Bejeweled

A highly ornate BMW diesel auto-rickshaw that was stuck in the slow moving traffic in front of the non-branded rickshaw I was travelling in triggered off the amusement button in my head today. Amusing though it might have been for me at that instant, it sure would not have been so for the car owner who would have suffered the loss of his precious car emblem. I could almost picture him somewhere  in a posh Pune suburban villa, wringing his artificially re-grown crown of pitch black hair in angst, possibly at an emblem’s distance away from sanity altogether...

Car logo thieves are frenziedly spreading brand equality all across the country nowadays. A slice of ‘have-ism’ gouged out and blatantly plastered across the foreheads of the have-nots. To anybody who asks ‘What’s in a logo?’ the answer would be ‘a whole lot!’ because that’s apparently what the ubiquitous mafia-like body that is involved in this ignoble art across the length and breadth of this nation suggests. One cannot even fathom the complexity of the microeconomics involved.  

Hordes of branded cars that are becoming de-branded and stripped of their esteemed emblems and logos day by day are only becoming outnumbered by the ravishingly ‘branded’ line of taxi-cabs, rickshaws and bicycles that are turning up bejeweled on the streets every other day. 

It's a weird thought, and a weirder sight. Wonder what's next... 

 Pic courtesy: www.motoringme.com