Passport to Adventure

In 1948, the Land Rover came to life with a simple purpose - to give Britain a vehicle that could compete with Jeep. It had to be simple, coupled with extraordinary strength and durability. The first Land Rover was built in that particular year.

Soon after, it became the farmer’s best friend, and with its outstanding off-road capability it became a vehicle of choice for military forces around the world. It did cut a distinctive profile among herds of commuters, as one could venture into unexplored territory. Built three years after World War II, Land Rover was a civilian, peacetime go-anywhere vehicle that broke the mold of conventional thinking.

The Series 2 made its way in 1958. This wasn’t greeted too well by the customers, and so the Series 2A was launched in 1961 to up the sales. Ten years later, the Series 3 made its debut with a V8 engine, which was a giant technical leap at the time. In the years to come, continuous changes were done to improve the vehicle even more. Hence, in March 1983, the 110 was introduced with petrol, diesel and V8 petrol engine options. This was again up-rated in January 1984. Five months down the line, the 90 wheeled on the road. For the next four years or so, significant changes were made to the engine of Land Rover. Turbo-diesel appeared in 1986, and the V8 got boosted up to 134bhp. Apart from minor alterations, no further changes were incorporated to the 90/110 Rovers. And so, in September 1989 both these models got a new name – the Defender. The 90 became the ‘Defender 90’ and the 110 became the ‘Defender 110’. The Defender 110’s name came from its wheelbase, which was 110 inches. Land Rover Discovery was also new at the time, and this move to usher in the Defender was perhaps to clarify the range.

A vehicle with an unlimited capacity for hard work was now being called the Defender. Later, it got a five-speed manual transmission; it became available with the 107bhp four-cylinder turbo-diesel, and 134bhp 3.5 litre V8. Even the interiors began to look more ‘car like’. People loved it. Now, the Defender had become a recreational vehicle rather than an off-road one. The car became more comfortable.

In 1992, the Defender got reintroduced as the ‘NAS Defender 110’ with a more refined, 182bhp, fuel injected 3.9 litre V8. This NAS 110 was a 4x4 and an instant hit. It had standard air conditioning, and a radio/cassette unit in the middle of the console. Furthermore, disk brakes were introduced, and the wheelbase was restructured. Then, in came the NAS 90 Defender, or the NAS90. This was meant to be a special edition vehicle, and a Station Wagon was made available, too.

Changes continued in the new century. Central door locking, electric window lifts, ABS braking and new colours; the Defender was now clearly an esteemed vehicle.

In 2012, a 2.4 litre diesel engine, a six-speed gear box, and dash and forward facing rear seats got introduced. The new engine gave 122 horsepower in both the Defender 90 and Defender 110. Both these models were updated in terms of the interior and the engine. But soon after, Land Rover confirmed that the production of the much loved Defender will end in 2015.

Maestro Fangio

5 World Championships, 51 Grand Prix entries, 24 Grand Prix wins, 29 Pole Positions and years of breathtaking racing. One man stood out, cool and calm, amid a split second world where time is told in tenths – Juan Manuel Fangio. No man has ever given more to Formula One than the exceptional Fangio; arguably the best Formula One race driver the world has ever seen who always drove his car like the wind.

Nick named ‘bow-legged’ by his peers, Fangio was born in Balcarce, a small town in Argentina. At the age of eleven, the young Fangio went to work in a garage.  When he was seventeen, he rode as a mechanic in a race for Model T Ford. Since then Fangio drove all makes of American modified stock cars, participated in extremely long distance races (some even thousands of miles), which later made Formula One races seem like child’s play. Making a note of that, the government sponsored Fangio and sent him to Europe to pursue his racing career after the end of World War II. At the age of 38, Fangio was given a drive at Alfa Romeo. From here on, the Fangio domination began, at an age when many drivers think of retiring.

In 1952, since he had missed a connecting flight, he drove all the way from Paris to Monza to take part in a race; a promise he had made. An already exhausted Fangio crashed his car during the race, breaking his neck pretty badly. The accident left him with a permanently stiff upper torso. It took him a whole year to recover. But, post his recovery there was no looking back.

