All set to Get Set Bolt!

As I entered the Forum Sujana Mall in Hyderabad, I was greeted by a charming red BOLT shining from top to bottom like a new bride in her favorite red dress standing under the spotlight! Undeniably attracted by the sporty beauty, I headed directly to the arena where it was parked. "Hello Sir, Welcome to the BOLT arena" said the man standing next to the car in a very welcoming tone. "Would you be interested in seeing this new car sir? It's a new hatchback from Tata motors!" he exclaimed. Without doubts "Of course!!" I replied ..

This is a blog post about my observations from the short demo sans driving of the Tata BOLT car (Petrol variant) in the mall.

Since someone was already checking out the car sitting in the front seat, I opted to sit in the rear seat to check out the space and comfort provided for non-drivers first. "Impressive!" I thought to myself. Though a hatchback, I found a lot of space in the rear seat to comfortably seat 3 people. Such a trend setter in the segment! Even the headroom was quite good for a tall person like me.

But beyond this I was impressed by the legroom offered to the passengers seated at the rear seat. Also by scooping out rear of the front seats, they have actually provided more knee-room to the passengers. This is a careful consideration and a welcome change, as more often than not people seated in the rear seat of a hatchback are forced to go through the painful affair of squeezing in their knees to accommodate the limited space!

Next came my turn to sit in the front seat to experience its features. As soon as I sat on the driver's seat, I could immediately feel the comfort and snug that those seats provided. Demo engineer immediately adjusted the seat to accommodate my height as the previous person raised it for him being short. Steering wheel was easily adjustable too!

Interior felt quite sportive and attractive with the color scheme of black, chrome and silver, perfectly complementing the sexy external looks. "Sir, start the ignition" said the demo engineer. With sexy revving of the Revotron engine, it started smoothly! While I was still admiring the roar, he said "Sir, try the steering". Oh boy, that electric power steering with amazing grip was silky smooth and a pleasure to handle!!

Demo engineer went on to explain some of the features of the car. Boy, was I impressed? WITHOUT doubts!! Now let me tell you the ones I was impressed by the most, of course including and beyond the point about comfort and space of the car that impressed me first!

Gone are those days when one had to depend on servicing engineers to get the car tuned for speed or performance. Yes, Bolt with its multi-drive modes is unique and very impressive for its segment! By default the car is set to "City" mode to strike a balance between speed and performance. But when in need for speed, could just press the "Sport" mode to get the burst of power to zoom or for that mileage fanatic mood there is "Eco" mode. Whatever be the case, all these cool modes are just a button press away!

Next notable thing is the paramount importance given for passenger safety!  Apart from ABS with EBD and corner stability control, Bolt features dual front airbags to protect the driver and co-passenger in case of frontal collision. Definitely a well thought about feature that is great to have in this segment of cars!!

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I couldn't believe when the demo engineer said the car is powered by a 1.2L turbocharged Revotron engine. Performance for a 1.2L engine to generate 84bhp at 5,000rpm is quite impressive!! Though I couldn't get to take out the car on a drive, the figures on paper are quite impressive. I've already booked my test drive. With such figures, I am sure it will be be a powerful driving experience!

Another impressive feature is the new touchscreen infotainment system that looks very trendy. Of course it is built by Harman! It should be. I tried pairing my mobile phone with Bluetooth and it was a piece of cake. I could then browse my phone contacts and play music directly from the touchscreen!!

Media control buttons on the steering wheel made it even more easy and the buttons to control my phone was also impressive. I was totally taken aback when the demo engineer controlled the system through voice commands! It recognized Indian accents so clearly and acted very promptly. I couldn't believe when I was able to control literally everything through voice commands. It is definitely revolutionary and a big plus for this segment!

Last but not the least it is impressive to have in-built GPS based navigation system in this segment. Yes, Tata motors in partnership with MapmyIndia has come-up with a Navigation app specially coded for integration between the user’s smartphone and the dashboard screen. So good-bye spending on 3G internet service to navigate through places and say hello to GPS based integration to explore your city!! Now that's definitely a welcome change indeed :)

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Now tell me! With such power packed features who wouldn't get impressed and wanna Get. Set. Bolt?! Already I am excited and all set, what about you?! :)

This post is a part of the Get. Set. Bolt. activity at BlogAdda.

Monster Martians vs Neem Ninjas!

I still recollect that horrific day ...  when the mirror turned my terror reflecting those dreadful monsters from the red planet waging a personal war of enmity against me, poor teen earthling!!

As a teen boy with boiling blood and raw energy, I immediately proclaimed war in return against those martian monsters without having any idea about their strength and secret dealings with earthly bacteria warriors! War started and I crushed & beheaded one of their red-dwarf warriors in no time to show my power. Boy, least did I know those martians rise back to life like a phoenix!

