Spotting a Lamby

Forget Harley-Davidsons cruising in India. Recently, I was surprised to spot the good old Lambretta in San Jose (CA). A few weeks ago, as I was leaving work, I chanced on this scooter standing out in the midst of the Harleys and the Kawasakis. I wasn’t sure if it was the Indian version, until the owner landed. He confirmed that this was indeed an Indian version of the Lamby (a relatively recent one) and he had it shipped from Lucknow. Had a brief chat with him and he was more than eager to share information about shops around the SF Bay area that specialize in restoring vintage Italian scooters. According to him, these Lambrettas are hot property. So, if your dad’s still lying around, save them.

Lambreattas, are supposedly common sight in San Francisco. Am not sure if that holds for Madras, where we grew up learning to ride two-wheelers with these scooters. Of course, that was the time before the Hero Honda and Bajaj Kawasaki changed the face of two-wheelers in India.

More pictures here.

Obama’s apology

Presidential hopeful Barrak Obama has offered an apology for criticising Hillary Clinton’s “India connection”. That should have closed the door on any doubts about Obama camp’s India perspective, but something he said in the past doesn’t make this latest aberration go away. In an emotional address, earlier, he had equated the Virginia Tech massacre to outsourcing.

“There’s also another kind of violence that we’re going to have to think about. It’s not necessarily the physical violence, but the violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways,” he said, and goes on to catalogue other forms of “violence.”

There’s the “verbal violence” of Imus.

There’s “the violence of men and women who have worked all their lives and suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them because their job is moved to another country.”