Tata Nano

Ok I'm back! I know it has been waaaay over a month since I last left you all with the story about our boat trip in India. I wanted to finish out writing about our trip with a summary of what the trip meant to me. But somehow, I just couldn't figure out what to say. Wouldn't that make it so final? But I don't intend to be done with India-at least not yet. I still have people there to visit, weddings to attend, and my retirement to consider. :)

I guess what I can take away from the trip, though, is that India still draws me. While there, I had the opportunity to discuss returning to my previous company & my previous life. To my surprise, instead of instantly negating the idea, I spent a good portion of the trip vacillating back & forth on the idea. As you may have surmised, I opted not to at this point in time. But the fact remains that I still felt the pull of India.

Another reason that this post is slightly delayed is that I have experienced yet another round of bad car-ma. Obviously, in a previous life I have inflicted some horrible punishments on cars and this time around they are paying me back. This particular round necessitated the purchase of a new car. As I investigated a range of cars and prices, I remembered hearing about the new Tata Nano. If you haven't heard, the Nano is now the cheapest car that is sold anywhere in the world (around $2000 USD).

Tata motors started taking orders for the car in April of this year, with delivery scheduled to start in July. [I anticipate it to actually start rolling out in 2010-IST, you know.] I'm interested to see how well these cars do in India-I know in Chennai, people are going to have to spring for a deluxe version, with the A/C for the summer months, which might not make the pricing as competitive as it initially seems. I'm even more interested to see, however, how the infrastructure and traffic patterns (both already stretched near the breaking point) hold up under the large influx of cars forecasted to hit the roadways in the next couple of years.