Through the sweeping high speed curves of Spa, past the sunlit terraces of Monaco, high on the Banking, down the historic ribbon of road that is Reims, through the flat wide open spaces of Silverstone, or winding round the unrelenting Nurburgring; wherever the roar of motor racing was heard, Juan Manuel Fangio was there, leading, and unstoppable.

For reasons known to him alone, the Nurburgring circuit was his favourite. In an interview in 2000, Fangio mentioned about the 1957 German Grand Prix and how he drove his Maserati on the tremendously challenging Nurburgring circuit, and how he conquered it. Apart from Alfa Romeo and Maserati, Fangio also drove Mercedes and Ferrari.

On February 23, 1958, the second Cuban Grand Prix was held. Fangio, who had won the first race, was back to retain his title. But, on the eve of the race he was confronted by a young man brandishing a pistol. Fangio was kidnapped. Interestingly, he was later released and remained a good friend of his captors ever since. And on 6^th July, 1958, after miles and miles of jaw-dropping car racing, he drove his last race in the French Grand Prix and retired at the age of 46. This was the end of an era never to be forgotten.

Fangio was a quiet man, not an extrovert. Virtues of honesty, integrity, self-discipline, respect for others and the sense of responsibility was typical of the man, and that characterized his approach to life. He was a true gentleman in every sense of the word, and will be always remembered as an ageing genius who showed young race drivers how to go fast and how to win.

The Flying Rockstars

 In 1483, Leonardo Da Vinci’s sketch of the ‘Aerial Screw’ or ‘Gyroscope’ showed the world how a basic helicopter can look like. That was enough inspiration for aviation to thrive over the years. Aerospace technology has risen to heights way beyond a naked eye’s reach. Today, NASA’s Robonaut 2 can perform telemedicine to administer care to astronauts flying aboard the International Space Station. Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? Well, it’s time to drop your jaw. How about someone tells you that a group of tiny robots can fly and create music at the same time in ways never seen before? Yes, you heard it right. Create music.

Two graduates, Alex Kushleyev and Daniel Mellinger, from The University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP (General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception) lab have ingeniously pushed the limits of experimental robotics with the launch of their company KMel Robotics. Experts in hardware design and high-performance, the duo present a team of flying robots that may well be the future of surveillance, search, rescue and warfare, but their design can also perform live music that is rhythmic and fascinating.

Quadrotors, as they are called, are quite capable of agile flight. They can navigate pretty easily in environments with obstacles, comfortably turning fiction into fact. But who would have believed these nano quadrotors would one day even tap on instruments to play songs.

The hexrotors (quadrotors) create music like playing a single string guitar hooked up to an electric guitar amp, and drums are hit with precision using a deconstructed piano action. Well, all one can say is that these tiny robots are programmed to do big things. It is an amalgam of aviation and creativity, like never before. Alex and Daniel’s modernization is indeed music to our ears.

Watch the video and enjoy the robotic rhythm.

Retrospective

I have nowhere to go now. My dreams are shattered, broken down to pieces of regret and shame. I could have had a decent job in my father's working place. He died last year of a sudden heart attack. Sometimes I feel things happen a bit too suddenly. Life never gives us a buffer time to contemplate and decide. I didn't want that job. I thought my hands would get dirty. The tunneling, digging and extracting was just too much of an ask. I used to wonder how my father never complained about the melancholic black colour he was surrounded with constantly.

I decided to get married just before my father's demise. He was in the pink of health then, and so was my mother. Both of them had this everlasting smile on their face.
I remember asking them once as a teenager, "How do you manage to smile so much? We live in an almost broken house, and we hardly get to eat. How do you manage to smile so wide and so often?"
My mother answered by asking me a question, "Are you happy?". I said, "Yes, of course I am happy."
"That's why we smile.", said my mother with a twinkle in her eyes.
I heard what she said, but I understand that now, sitting right here at this table.

