Fiat Grande Punto – Review in a nutshell

Here comes the super hatch killer in India. The Fiat Grande Punto. Since its release, I have seen a few on the roads and envied it. I thought I have waited a lot and yesterday just took off for a test drive of this Diesel beast. I’d like to share a few experiences.

Looks exterior: One word describes it. Awesomeness. Fiat’s allround design beats the ugly Ritz and A-star. The front grille, the rear finishing and the side doors all give this car a superb touch. You’ll surely fall in love at first sight.

Looks interior: Not very much impressed. I’ve always tought Fiat has to hire interior designers from Hyundai or Honda. They have always been giving the customers crappy interiors and still have’nt learnt their lessons. I drove the top end Emotion Model which had an inbuilt  Music system whose contols seem like an old transistor. The Air Con vents and the sliding controls are just too primitive. Its all black-black inside. The door side handles are’nt eye pleasing either. Fiat, its time. Change your inner wear. It matters. x|

Comfort: Great. You go inside and feel you are in a super big sedan. There is no way that 5 big sized adults could feel even the slightest of the cramps. With Steering level controls and seat height adjustments provided, a 6 foot guy need not worry about his comfort inside. Same with a guy who weighs a 100 Kilos. You’l fit inside with utmost ease.

Engine: The Fiat 1.3 MultiJet Diesel is a gem. Its Gold. I need not speak about it. Its a proven champion.

Acceleration: Here’s something you have to worry. Fireup the first gear, a slight push on the Gas would kick start the Punto. Then, you move on to the second and third, the car does not move until you push the Gas Pedal fully. An unpleasant surprise, but that’s the fact. I do not know whether it was a problem with the test drive vehicle, but if its not this is a serious issue. Press the Gas fully and leave the rest for the engine? I felt like a moped.

Braking: Its time that Indian car makes start giving us ABS as a compulsion and not as an option. With roads these days wider and better, and with a masterpiece Diesel Engine, you tend to zoom in fast and brakes are your life savers. Aren’t they? If thats not possible atleast give us all four Discs. That said, Punto’s brakes are not bad either. They show good response at speeds of 100kmph but never tested with 5 adults and luggage fully loaded.

Power Steering: The motor driven power steering responds well for a fairly bulky body like the Punto.

Air Conditioning: 1.3 Diesel does not bow down to an Air Con. You feel instant chill and it reaches out the rear passengers as well.

Dashboard: Ugly. What Fiat thought by placing the fuel and the temperature indicators at the center is still a mystery. Who on earth, while driving needs to keep looking at the Fuel Indicator going down all the time? I was very dissapointed. People are used to see the speeds and RPMs while driving, so put them at places right in front of the eye. Placing them where the edges of the steering cover them is foolishness. And next time, please change that italic font on the speedometer. It sucks.

Mileage: Punto gives you a highway mileage of 20 kmpl and a 17 kmpl in city conditions. I would accept this any day.

Gear Box: The new improved Fiat Gear Box is good. No complaints. All gears fall just right in place.

Top Speed: I always test drive Fiat vehicles at the Mysore Road, Concorde Motors so that I can zoom away in the Highway. Punto accelerated within no time and reached 100 – 120 kmph and stayed as stable as ever. Punto’s Aerodynamics and Geometry are the best available today. Go, press that accelerator and feel the rush

Tyres and Suspension: Tubeless tyres and Good suspension. Fiat won here.

Boot Space: Ample boot space to accomodate enough luggage for a family of four for a week long tour. No complaints here.

All in all, the Grande Punto is another step forward towards Fiat second innings in India. Given a chance to choose, I would rate the Punto over the Swift. Anybody now buying a Skoda Fabia is nothing less than a fool. Its very interesting to see how the 4 different cars – Punto, Indica Vista, Swift and Ritz fare at the market with the same 1.3 Multijet inside.

Find more pictures of the Punto Here. All the best Fiat.

The 2.5Lac Bajaj Alliance Scam

Back in 2007, Bajaj Alliance anounced a new life insurance policy which at that time was worth every bit. The scheme was a single premium policy which they would be investing in the stock market for ten years. Once the policy is matured, the current market value of the premium paid would be returned. The maximum sum insured is Rs. 2.5 Lacs for a single premium of Rs. 25,000.

