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The Hindu : y>

I want to buy a diesel-engined C-size saloon. Has Toyota dropped plans for a 1.4-litre diesel engine in the Corolla Altis? Will the Maruti SX4 offer a 1.6 or 1.9-litre diesel anytime soon? Is it true that the Suzuki Grand Vitara is likely to be assembled in India shortly. Will there be a diesel offering? Does Hyundai plan to offer the i30 with a boot to replace the Elantra? And will the VW Polo saloon be equivalent to the new Honda City in size and rear legroom?

K. P. Singaravelu

Toyota plans to launch the diesel Corolla by mid-2010, a 1.4 diesel developing approximately 100bhp. While there has been talk of Maruti launching the SX4 diesel, Suzuki is not enthusiastic towards ‘dieselisation’ of its cars simply because it has to rely on outside suppliers (Fiat in this case) for diesel engines. Outsourcing engines from a third party also works out to be expensive. The volumes for the Grand Vitara are too small at the moment to justify assembly and the Suzuki SUV will continue to be imported. Hyundai’s i30 is unlikely to come to India as large hatchbacks have very limited demand. Lastly, the VW Polo saloon will have a longer wheelbase than the hatchback to give it more space which, we hear, will rival the Honda City.

I am looking to purchase a C-segment car within Rs. 8 lakh. I love driving, and most certainly would put my money on Ford Fiesta. But I’ve just learnt about the upcoming Fiat Linea 1.6. Would it make sense to wait for it or should I go ahead and buy the Fiesta?

Bharat Dua

The Fiesta is without doubt the best driver’s class for the money today, and one of our favourites. The 1.6 Linea that you have mentioned is a more powerful diesel version but it isn’t expected till end of 2010. Besides, diesels don’t quite give the…More

The Hindu : y>Discovery Channel grabs our eyeballs with underwater stories

ALL CREATURES Bright and beautiful

Discovery Channel has launched a series called “The Blue Planet” that reveals the mysteries of the ocean world.

The nine-part series is one of the most comprehensive series devoted to the natural history of the world’s oceans and features a stream of startling, never-seen-before footage of marine life and behaviour.

The series was created in the course of more than 150 trips to film a range of creatures from the North and South poles to the mysterious trenches. To document the series, 16 specialised film crews travelled to many spectacular locations across the planet including the Galapagos Islands, Cape of South Africa, Brazil and Costa Rica.

It captures the behaviour patterns of animals and other sea creatures such as the biominescent squid, and the fang tooth fish.

Each episode chronicles one aspect of ocean life, including the mysteries of the deep, the intrigues of coastal sea mammals, tidal and climatic influences and the creatures and systems that govern life in much of our planet.

It will be hosted by legendary natural history filmmaker, Sir David Attenborough and airs every Wednesday at 9 p.m. on The Discovery Channel.

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The Hindu :

Upmarket looks, a more powerful engine and a long list of features — the new Honda Aviator has a lot to offer

T he original Aviator was armed with modern features such as telescopic forks, a front disc brake and alloy wheels, perfect for style-conscious scooter riders. Eighteen months later Honda has rolled out the new Aviator gearless scooter. On the looks front, the Aviator remains unchanged and carries forward the original’s dapper appeal. While a large front wheel, smooth lines and a chic tail are details that make this among the better styled scooters in the country today, Honda could have improved practicality by equipping the new Aviator with a front storage bay and front fuel-filler. As before, the Aviator will sell in two variants. In addition to five-spoke alloy wheels and a front disc brake, a jazzy chrome-finish front apron, body-coloured handlebar with silver embellished instrument cluster and body-coloured grab-rail will distinguish the higher-spec model from the base variant. Like any other Honda scooter, high levels of fit-and-finish and overall quality are a given.

The main talking point of the new Aviator is the adoption of the 109cc engine that made a debut on the Activa earlier this year. Producing maximum power of 8bhp at 8000rpm and 0.9kgm of peak torque at 5500rpm, this four-stroke, single-cylinder, air-cooled and variator-driven engine is marginally more powerful than the 102cc unit it replaces. This refined and efficient new powerplant promises to benefit the Aviator with peppier performance, without a fuel efficiency loss — just as it did on the Activa. A viscous air filter and new maintenance-free battery are other notable additions.

Using a conventional tubular chassis, the Aviator retains a good score for keeping its telescopic forks up front, in tandem with an engine-mounted rear shock absorber. Meanwhile a Tuff Up technology-enabled rear tyre helps minimise the likelihood of punctures.

