Chalti ka naam gadi

In his book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell talks about how little things make a big difference. I used to wonder how the book became a best seller. Don't we all know this. Common truth. Mundane bland statement. Restating the obvious isn't literature. Let me share my little experience. It all began when our Palio had just gotta go. Our first. It brought new born Nitika home from the hospital, drove us through streets of Bangalore, accompanied us to Nasik, Pune, Mysore, Ooty and in and about the city of Mumbai. Faithful and dependable Palio. But the circle of life catches up and it had to go. Unlike the good old family car Fiat of yore, which lasted for close to twenty years, this Fiat had  managed just eight. So much for Indian liberalisation and American consumerism. We had moved away from the Fabian socialist ideologies of the loyalist sixties. Now, the decision had to be made for buying a new car. Thanks to Dr. Manmohan Singh, India post 1991 has being seeing a barr...