Pune - A Retrospection

(Dramatic title, no...?)
Had been to Pune recently, recently being a good 3-4 months back. Considering the procrastinator that I am, this post coming 3-4 months late ain't that bad.

It had been more than a year since I had left Pune now. And I had run out of excuses for not coming back to meet my friends. And so began my nostalgia tour, on a hot mumbai morning, to the city where the number of two wheelers is matched only by the number of potholes on the roads, or even beaten.

After 12 long months I would be reunited with Neeta. How would she react to my ignoring her for so long, would she have lured some other guy with that thing that she did on the curves, with that sound she made in the tunnels, on the Expressway, did she still have those racks where I put my stuff if there wasn't enough space below, would she still charge only 200 bucks for that 4 hour long titillating ride she took you on, would those seats of hers still recline all the way back, did she still stop at Foodmall for petrol (Rama you won't understand what I feel for her). How else could I have reminisced. Part of my memories attached with Pune revolved around the round trips to Mumbai and back. Those movies you had no intention of watching otherwise (), the paneer franky at Food Mall, listening to The Gathering's 'How to measure a planet' (which coincidentally I was listening to for most of the time I was writing this ), the Expressway itself, during the rains, that chic with the tattoos and piercings who used to sit next to me most of the times (I made that up, ...not to fool you, but myself). I have always fantasized about a chic next to me on those innumerable trips. And when finally that did happen, I was so fcuked up that I was having trouble just trying to keep my teeth from chattering, forget talking to the female. You see on one of my earlier trips I had chosen to wear shorts and sit on that very seat just below the A/C duct which was broken and was now a gaping hole through which flowed the frostiest of air. Still I did manage to blurt out things like, "so... You work in Pune?", "which college you from?", "oh! You're in HSBC, I have friends there" and other such small talk...

No such luck this time. That remake of the Amitabh starrer mafia flick, ironically starring his arch nemesis of the day, was playing.
The bus stopped at a different place this time, one I hadn't been to earlier, and I thought that by now I would know Pune in and out... Met up with my friends, had a bit of the ol' KFS.
Then in the evening met up with friends from Mumbai and went to Apache. This is an amazing place. Had been wanting to go there for a long time. It's this pub where they play Heavy Metal. Metalica, Megadeth, Maiden, Cradle Of Filth, Children Of Bodom, et al... And the usuals - SOAD, LP. Imagine any place in Bombay playing such music! Had some more KFS... Ok, a lot more... Chandni Chowk rocks! Had dinner and came back home (Anshu's place). Paid 3 times the normal rickshaw fare. You would have guessed that by now I assume, if you had not slept through my earlier posts. By the way, No Man's Land (the road outside Anshu's house) has been much improved. Almost one third of the stretch has tar now. And traveling through it doesn't give you that feeling of a thousand bulldozers ravaging your guts anymore.
Finally home, we tried to get some sleep in that nasty Pune cold, wrapping ourselves in curtains and old newspapers. Thats all there was left in his house since Anshu's brother left for B'lore.
Next day had breakfast at Satvik, where I had had 93.07% of my meals when I was staying there. For lunch, had a Cheesy Veg Burger With Cheese (deja vu?) and a Green Apple Fram at Pune's own Burger King. Hmm... Burger King... You need guts of steel and a stomach as big as the Serengeti crater, which sadly I am endowed with, to finish off a single burger there.

After that spleen-splitting, gut-busting lunch, the 3 of us (those friends from Bombay) combined had 55 bucks with us. Decided that I had reminisced enough and came back home in the good ol' ST (Service for Travellers or Tourists whatever, don't rack your brains, it’s a chhedanagar joke).

Not very eventful, but to me, quite nostalgic.

All my earlier rants about Pune notwithstanding there were quite a few things I did like or found out that I actually liked. Which brings me to the Retrospection part ;)
Some of the things I'll remember and some changes that staying there brought about:

• Staying alone for so long taught me how to enjoy absolute solitude (I had also started reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "100 Years of Solitude" :P ).


• Experienced Pune's rain. The air is so moist that fish could swim through it (where have I heard this before? Seriously if you have heard this earlier let me know where).


• I had food in a roadside Dhabba in the middle of nowhere on a National Highway at midnight, something I could never do in Bombay.


• Tasted German Bakery's "Herbal" *wink wink* Chai (Choi as a friend corrected).


• Paid a fortune each time for traveling.


• Celebrated my birthday with 20-30 total strangers.


• Found out that Pune surpasses Bombay by a huge margin in the number of good looking woman (a Pune friend argues that even though there quantity in Pune, for quality you have to come to Bombay... Hmm... I don't think any girl would be reading this, if you are, here's something for you... :P ).