The new Aviator…More

The Hindu :

Auro’s mom is sensitive without being melodramatic, discloses Vidya Balan

New Experience Vidya Balan in Paa

By now, we all know that Amitabh and Abhishek Bachchan share a unique bond in the rare father-son story “Paa”. We also know that Auro (Amitabh) is a 13-year-old boy who is prematurely old or suffers from progeria.

Enacting the role of a mother for a rapidly ageing child calls for some thought. Vidya Balan, when offered the role by director R. Balki, wasn’t sure if she wanted to play mom to a 13-year-old Amitabh Bachchan.

Glad she did it

“I didn’t know how to react. I listened to his narration and liked the conviction with which Balki wanted to make this film. He was neither hesitant nor arrogant and I was bowled over. He told me he wrote the film with Amitabh, Abhishek and me in mind and if one of us turned it down, he wouldn’t make it. Even then, I wanted time to think.”

Days before “Paa”’s release, she is glad she accepted the part. “The actor in me liked the challenge but the vanity in me put forth obstacles,” she reflects.

Once she came on board, she pored over books, browsed the Net and watched documentaries on progeria. “I am a gynaecologist in the film and so I had to be informed,” she says. “The mother deals with the child with sensitivity instead of being apologetic, evoking sympathy and indulging in melodrama. And the film is not about progeria. It’s a family drama and there are other issues in focus,” explains Vidya.

When Vidya was a student of St. Xavier’s in Mumbai, she worked with an NGO that helped mentally-challenged children and feels that experience helped her understand the psyche of exceptional children and their parents better.

“Otherwise, I am not great with children. I am affectionate towards them but not overtly maternal.” Vidya is now proud of having…More

The Hindu : y>CNN’s documentary speaks to Bhopal’s brave survivors

THE HORROR Of survival

No Indian can forget the catastrophic Bhopal gas tragedy, one of the world’s worst industrial and human disasters. This nuclear power plant accident that occurred in December 1984, killed thousands, and left thousands more handicapped.

CNN International’s “World’s Untold Stories” now travels to Bhopal to see what has changed and what hasn’t. This special documentary, titled “25 Years After Midnight”, talks to survivors and activists who have devoted their lives to speak about the disaster, and help victims.

Shortly after midnight, on December 3, 1984, thousands of people were killed when a cloud of chemicals leaked from a Union Carbide pesticide plant. While reportage in its aftermath has dwindled to anniversary rituals, for those in Bhopal, the disaster isn’t just a moment in history. It’s an ever-present part of their daily life.

Satinath Sarangi, the founder of Sambhavna Clinic sees new patients every day who are suffering from the after-effects of the disaster. The clinic provides free medical care for survivors of the gas tragedy. This special CNN documentary tells the global audience how the Bhopal gas tragedy victims are affected — physically, financially, and emotionally. It also hears from the determined, dedicated individuals who have devoted their lives to helping the survivors, finding out what motivates them to keep going in the face of an increasingly disinterested world and a new generation in Bhopal that just wants to put the incident behind them.

The programme will be telecast on CNN International on December 8 (6.30 p.m.), December 12 (11 p.m.), December 13 (5.30 p.m.) and December 14 (8.30 a.m.) on CNN World.

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The Hindu : y>

Song and dance Sutrith launched his debut album with a live performance

Sutirth Mukherjee released his debut album in Bengali, “Fall in Love” recently. Sutirth is trained in Hindustani classical vocal music and decided to pursue a career in music. He began teaching music in schools, started his own music academy and worked on his music album.

Sutirth met Shrabani Basu, a senior Human Resource professional and passionate about dance and music. At the launch, he performed live accompanied by a dance and a fashion show conceptualised, directed and anchored by Shrabani. The music and lyrics of in the album are self composed and rendered, complemented with the arrangement by Joel Mukherjee, a renowned musician from Kolkata. For more information on the youngster, log on to suthrith.com

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The Hindu : y>Volkswagen Beetle and Touareg to be launched on December 5

Volkswagen will launch its Beetle and Touareg models in India on December 5. Pricing is expected to range from Rs. 22 lakh for the Beetle, to around Rs. 55 lakh for the Touareg sport utility vehicle.

The Beetle will be powered by a 2-litre, 113bhp petrol engine, mated to an automatic transmission and VW plans to offer the fully loaded version, which includes airbags, climate control and plenty of other goodies.

The Touareg, which has been made available unofficially with VW dealers for some time, will be making its official debut this month. The SUV will be powered by a 3-litre, V6 diesel engine that makes 240bhp and feature a six-speed automatic transmission with the DSG system.

