Public image ... and Tata's 'sorry' just won't do, says Nano owner

A bit late in the day but of great concern ...

How serious are we about our public image ? In the connected world it is necessary to take care not to allow any incident go by, whether small or big by our definition. One never knows where it will hit !

Take the Nano for instance - it just caught fire and no one is saying sorry !

Tata's 'sorry' just won't do, says Nano owner

Mid-Day.com, Thursday March 25, 2010, Mumbai

Mulund resident Satish Purushottam Sawant is still shaken by the March 21 incident, in which he and his family narrowly escaped death in their brand new Tata Nano. If there's anything that rankles the Sawants even more, it's the absence of an apology from Tata Motors.

And then another caught fire, and these have been termed isolated incidents.

New Tata Nano catches fire

Last updated on: April 07, 2010 20:52 IST

Another brand new Tata Nano car caught fire near Anand, the second such instance within a month, but the company claimed there were "no design flaws" with the world's cheapest car.

The incident took place at the vicinity of Boriyavi village, while a fleet of 11 Nanos was on its way to Vadodara.

Then there was the hack of TCS's website. It went down for a few hours but there was nary a word.

TCS website hacked BS Reporter / Mumbai February 9, 2010, 0:36 IST India’s largest information technology services company, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has become the latest target of hackers. The company has restored its website, after hackers changed its domain name and put it up for sale.

And of course whats happening today is the spat between Shashi Tharoor and Lalit Modi. One is a cabinet minister and the other is the big boss of the Indian Premier League. Both gentlemen have done a considerable amount of dirty laundry washing and name calling over the past few weeks. One has bitten the dust (as in resigned) and the other is said to be on his way out.

Image be dammed - public memory is short, and in any case who cares about what the public thinks anyway. Not the people who are in power or in money. Anyone outside their hallowed circle is inconsequential in form or thought.

So the rich, famous and connected continue their unchecked plunder and fight like c... and d... over the spoils.

A cool LCD story..... :)

Love, Cricket aur Danda

It is about love and cricket and the danda.

A story straight out of my childhood - there was this cut lady who i was trying to impress and she came to the school cricket match. I wanted (badly) to be the star of the game and told the captain to make sure that I was the opening batsman.

We lost the toss and were the fielding side. I was not asked to bowl and did not have much of a chance to do any eye-catching fielding too. The twenty overs were done and we went in to bat - and the captain did not send me to open ! Was I hopping mad, especially when he knew about my budding love story. And neither did I get to bat, because the second man to bat knocked up a good score and we won.

Well by the time the match ended, my love was tired and decided to go back home without any kind words.

She left and I had a fight with the captain and we got hauled by the principal who gave us both a good whack on our backsides with his danda (cane)

Love, cricket don't mix... and a danda does follow :)

................. over the past few days we are seeing this happening in India too. The difference is that there are big bucks involved and these guys are fighting on trying to get a bigger share.

Greed really knows no bounds - like these guys have raked in a few thousand crores already here and they are fighting over small change. And thank God this has attracted attention and now (hopefully) they will pay for their shenanigans with their resignations.

They can then go back to Rajasthan, UN, Kerala or Dubai for that matter and come back quietly later.

Governance, ethics, good manners, public responsibility, accountability .. what !! Alien words :)