Considering the market situation at that time, which indeed was in full flow, my dad purchased the policy in the name of my sister. We were introduced to this policy by one of the affiliated banks with Bajaj Alliance, and so, we decided to go ahead with the policy via the bank to help promote its marketting statistics. We paid Rs. 25,000 to the agent present at the bank, completed the initial formalities and thought we’d made a nice deal.

Bajaj Alliance then issued the policy which reached us after 15 days of the date-of-issue due to some delay by the courier service. To our surprise, the maximum sum insured in the policy was just Rs. 50,000. My dad, at that moment did not smell any foul play on the part of Bajaj Alliance. He contacted the agent at the bank about the sum insured and he suggested us to go for a Free Look Cancellation and ask for a new policy.

Here started the problem. According to the norms of Bajaj Alliance, Free Look Cancellation can be availed only 15 days from the date-of-issue and because of the initial delay, we could not avail that. Now, we were left with no option but to keep the policy and live with it.

Now, which fool would pay a single premium of Rs 25,000 for an insured sum of Rs 50,000 for over a period of ten years? Keeping it in an Fixed Deposit would become 4 times in the same period Moreover, my sister was just 23 at that time and most eligible to get the full sum insured of Rs. 2.5 lacs. My dad then though something had gone wrong.

My dad asked for the application submitted at the bank. When closely observed, the Bajaj Alliance staff had modified the insured sum of Rs. 2.5 Lacs as Rs. 50,000 and had actually submitted it. Anybody with his naked eye could see that in the 2,50,000 what we had written, a whitener was used over the initial ‘2′ and a fake signature was forged. Note that there was no column in the application to write the sum in words. Cunning Bajaj Alliance.

When the bank was contacted on this matter, they chose to ignore it and said it was upto Bajaj Alliance to handle it. When the topic of forgery was raised, Bajaj Alliance people refused it right away and maintained that the correction was made by us. No person in his right mind would leave the first box empty and start writing from the second box. It was clearly visible that a whitener was used.

My dad was never going to give this up. He then wrote a letter to a higher official in Bajaj Alliance and the subordinates got a whip on their ass. They then offered us a Free Look Cancellation and close the matter, provided we paid Rs. 10,000 as their processing charges. We were given an option to pay for no fault of ours.

Since this was a matter of fraud and forgery, Bajaj Alliance then came up with a proposal that they could insure a sum of 5 times the premium ie Rs. 1.25 lacs. This was because by the time all this happened, the market had gone down and recession had hit. We were in no mood to accept anything less than what was in the initial brouchure.

All this pain, agony and discussion went for over 18 months and Bajaj Alliance had no signs of a compromise without even fearing their credibility of this matter became public. Finally, my Dad contacted a very senior official of the bank and reported the matter to him. The official then took personal interest and discussed the matter with the subordinate-to-CEO of Bajaj Alliance. The application was then sent to forensic laboratory for handwriting verification.

Bingo! The forensic lab gave a report in our favor. Handwriting verification report proved that the signature was forged and Bajaj Alliance had to surrender. Finally, a few days back we recieved a policy for the full sum insured of Rs. 2.5 Lacs and an email from Bajaj Alliance with the subject “Suspected Scam”.

This is a lesson for the future for us and everyone who would like have a deal with Bajaj Alliance. Atlast truth prevailed.

HowTo: Automate start and stop BSNL router in Linux

BSNL is the culprit of spreading insomnia(sleeplessness) among young India. In other words, the happy hours of BSNL free download is scheduled from 0200 hrs to 0800 hrs which results in people staying awake early in the morning and missing out on the essential sleep. This is when automation tools and schedulers come to picture.

This guide basically does you want to do at 0200 hrs and 0800 hrs with a BSNL broadband connection. This works only if your modem is configured in the bridge mode and not in the PPPoE mode, assuming most of you have port-forwarding enabled for higher download speeds which by default needs bridge mode.