• Was asked by a Rickshaw driver, why do I travel by rick and don't own a bike.


• Discovered the beauty of Anneke Von Giersbergen's voice.


• Made some good friends.


• Ate Continental food for the first time, and probably the last.


• Paid a fortune each time for traveling.


• Lost my virginity. Now that I have your attention, I'll continue...


• Learned to derive immense pleasure from staring at blank walls (when you'r living alone in an empty home with no TV or computer, definition of what's fun and what's normal takes a back seat).


• Went on long drives to distant Dams in the rain.


• Discovered the beauty of the Mumbai-Pune Expressway.


• Discovered the beauty of the Mumbai-Pune Expressway during the rains.


• Found out I am pretty good at bowling (I am not talking about cricket).


• Lived through Siddharth's and Neeraj's rash driving.


• Made a Tang flavoured Hukkah out of a Mc Ds milkshake cup.


• Mastered Sudoku, Kakuro and Loop the loop.


• Paid a fortune each time for traveling.


• Did'nt visit the Osho Ashram.


• Still didn't learn to ride a bike (I can't).


• Still didn't learn to speak in Marathi. Though I now know JAVA, UNIX, PL/SQL.


• And finally, paid a fortune each time for traveling.

Wasn't much of a Retrospection, but I just remembered the words of some wise old man : "Its not the destination that matters, its the journey that counts". True... (or is it... *single raised eyebrow*)

Part 1: Pune... the Beginning

Part 2: A Tale of two cities

Now Playing:

Track: All Tracks
Artist: The Gathering
Album: How to Measure a Planet?
Vaidu’s classification: Progressive/Ambient

A Tale of two cities

It was the worst of times... period.


(continued from my last post, i know its lame... but...)
You know you’re in trouble when you have to take 3 ricks to get to your work place, at times paying more that what the meter shows. You must have heard of half return rates at night (Bombay people please ignore), but what’s triple (or even quadruple) return!?!?!?! That’s how I used to travel in Pune, i.e. if I was lucky enough to find a rick that was ready to take me to where I wanted to go.

Just my luck, my training had been bangalored (can I use that...?) to CMC Ltd. And this place was in the middle of some industrial kind of area, again, far from my place (Anshu’s bro’s home – henceforth called Solace Park).

We were called (and still are called after one whole frigging year) ITPians ( Initial Training Programmeians :-/ ) and we had to go through Software Engineering Boot Camp - complete with having to take10-15 tests, score 50+% in each, get an aggregate of 60+%, not fail in more than 3 tests, clear any retests in just 1 more attempt, phew..., not cheat, not miss any trainings, etc etc... failing any of which we’d be thrown out. Well I lived through all this and almost topped my batch of fellow ITPians, without even having a PC at the Pune home (Take that TechM!). Does using a cyber café count?

We had to share the training centre with ILPians (Initial Learning Programmeians :-/, is the S/W industry creative or what!) from TCS. Finding out that CMC was an undertaking of TATA wasn’t much of a solace. Obviously the ILPians got the better training rooms (I am just saying that... :P) and better food (I am not just saying that). But we did get whatever was left after their lunch in the make shift canteen.

Found a few friends from college and school among the hordes of ILPians. That was kind of a relief till the day when they finished their training and left for Bombay... Now that was frustrating. I had a good 2 months of training left.

Yes, coming back to Solace Park, it was a great society, swimming pool et al. The only problem with the place was that it fell right in the middle of No man’s land, B.T. Kawade Road, forsaken by the PMC (Pune Municipal Corporation) and feared by the rickshaw-wallas. The excuse for a road outside, a good 1-2 Km stretch on either sides, was basically a bunch of potholes sewn together with a bit of gravel and tar. The place was called Ghorpadi Gaon (notice the Gaon). Right on the first day of training I was splashed with the dirtiest of muck on my way to the training centre, while waiting for a rick, of course. Sign of things to come? All 3 exits from BT Kawde Marg were reinforced with rails, railway tracks that is... All the frigging exits had railway crossings... (Calculate the probability of not having to wait at a particular crossing on a Monday morning for the Udyan Express)

Now I’ll tell you about my social life during those 2 months of training...

That’s about it.

My regular haunts were Satvik (the pure veg. hotel where I ate 93.07% of the time) just outside Solace Park and Worldwide Cybage (the cyber café at its side). Orkut zindabad for those 2 months. I couldn’t afford to stay out late and hope to get a rick back to Ghorpadi, for you see according to the rickshaw wallas the road (they still called it a road) was bad and they couldn’t get back any fares from Ghorpadi (ya right, people who live their sprout wings and fly, they don’t take ricks).

