And it’s lights out and away we go with the 2020 tgp experience! And on we go into March 2020 and the trickiest month of the year, catching a load of people off guard with its strange timeline. Governments issuing multiple 2 week long lockdowns, with India’s speedy response to the situation trying to control the spread of the virus. And the introduction of the school’s new magazine for the 2020-21 year, The Green Pages, offering people who had interest in a field to write about things they were passionate about.
I heard about TGP needing somebody to write about cars and motorsport for a column. The audition article I wrote was about the most innovative thing at the time, the release of the
Koenigsegg Gemera, in the 2020 Geneva Autoshow. I found that writing just that small 200 word article gave me a sensation of peace i hadn’t felt in a long time. I found that writing about the technical and historical aspects of cars to be soothing. The ability to use an outlet to write about something I was passionate about was something I had never had. I found it to be a way for me to change up my boring monotonous life in quarantine. The first official article I ever published was for the “Credendum” issue. Having never heard that word before, I had to find out its meaning and correlate it to my column somehow. I wrote about Porsche as a brand and the fans around it that value tradition, heritage and the driving experience over specs like top speed, accelerations and lap times. I found that relating such unique words to cars took a lot more effort than i thought before. The second article I wrote was for the “Origins” issue of the magazine. I took this opportunity to talk about the history and the origins of my favorite car company, Lamborghini, and what makes their cars so special.
The third article I ever wrote was for the “what moves you” issue and is probably my favorite one. I wrote about what got me into cars in the first place and why I find comfort in writing about them in the magazine in the first place. Analysing and talking about why I’m passionate about my passion caused me to go back in time to the early years of my life. It made me nostalgic and involved a lot of well-needed self-introspection. I talked about my PS2 games and the cars that so greatly affected my outlook on cars.
My fifth article for the issue “crossing the line” involved me talking about a controversy that happened at the time, the Racing Point team in F1 being under review for copying parts from Mercedes. The change from analytical articles to current articles involved me to change my writing style drastically. I found that this article involved the biggest change in my normal writing style in order to write.
The seventh article I wrote was for the “metamorphosis” issue of TGP. As usual, I offered the backstory to Tesla but for the first time I talked about the future of electric cars and, more
importantly, the impact of Tesla on the EV market as a whole. Since I had to talk about the future of EVs in the future, I had to give my own personal opinions for the first time and speculate from my point of view.
The eight article I wrote was in collaboration with Gagan N Bangaragiri, my successor in TGP for the automotive column. The collaboration was for the “People that inspire” issue. The person we’d chosen was Ayrton Senna, arguable the greatest driver to ever race in F1. The article offered me insights into other people’s writing styles and taught me how to improve my own. I also learnt how to try to compliment another person’s writing style and try to bring out the best of the article as a whole. Senna is the inspiration for both me and Gagan, and this joint passion and admiration was seen in the article and caused it to become my second favorite article ever. We offered insights into what made Senna’s rise so significant, a few of his most popular races, and his unfortunate demise in a fatal crash in Imola.
Writing for TGP was a great experience for me this year and it helped me in many aspects of life, from learning how to manage studying for school and writing, to learning how to refine my writing style, and to remind myself why I love cars in the first place. This year might have been different for most of us, but I’m grateful to have had writing for TGP as an outlet to find peace.
PS: good luck Gagan ;)
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