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Very next day, another angry-red-faced martian greeted me with a war siren - 'You beheaded one of our warriors yesterday and now in return we attack you with all our power and support from your own earthly bacteria warriors. Do whatever you can!'. When it comes to aggression, I am not any less. This time the war turned quite serious. I successfully beheaded more of their warriors to teach them a lesson once for all and went about doing my work, without realizing the war was not about to end anytime soon!

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As days went by, more angry warriors sprouted out of nowhere and started attacking me mercilessly! Soon they left my face lifeless like a battle zone. I then realized how I underestimated the power of those martian warriors. I turned to my parents for help to address the situation in hand. Having faced such martians in the past they had few remedies in hand. But they seriously warned me against my aggression and asked me to ignore those martian war cries. Something very hard to digest as a raging teenager!

View image | gettyimages.com

By then those scars from my martian battle left my face ugly. I was reluctant to even go out and play with my friends. Meeting relatives was not an option. I felt depressed. Whomever I met by chance also had an easy topic to discuss and that would ruin my mood instantly. In all, complete shyness and sadness unfolded in front of me. Not at all easy to handle at that age.

View image | gettyimages.com

Granny suggested seeking help from Citrus king Lemon. With support from Lemon king on my side, I answered the martian war cry with citrus power! It was an effective attack. Few martians perished beyond revival. But soon they got adopted. After sometime they grew strong to citrus power sadly. Later it was the support from the kingdom of yogurt that gave me some relief. But not for long! Then garlic soldiers joined forces with curd to help me fight those martians. Again the same story repeated and my sadness continued for a long long time.

View image | gettyimages.com

After many years, one fine day I read a secret book and came to know about Neem ninjas from Garnier Kingdom. It was a great news for me when I heard Neem ninjas have their personal enmity with bacteria warriors over generations! After all enemy's enemy is a good friend! With strong support from Garnier's Pure Active Neem ninjas I attacked the martian warriors again. Voila, Neem team effortlessly collapsed the support bacterial warriors were providing to martian warriors for years. This was a turning point of my life! Though this war went on for some time I could evidently see the martians loosing the battle slowly and steadily!

View image | gettyimages.com

Over a period of time engaging the powerful Neem ninjas, I have successfully won my battle against those dirty little martians. I am totally indebted to Neem ninjas all my life for restoring my smooth face and putting the confidence back on it!! Now where is the camera? bring on those selfies :)

View image | gettyimages.com

I know, I am not the only one who fought the personal war against those angry martians. If you are being personally attacked by them, be at peace and do yourself a favor by taking help from the Garnier kingdom!! Their specially trained pure active neem ninjas combined with their magical powers acquired from tree tea oil extracts, they effectively fight the martians and free yourself from trouble in a short period of time!

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If you are interested to team-up with Neem ninjas in your fight against monster martians, quickly head to these pages from their secret book here (http://bit.ly/GPABlogLinkIndiBloggerActivity) and here (http://bit.ly/GarnierPureActiveNeemWebsite).

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PS: I have impersonated angry red faced pimples as Martians (imaginary people from red planet Mars) in my post to build a story!

This blog post is written for IndiBlogger topic 'Garnier Pure Active Neem'.

Indian Streets - Of Colors and Action!

For this Sankranthi festival, I took my newly acquired Sony Alpha 5100 mirrorless camera for a test shoot. I randomly went to the countryside in the outskirts of Hyderabad to shoot the festivities and action. Here are some of the photographs I shot using the camera. This post is not a review about the camera rather a show of colors, action and festivities from the Indian streets! Click on the individual photographs to view them Large.

When I set out very early in the morning, it was very cold. People gathered around bonfire to keep themselves warm in the last leg of winter!

As I drove further, came across this beautiful scene of sunrise and people standing around bonfire. A nice combination of cold and warm colors.

This little girl enjoyed herself throwing agricultural waste into the bonfire to keep her family warm.

Typical early morning scene on the Indian streets. Drawing Rangoli is part of our culture.

People soaking in the golden light!

Women making colorful Rangoli for Sankranthi Celebrations ...

Indian streets are filled with interesting action and characters!

A small kid posing in front of his house :)

Rangolis are drawn with rice powder and they do serve a purpose!

Curios young boy!

Hope you like this blog post! :)

Time to go smart and sleek with ASUS!

With technology improving by the day, it is totally unimaginable the power of electronic devices that are coming out in the market these days. I was a proud owner of a bulky assembled PC just a decade ago. It costed me a bomb but had a measly 512 MB hard disk drive with 256 MB RAM, which was too good a configuration at that time that I used to wonder why would anybody want anything more than that!! I recollect how it had a bulky tower CPU and a separate CRT monitor, both so huge that it occupied a entire computer table at that time. Add to it a keyboard, there was hardly any space left on the table even to keep my hand and work! But yes, good old times, they retired!!

