productions in aid of the Concern India Foundation brought to the theatre-lovers in the city a well-deserved performance.A tribute to Amit Kumar Chatterjee who introduced Majumdar “to the characters of Lucknow ’76 in my childhood, in his kitchen garden and shared his love for the city…”, this was a play that also recalled two time frames in Indian history.The politically-and historically-gripping play attempted to move between two time frames of 1876 and 1976. One (1876) spoke of colonial India ruled by Queen Victoria and the other (1976) spoke of the Emergency with Indira Gandhi as the Prime Minister.A white backdrop with a blood-red light projected at heightened moments, a plaster of newspaper clippings on the floor and raised platform, a ziz-zag geometrically-shaped stool and bench, a black cushion and an earnest audience.At repeated points during the one-and-a-half hour intense performance, there are scenes of utter confusion – of people pacing up and down the raised platform and enacting dishevelled and hysteric states of being – emitting noises and peals of laughter. A man who faces the backdrop, with his back to the audience, creates shadows on the white screen. Dim lighting and projected designs of an intricate historical monument in Lucknow evoked an atmosphere of 1876 Lucknow.And Kallol Dasgupta gives the play a rich, epoch feel with his music of the guitar and voice, which at times were too loud to catch the fading lines of the actors.As the play unfurls, you take in the tension and anxiety of journalists during the Emergency.They are bent at work, a woman is clad in a sari and woollen jacket that is typical of the style of the times and perhaps even…More

The Hindu : Blank Noise Street Action is organising “I Never Ask for It”. The all-India street intervention will be on March 8. The Bangalore team meets at 5 p.m. opposite Empire on Church Street. Here’s a call to all women who have dealt withstreet sexual harassment by confronting it.It’s based on the premise that harassed women are often told “You were asking for it because you were wearing certain clothes, or were out at a certain time, or occupying a certain place”.The final response might have been to choose to ignore the harassment, but she will have chosen to do so, not failed to notice it.You can be an Action Hero by participating in it. Join women from all walks of life, all ages, all parts of the country, in a simultaneous street action to let the world know that women are ordinary people who have the right to share public spaces.The Blank Noise street action challenges you to be an Action Hero. Participants are requested to come wearing a garment they wore when they were sexually harassed.By doing so, they are actively taking a stand that reads ‘I never ask for it’. The only other requirement is – be yourself.Blank Noise is a public, participatory project working both online and on the streets.It comprises volunteers in various cities, including New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Lucknow, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Chennai.Contact: http://blog.blanknoise.org/ or call 0-98868-40612….More

The Hindu : Sandesh Kadur looks at photography as an identification tool. The U.S-based wildlife photographer and documentary filmmaker started experimenting with his father’s Nikon when he was 14 or 15-years-old. “There were no field guides and I was curious when I started going on treks, hikes and camps.”When he realised that he didn’t know many of the plant and animal species, he clicked images, took them back home and started researching. “It is a fantastic medium as I can document the natural world and also use it as an art form.”Sandesh has also released a book in 2005 called “Sahyadris: India’s Western Ghats – A Vanishing Heritage” along with Kamaljit S. Bawa and made a film “Sahyadris: Mountains of the Monsoon”.He feels that for environmental awareness and consciousness to be instilled in society, it not only requires education at the school level, but strict enforcement.In the U.S., he was part of the Gorgas Science Foundation which strongly believes in conservation through education. It was here that Sandesh got his break when John Bax and Lawrence Lof encouraged him to film in the Mexican forests, and ultimately encouraged him to go back an explore the Western Ghats in 1997. “I had no idea about how to use the camera and I had no professional training.”He didn’t want it just to be a three-month college project and instead became a four-year intensive one. “I didn’t want it to be a run-of-the-mill project, but meet the expectations of the foundation that had sponsored and invested so much in me.”Then, he did what everyone would toy with during college-days – Sandesh dropped out of college and stayed back in India. “I had the basic photography tools but I could not figure out how to edit the story and put together a sequence.” So Sandesh went back to the U.S. and had to learn that still photography is quite different from filming….More

The Hindu : Mocha clubsMocha will launch its first club in Bangalore this March called The Get-Away Club. This, say the organisers, will be a “community for people who like travelling and exploring.”To mark the beginning Mocha will organise a trip to the jungles on March 22 and 23.This will only be the beginning of many such clubs that Mocha will be launching in the near future, they add. Mocha has also started various clubs across the country like The Mocha Film Club (MFC), a platform for short films and documentaries, Mocha Backpackers Club (MBC) dedicated to the pleasure of solo travel and backpacking and Mocha Bike Association (MBA)The club has been initiated to create a highway for these enthusiasts to meet and make friends with people who share their passion for velocity, discuss problems, offer solutions and interact with one another and hit the road to breezy biker destinations.Mocha in association with British Council has Sundowners Session, once every month where they will have different forms of Art.It is a cultural event where they will introduce art and culture in the form of music, play reading, and films etc….More