Good Auld Pune

Christmas in Pune is like getting sucked into the vortex of a whirlpool. I’ve come up for a breath and a quick post before I get sucked in again, not surfacing till the fourth day of the New Year… at least.
At times it is like a never-ending party. At times, a moment of zen, and at times, like good ‘ol Pune.
The city is growing at the speed of thought, changing in ways that are more than noticeable. Yet beneath it all lies the heart and soul of a town that just refuses to grow up. Thank God.

A Pune Christmas

Pune Camp was as cosmopolitan as it got till the 1990s. You had Muslim butchers who openly supported the Pakistani cricket team. You had Iranians, Palestinians and Africans who claimed streets for their own. You had the Brahmins who sneered at cow-eaters and cheered during Ganpati. You had Parsis, who baked bread and ran restaurants. And you had the Christians. Who went carol singing during Christmas like it was the most natural thing to do. The thing was… it was.
That’s what made a Pune Christmas beautiful.
And every carol singing troupe must surely start with this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stEjTFMb940

I remember when...

I was schooled in the art of housekeeping – call it urban husbandry actually. Going to the market, butcher, post-office, all require a certain ‘nous’ in a small city; especially if this is to be accomplished on a specific budget with no compromise on quality.
Now I find I can pretty much conduct my entire life via the internet. Though essential shopping online is nothing new, it has only recently entered the realm of my existence and therefore, bought into play the nostalgia of cycling around Poona getting home jobs done.
Online for convenience, but real time for experience.

City that's made

In CP Surendran’s (editor, Times of India, Pune,) preface to his book Iron Harvest (now a bit old, but just read by me), he refers to Pune as – ‘a city on the make’.
I always claim injunction against such patronizing descriptions of my hometown. So I set about thinking whether Pune was in fact on the make, or, was it made? Mumbai, for example, is never on the make, because it’s always on the take.
It’s a matter of perspective. Money-wise, perhaps, Pune lags. In every other aspect though, it’s pretty much made. If only Pune realized that.

Detroit - Pune of the West?

The Times of India branded Pune some years ago – Detroit of the East. It was despicable branding. Why was the West needed as a reference point? Puneites had already been basking in the pseudo-sobriquet ‘Oxford of the East’ for years.
It’ll be interesting to see now if Pune does indeed, go the Detroit way. GM, Ford and Chrysler are fighting for funding to stay alive. How are Telco, Bajaj and Kinetic going to survive the crisis? And what of Pune’s DaimlerChrysler plant?
India has, so far, adroitly handled the crisis. But I sense the worst is yet to come.