Thanks to ever evolving electronics industry, times have changed within a decade! Now we have the most powerful and sleekest of products at an affordable budget price. I happened to come across two such products today - ASUS EeeBook X205TA and the Ultra-Portable ASUS All In One PC ET2040. When I bought my Google Nexus 7 tablet from ASUS last year, I was totally impressed by the build quality of the product and the power that is packed into that small unit. From that day, I added ASUS to my watch-list for new electronic gadgets in the market! Today when I saw ASUS All In One Desktop PC ET2040 product listing in the Amazon's page, I knew it's time to retire my three year old PC finally!!


Being a freelance travel photo/videographer, I shoot for a lot of photography assignments and individual projects. My workflow typically involves transferring GBs of images and videos into hard disk, first to process them on Photoshop before finalizing them and delivering it to my clients. Currently my PC with its 1 GB RAM totally struggles even while copying the image files and with limited hard disk capacity, I can't even copy all the files locally to edit. Then to load the Photoshop takes its own sweet time rest alone editing a bulk of them!! Of late I was looking for a good desktop alternative in the market and today when I saw the specifications of this ultra-portable desktop I am again impressed with ASUS. Apart from the obvious fact that it is very slim and does not occupy much space at all, there are many useful features that make everyday use of a desktop a pleasure but I am listing below some of my favorite features that is well suited for my lifestyle!

As a photographer, my eyes are always drawn on the display characteristics of the monitor I use. With it's crisp 19.5-inch HD widescreen display with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels, ET2040 scores very well for my needs to edit photographs and videos. Widescreen display is a sure boost for editing landscape format photographs and LED backlight technology is guaranteed to produce amazing brightness, contrast and colors to the photographs. I am sure it will be a treat to watch the final edited cut directly on the monitor!

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With latest and greatest Intel processor (Quad Core J2900) with super-fast graphics (Intel HD), it will be effortless to run even a memory hogging editing software like Photoshop. With 2 GB RAM, I can effortlessly edit bulk of my photographs and videos at ease!

Another common problem in India is the power-cut. Nothing can be irritating like that unexpected power-cut coming your way while you are editing a photograph! All the work gone the drain completely. Thanks to the savior one hour smart backup that keeps things going even in case of a power-cut! Really really useful I say!

Next impressive thing is the availability of built-in HDMI-out port! I can now directly connect my HDTV to the PC to check out the final edited videos and watch it live! Talk about all the time consuming job of copying the edited version to a separate HDD and connecting that to the HDTV to watch the cut. Again doing modifications and repeating the same task all over again! This is such a blessing, definitely!

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With the availability of super-speed USB 3.0 ports, connecting my camera or my external hard disk drive and transferring images will be such a pleasure. Don't have to make a cup of coffee and wait for the transfer to complete slowly! These USB 3.0 ports can also doubly serve the purpose of charging the smartphones and tablets. I love it when multiple things can be done at a breeze.

Last but not the least hands free entertainment is another big big plus! With advanced Hand-Gesture Recognition Software (HGRS) that uses the built-in camera to accurately interpret movements, I can zoom and rotate photos from a distance, without even touching a screen, keyboard or mouse. I say it's a big plus because while watching the final cut, it will be very quick to zoom and check specific portions of the photograph to finalize it!

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By checking out all my list, this PC looks like tailor made for a serious photographer like me. But yes this is just touching the tip of the iceberg, features that are very much suitable for my needs. For more features about this desktop, click here.

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Ready to dare and win the date!

Valentine's day is just around the corner and the restless days are on to plan and make it as special as possible! But hey did you notice already? this year's valentine's day is on a Saturday, which means one could be together for the whole weekend! BIG isn't it? so without doubts one has to walk that extra mile to plan and make things simply extra special! And when I came across this prompt "If you had to propose to your crush on Valentine's day how would you do it?" for close-up cupid games initiative, I thought I would definitely share my dreamy idea here!

To start with, the bonus in my case is we have a lot of common friends and many of them already have a slight clue about my 'special' interest towards her :-) Also, since this year's valentine's day is conveniently falling over the weekend, I would simply plan a weekend trip to Goa with all of them! Boy, do I know already she loves Goa and the beaches?!! ;-)

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Saturday morning would be all about prepping her indirectly through brilliant clues leading to a fantastic evening! Starting with a fortune cookie delivered exclusively for her by a cute little pup [yup yup I know she loves dogs!! ;)] with message "This evening is going to be extra special to you!". And for the evening, I would arrange a beach-side barbecue party exclusively for us friends at one of her favorite beaches! Sssh.. secret .. I collected that info from her best friend already! ;-)

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Cold winter evening, star studded sky, moon peeping from behind the clouds, silent waves slowly touching the shore, live guitar music mildly playing in the background, warm bonfire and all of us sitting around it! Well .. how does it all sound? Yes, that would be my chosen setting for the evening at that secluded beach! Nothing is better than starting things in a regular-casual way. Of course, no fun making anyone nervous straight away right? I would let the evening progress on its own sweet pace - cracking jokes, making fun, preparing great bbq food with amazing drinks to accompany!