My wife loves me. I feel I've failed to return the favour. She felt for the words, my hollow words. She felt for the exterior, my false facade. I feel sorry for her. She is pregnant now. She said she wants to have the baby badly. She is naive, oblivious to the escalating cost of living people encounter everyday. I shouldn't have married her. I am about to ruin her life, too, and also the child's. Some decisions you make in life can make or break your future. My decisions have broken and bludgeoned my present. My future is quite apparent to all. Perhaps I never made up my mind. The extracting work could have begrimed my white hands, but it could have also made me a better person than I've become now. I would have been more responsible and much more awake.

There is a village miles away from this bar, where my mother lives. She lives alone, stitching clothes all day for other villagers and earning some money just to be able to wake up tomorrow and repeat yesterday. Surprisingly, she still has that smile on her face, perhaps for the same reason. In some corner of her heart she still believes I am as happy as I was being a teenager. I have learned nothing from my parents, and perhaps it's too late now. The bottle of alcohol that I am finishing is somehow dehydrating my will, or what's left of it. Every puff of smoke the cigarette emits is anti-gravitating any hopes of my resurrection.

All that is left now is just a moment I have with my wife, right here at this table.

Risk and the Math

There is a pun in that, of course. But, then again, there isn't.

Taking risks in life is paramount, I feel. Failure is imperative, too. Without taking risks, we won't fail, and without failure we won't learn.

Now, taking calculated risks is something else. This is the time when you've got a lot to lose, and you don't want to. It's kind of a Catch-22 situation where the solution doesn't look certain, but what the hell. You give it a thought, prioritize a bit and then decide to take the leap of faith, having measured the leap first. And while you decide what to and what not to hold onto, math checks in. This is the moment of truth, the make or break. This is where you hold onto your nerves more than anything else you wish to hold onto. Math is where the engine stutters. Damn!

Psychedelic Me

Pushing science and logic to its limit, I dare

Or perhaps beyond the boundaries of acceptance

I bend the rules and bend my hair

I stretch the levels of people’s tolerance

I feel like a metaphor when I am defined

I just look the other way when I’m spoken of

Very few take me seriously, but I don’t mind

I really don’t lend an ear to all that stuff

Psychedelic me, what people don’t see

Psychedelic me, oh just let me be

It annoys them when their theories are defied

All of their black and white, colourless theories

I’ve died to earn all these colours, I’ve cried

I don’t need a theory to tell my stories

I keep my mouth closed and heart open

Some say and believe that I’m an introvert

Truth is, I refuse to speak to each and everyone

I conceal a lot, that way I am quite stubborn

Psychedelic me, what people don’t see

Psychedelic me, oh just let me be

Filling the Scoring Shoes

Ajinkya Rahane. The name surely does not send shivers down the spine of the bowlers around  the world. What it does though, is it provides some sort of solidarity in the Indian middle order.

Rahane was seen on the benches most of the time when Sachin was reaching the fag end of his career, getting an opportunity here and there, which he couldn't grab with both hands on all occasions. And quite understandably so. One cannot expect a batsman to jump-in in a one-off game and score a flamboyant ton. But, a bench strength he certainly was.

Sachin retired with an unforgettable 74 at the Wankhede stadium against the West Indies, in a test series which Harsha Bhogle correctly noted by saying, "West Indies would be feeling they have come to someone else's wedding." As it turned out, Sachin got a fitting farewell as India won the series 2-0.

Before the master retired, likes of Dravid, Ganguly and Laxman made way for youngsters to start bleeding the patriotic blue, or should I say, "The testing white." And as soon as Sachin put a full stop to international cricket, Ajinkya Rahane started getting games as the new-found no.5. What big shoes to fill! The fab four were out of the equation and the burden of responsibility, all of a sudden, came on the young middle order shoulders. Rahane was one of them. His impressive domestic record made everyone expect a lot from him every time he went out to bat. Gradually, in his short stint up till now, people have already begun to see the new Rahul Dravid in Ajinkya Rahane's compact batting technique. That's how cricket is followed in India. If you are good, you have to keep on being better and better and better.