Dec 13, 2006 11:14 PM
8813 Views
If you want to see the most cliche-ridden writing in Indian journalism, read car and bike magazines. If you value good writing, you won't read another. If you value clear thinking, you'll throw up.
I made the mistake of buying two issues of Bike India magazine because I wanted to buy a 150cc bike. The November issue contained a review of the Hero Honda CBZ Xtreme: when I'd finished reading the article I was more confused than ever, because the article contained so many internal inconsistencies (different top speeds in different parts of the same article!, for instance). The December issue contained a "slugfest" (I am not sure if this an even where bikers slug each other with bikes, or bikes with each other, or readers with all the crap they can lay their hands on) amongst four 150cc bikes, and found even more confusion because they couldn't find a best bike: the Bajaj Pulsar and the Xtreme tied for first place. But according to the same article, the Pulsar performs better, handles better, has lots more goodies, and is cheaper. How could the bikes tie, then?
Then I found they'd got the prices wrong. On-The-Road (OTR) prices in Pune are listed in the feature, and the Xtreme is the most expensive. When I went to the dealers, however, I discovered that the Pulsar is about five per cent more expensive than the Xtreme, so the people who wrote that article obviously didn't know what they were talking about.
Reading magazines like this is worthwhile only if you want to see pictures of foreign bikes at shows, and read semi-literate and ill-researched reviews of some of these. You could also see pictures and read more semi-literate articles on somebody going around the country on a bike. But if you yourself want to take a long ride, the best thing to do would be to burn the magazine and take the ride anyway.