Coming to rickshaw wallas, they are nothing like the ones in Bombay. Outside Solace Park you could get 2 types of rickshaws - the normal ones and the BT Kawde Marg shuttles, the ones that operated only from one end of the road (see I m also calling it a road now, though it almost doesn’t resemble one) to the other. I once had to bribe a rick walla and pay double the amount just to get to the training centre on time for a test ( Rs.110 instead of the normal Rs. 55 :’( ), but at least he agreed to come... Coming back from the centre was much better, only a bus ride followed by wait for a rick or share rick back to Ghorpadi then another one to Ghorpadi Gaon (Gaon). You just mention Ghorpadi to the driver and he would do this maneuver with his face and finally say no anyways. The share rickshaws were truly brutal! They could take in as many passengers as the rickshaw walla could find. There was at least one time when I came in a rick with 7 other people plus the rick driver. Then I had to get down at ghorpadi after which there were a total of eleven people in the rick, ten passengers and the driver. All this in a normal rick. Maaan that’s brutal!!!

Finally back at home I would get back to my favourite pastime, listening to some music and staring at the wall. When you have no TV, no PC, no one to talk to, no nothing, this can be quite fun. Just blank walls to stare at. Then I also had the newspaper - sudoku, kakuro, loop the loop - till about 12 -1 at night. Most of the days I would skip dinner just because I didn’t feel like going out again (that’s why 93.07%)

During those times Neeta and Ambika were the only respite. I would see them everyday and eagerly wait for the weekend.

Thursday was the most awaited day. That was the day I would pack my bag for the weekend trip back to Bombay. And probably that was the only good thing about the whole deal. All the dirty laundry of the week neatly folded (I guess that’s the only thing my mom appreciates about me) stuffed into the Addition (written in the style of Adidas) bag and taken to the training centre the next day with certain amount of pride. And on Fridays at the end of the day, we (a friend from college who used to come back to Bombay every weekend too, and me) would make reservations for bus tickets and hurry to Ambika petrol pump where we got our Neeta Volvo bus (and you were thinking...?) back to Bombay.

The ride back was the most pleasurable experience of all, for lack of a better analogy, just like how you feel when you get to pee after having to hold for, say, two years... (ok I am not good at this, but you get the point). That’s when I fell in love with The Gathering’s album “How to Measure a Planet?”.

The ride back will be another post and soon too, hopefully...

The reverse of all this on Sundays... packing new clothes for the week ahead and stuff...

Then I would leave on Monday mornings back to the mundane sh*t and this continued in a vicious circle for 3 whole months... Friday evenings leave for Bombay, Monday mornings come back again.

Coming to think of it now, I feel I wasn’t staying in Pune and coming back to Bombay on the weekends. It was more like staying in Bombay and going to Pune during the weekdays... what say...?

Part 1: Pune... the Beginning

Part 3: Pune - A Retrospection

Pune... the Beginning

I was in Kerala when I got the confirmation and the location of my training (I had got into TechMahindra through campus placements). As expected I had Pune as my training centre. I was excited. Little did I know what was to follow. Of all the people in Mumbai, only the 5 selected from RAIT computer science were to be sent to Pune. Meaning I was the only guy...

As the joining date approached it dawned on me that I had to find a place to stay for 3 months in Pune..., alone. That’s when you have people helping you out... a cousin’s acquaintance’s uncle’s someone has a house in Pune, a neighbour’s sister-in-law has a house in central Pune, a someone’s someone has a flat somewhere etc... Obviously none of them was feasible, one as too far off, other was not free, blah blah.

Finally got a place which was like 5 mins from the office. I was told that it was an “out house”. That turned out to be too generous a description for the place.

I had a last resort though, Anshu’s bro’s house. Had been there last new year’s. so I got his house keys as backup or at least till I could find another place.

Finally after a lot of alcohol induced farewell hugs and we-all-miss-yous, the day arrived.

Neeta Volvo, 36 China town, Agalloch, Food Mall, and some ghats later we reached Pune, the city of 2-wheelers and masked women.

Got down at Karve road. My office was frigging 5 mins from the “out house”. The SNDT girls college was 3 mins from there. What more could you ask for?!?!

But when I got to the actual place turns out it was more like a godown. No light, no fan, hell, not even an attached bathroom and a threat of snakes and other wild creatures getting into the room at night.

That’s when Anshu’s bros home came to my rescue. It was a bit far from office, no... very far..., but was much better than hunting for a home for 3 months. Picked up my stuff and off we went to Ghorpadi...

What?

Ghorpadi is another tale... will write about it some other lazy afternoon in office when I am done with work; documentations, 2 line code changes and more documentations for the earlier documents.

Part 2: A Tale of two cities

Part 3: Pune - A Retrospection