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The Hindu : y>To change the way you look, just change the way you look at yourself. Acceptance is best, says BINDU TOBBY

KEEP THE CURVES Jennifer Lopez is a more agreeable model for us, with her ample yet sexy figurePhoto: AFP

The blubber obsession is around you everywhere — with tales of inches swallowed, milligrams lost, tummies tucked and thighs sucked. While some of us have swallowed the weight loss pill, the rest of us couldn’t care more than to shift a little on our couches just to get closer to the pack of potato chips. And chips that go well with reality TV shows where women (yes, some were too well endowed to be adorned in such few strands) strutted in skimpy bikinis, vying with waif-like models to be part of a calendar, while judges scrutinised every bulge in their body.

We all know that the obsession around adipose tissue by others oftentimes makes the ‘healthy’ (not ‘fat’, mind you) ones among us ‘heavily’ victimised. While the need to lead a healthy lifestyle is a given, is the mass hysteria about discovering that lithe body beneath those layers warranted? Why are the ‘big’ ones among us always the butt of jokes at all social gathering where someone somewhere inevitably brings up the topic about how skinny you were as a child and what childbirth or marriage did to you? Why is it that you need to pretend to ignore those sniggers from sales folks when you fumble around the ‘waist-size-36′ shelf? (Which are, un-surprisingly always the lowest and most inaccessible shelf, considering the tummy does come in the way when you bend?)

So most of us victims have writhed while trying to squeeze into an old pair of trousers but willingly wage that lifelong battle with the bulge: waking up to lime, honey and warm water or sleeping on empty stomachs with not too much avail…More

The Hindu : C.K. MEENA

We are talking bikes in buses. How will they fit in?

He looked like a man who sold old newspapers. He got off his well-worn bicycle and, pausing at a bus-stop on Mysore Road, said something unintelligible to the conductor of an almost-empty bus. The driver was champing at the bit (the way he’d been flitting from stop to stop gave a whole new meaning to the expression touch-and-go) but the conductor asked him to hold his horsepower while the cyclist repeated his question. It appeared to make no sense. A bystander laughed and spelt it out clearly: “He is asking if he can get into your bus with his cycle.”

Driver and mate burst into a gale of laughter as they sped away but I remember thinking it a very sensible idea indeed. The man, weary of pedalling in the afternoon sun, must have hoped to save time and effort in getting to City Market. I thought of him when I read a report in the papers last week. At a recent function the transport commissioner is said to have announced that hitherto, all BMTC buses would have cycle racks. While I suspect he got the idea from not so humble a source as mine (could it be a foreign trip?) I’m also pondering the implications of this grand plan – if indeed it is executed and doesn’t go the way of other grand plans of the past.

First off, the motive behind building cycle racks in buses is not to ease the common man’s aching feet but to coax middle class bottoms away from the driver’s seat. The cycle-carrying buses would no doubt be the red, air-conditioned kind, and the cycles, the geared foreign ones worth Rs. 20,000. Racks are meant for health-conscious urban-dwellers who could cycle part of their way to work or play in order to save the environment,…More

The Hindu :

The impact of climate change on women belonging to fishing and farming communities has to be looked into seriously

PHOTO: C.V. SUBRAHMANYAMFishing In troubled waters

“T oday, my husband brought fish for only about Rs. 150,” says Anandhi Raghu, looking alarmed. “After diesel, we’ll be left with about a hundred. How do we manage with this income, when groceries cost so much?” On the Kovalam beach, where they fish, the catch has been dwindling. Her elderly mother-in-law is forced to sell the load street-to-street. “When the catch is huge, we auction it on our doorstep, and take some to the market. We can’t afford the transport cost anymore.”

Her husband Raghu thinks it’s because of climate change. Seasonal rain happens around the months that fish breed, and ensures water movement and temperature control. “We need storms in November to move the fish to the surface and closer to the shore. This year, the winds moved in the opposite direction, making wave patterns unpredictable. If seasons change, there’s no breeding, no fish, no income.”

Srinivasan, founder, Chennai Metro Union (Anandhi is the treasurer), has worked with fishing families for years. “Once fishermen come ashore, women take over — they buy, sell and dry the fish. Women are integral to the fishing industry,” he says. “Profit-making fish such as pomfret have gone 12 to 14 nautical miles away, so men go far into the sea. They are away from home for long hours, leaving women with more responsibilities.” Chandrika Sharma, working for International Collective in Support of Fishworkers, is worried about the rise in sea level. “When beaches go, drying spaces are lost,” she says. “Fuel wood can’t be found either. Groundwater salinity makes water collection, a woman’s job, difficult.” Coastal resources such as beaches, mangroves, and sand dunes are precious — they act as buffer zones. Destruction of the coastal eco-system invites change in weather…More