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When the tempo is high and everyone is at great mood enjoying the evening, I will have the musicians play her favorite tunes one after the other! Then at one point I will grab a guitar, walk straight up to her looking at her eyes, playing her most favorite tune (Yes, yes, it all takes a lot of groundwork to know things, you see!) and then kneel down in front of her to ask those few precious words that matter the most - 'Will you be my Valentine!!' :-)

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Given such a brilliant setting and mood, I am sure things will work out in my favor!! Oh wait, wait, now that's not the end of things there! If she accepts my proposal, which I am sure she will, I will hold her hands and slowly walk her up to a separate table a little distance away for a brilliant beach-side candle light dinner setup exclusively for the two of us!! Finally not to miss the flight over the beach with glowing letters that reads "Oh girl, he loves you so much!!" :-)

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Don't you think that would make things complete for a fantastic valentine's night together?? I am sure it will !!! :-)

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Hello there, litterbug!

Long long ago, so long ago, nobody knows how long ago, our litterbug hero was not so great. He was just a little kid. His parents were taking him out on a walk. After walking a little distance, suddenly our little hero felt the urgent rush to pee. After all the weather was cold. So the poor little thing wanted to return back home. But his lazy parents convinced him that he is only a little kid and he could just pee on the roadside [well well .. they really did not want to walk back all the way]. So he did. While doing, he even saw few grownup uncles sharing the same wall, for the same purpose and realized it was absolutely normal to do so!! Kids do grab things quickly you see!

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After a few years, our litterbug grew up a bit and his family was going out for a vacation. It was his first train journey and he was super excited. When he entered the train, he saw it was littered with peanut shells. Curiously he asked his mom, "Why they don't keep the train clean like their house"? His mom replied, "Beta, it's too big no, they cannot clean it everyday!". He immediately registered that train cannot be cleaned as often and hence it will be dirty. Later his mom opened their food package and everyone had a nice nice food. Later she just parceled all the garbage together and without any thought just threw it out of the train's window. Our young litterbug was worried now. He asked his mom, "Why you didn't put it in the dustbin like in our house?", "What happens if it falls on someone else's house?". His mom immediately shut his mouth saying "Since trains are moving all the time, they don't have dustbins like our house" and "So what if it falls on someone else's house? they will clean it anyway no! You keep quiet!". What to do, our young litterbug immediately registered in his mind that perhaps this is the way it should be done! Oh boy .. !!

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Later one day our young litterbug noticed his mom complaining and frantically cleaning their compound wall. He was curious why! So he asked his mom "Is there any festival coming? Why are you cleaning the compound walls?". "No festival beta, someone spray painted our wall full of pan stains" replied his mom. "But then papa also does the same no?" he asked. "Shut up! he doesn't spoil OUR compound wall like this. This is some other moron!" replied the mom. Oh so .. spitting on someone else's wall is acceptable thought our litterbug!

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Another day, during his school outing to a local monument in the city, our teen litterbug noticed a few uncles scratching on the monument walls. Drawing some heart heart thing and writing their names. Our curious little teen asked those uncles what they were doing? Those local romeos replied "Bacche, you won't understand now! We are writing our name with our girl friend's name on the wall and heart means LOVE!!". Our teen litterbug was confused! He immediately asked "But why are you writing here?". Those kids drove our teenager away saying, "that's how it is done and in the future it will stand as a symbol of their true love!!". Though completely confused, he just registered that thought in his mind!

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Many years later, while walking on the road, he noticed the lazy next door aunty dumping the trash outside the trash can which was overflowing. Our litterbug didn't understand why! But then aunty said, "It's ok beta, the cleaner will clean it anyway!". "Oh ok" thought our litterbug.

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Later that day he even noticed a educated looking, stylish, business man in his rich rich car throw a cigarette pack out of his window but wait, our litterbug is now grown and is smart. He already knows, moving car cannot have a dustbin and so it was absolutely fine to throw the garbage out! Smartly matching the patterns no?

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Finally our little litterbug is a well grownup adult now. He knows all the social values properly. He is sure to handle our society at ease! Now watch our grownup litterbug in action in this video!! Doesn't he strictly adhere to all the social values taught by his family and society!!? In case you doubt, HE IS ..


Wait, don't complain him. He is innocent. He was only taught and brought up like that!! Without any forethought, he thinks that is the right way to do. You know whom to blame now!!

Check out more such interesting people and stories of them at the Great Indian Litterbug campaign by Times of India! If you know of a great Indian litterbug in your locality, do share a thought there!