OK, here we go. At 0200 hrs -

• You want to start the internet connection
• You want to reset your IP
• You want to start your torrent client

and at 0800 hrs -

• You want to stop the internet connection
• You want to stop your torrent client

At a point when you are about to sleep, turn off the internet connection with this command in the terminal:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking stop

Now, start your torrent client and enable all downloads. The downloads will not begin since your internet is off. Remember your modem is still ON.

The main task here is to switch on the internet connection at 0200 hrs, and stop the connection at 0800 hrs and close all torrent clients and download managers. For this we use the inbuilt automation tool in Linux, cron. Open up the terminal and -

sudo crontab -e

Note that if you are running cron for the first time, it asks you to choose an editor. I strongly recommend you to use nano. Enter the following lines into the file -

05 02 * * * /etc/init.d/networking restart
55 07 * * * killall ktorrent deluge
55 07 * * * /etc/init.d/networking stop

Save and close the file. Here replace ktorrent or deluge with your favorite torrent client. Once this is done, your internet automatically restarts at 5 past 2 early morning, starts all your downloads and turns down the internet at 5 minutes to 8 and also closes down the torrent clients.

Now, you may ask how do I initially configure my internet connection in Bridge mode. Thats simple as well.

Open the terminal -

sudo pppoeconf

Follow on screen instructions, enter your BSNL username and password when asked and done, your connection is up and running and activates at every boot.

With this, you can now sleep tight. Good night.

PS: To automate stuff in the PPPoE mode, follow Madhusudan’s Guide.

Ever seen a Rs. 0 note?

Ever seen a Rs. 0 note? Here it is.

Rs. 500?

This is not a quota or a fake note. This is one hundred percent original currency which just popped out of an ATM near my house. This is an insult. Really!

That day, I had to lose 50 Rupees :-(

It was the last of my exams of the final semester of my Bachelor’s Degree, The Constitution of India and Professional Ethics. As usual the exam was at 1400 hrs and I left home by 1230hrs. My bike which would start off with a single kick even at 15 degree C, ceased to start even after several attempts/kicks, that too on a Hot summer afternoon.

Was this the indication of something bad at stake? I then pushed my bike for a fair amount of distance and tried my luck, but failed. Finally, I took the bike to a slope and as it gained momentum, I put it into gear and vrrrrom, it started. I was happy at that time, but wait. Did I ignore God’s warning about something bad which  was going to happen in few minutes time. I should have realised at this time, but I chose to ignore.

More than half the distance covered, and I smelt something fishy. I instantly stopped the bike to check my pocket only to know that I had forgotten the Hall Ticket. Now, I had two options. Firstly, proceed to the college and bribe the attender for a duplicate Hall Ticket. Secondly, head back home and get the Hall Ticket.

Since, it was the last exam, bribing for a Duplicate one would be of no use. The hall ticket was just another piece of paper after that afternoon. I still had 1 hour left for the exam to begin and I chose to head back home to collect the Hall ticket. I sped away, and reached home within 10 minutes, collected my Hall Ticket and again started towards college. At this point, I thought I had saved 50 Rupees for myself to drink fruit juice after exam

On my way back, I witnessed an accident in the opposite direction at the double road. Since, hall ticket was my main concern, I ignored had the accident. But on my way back, a number of traffic policemen had already gathered at the accident spot, clearing away the crowd and making way for the Ambulance.

To my bad luck, one of the Policeman happened to come in my way and I had to slowdown without any other alternative. He, taking advantage of my speed, stopped me and asked me for the Vehicle Documents. Just at this moment I realised that I had my Driving License and Insurance, but the emission certificate had expired a week ago and it had escaped my mind since I had my exams for the past week.

The policeman demanded 300 Rupees as penalty. I pretended to have no money with me. Then he asked me to give away whatever I had. I had a 50 Rupee note in my right pocket and a 20 Rupee note in my left pocket. At that moment, I took out the 50 Rupee note instead of the 20 one, again my bad luck. He snatched it right away and let me go

So, that day, just as I thought I had saved 50 Rupees, I lost it in a few minutes time. If I had not ignored the warning of God, when my bike failed to start at the first kick, I would had my fruit juice that evening. But as they say, if its in the fate, it has to happen.