You wake up from your shallow slumber, thanks to the sudden hollering of the bus conductor - He is that short guy with a loud voice who sits beside the bus driver, and could easily win salesman of the year for selling his bus seats to prospects looking for a ride to Pune. And we all know that if he pushes himself anymore he can even sell sand to the Arabs, forget about that lone seat to a guy who is already tired of waiting for another alternative! So, you hear this guy yelling out “Wakad junction; chalo, wakad junction” loudly, as if he’s addressing a bunch of deaf people. Soon, he drops you at your destination, and you find yourself swarmed by a congregation of Rickshaw drivers wanting to take over your wallet and drop you wherever you want, for as much money as they want! Welcome to Pune – the city of the conservative cosmopolitans.
After living here for a little more than a year I have come to realize that there is something about this city that no adjective in the dictionary can describe. Well, for starters, I would have looked for words like vibrant, urban, uptown, rich, well-planned, civic, cosmopolitan etc. but if you’ve lived in Pune, you will agree that none of these words wholly describe the city and her soul. Needless to say, that all of those words and many more would fit very easily in to a book called “Me Punekar”, if someone were to literally write it, that is. But, if I were to tell you about the city as such, I would merely be talking about the good weather, Student population, Urbanisation etc. Whereas, if you ask me about Bombay – then I would go - The Newyork of the east, or hey, that’s one place that never sleeps, or that’s where Amitabh became Big B.. yada yada. Pune, on the other hand is like a shadow of a metro, mostly. It’s that place where at least one person you know or have known at some point in your life, has studied at, and/or graduated from. According to Wikipedia and some 5th standard geography textbooks Pune is the 7th metro city in India. But the way I look at it, Pune is a city that’s stuck somewhere between a large village and a metro. It's one of those cities that grew bigger and bigger from a village and ultimately ended up as a town city – but obviously, the social infrastructure, business environment, real estate costs, etc have all made Pune a metro among other metros.
Unlike Mumbai, or Delhi, Pune’s culture is more conservative and people more cultured if I can safely say that. But at the same time, a large number of migrants living here make it a fairly cosmopolitan culture encouraging different art festivals, events, cuisines, movies from around the world. That, along with your friends who are living here, makes this place somewhat exciting, but not as exciting as Goa, obviously. Here are some things that will not miss your observation, considering you spend enough time here, and are not too drunk or stoned to notice them.
1) Rickshaws on the footpath – I have been told that this is the main reason Pune will not make it to the 50 best walking cities in the world surveyed by the International Podiatric Medical Association! Now, how can they list us, when a) we dont have too many footpaths, and b) the few existing ones are used as parking space for 6 seater tum-tum rickshaws.
2) Sunbathing in the summer – The statement, “you shall burn in hell” is not much of a curse for the average punekar – because the average punekar knows that “burning in hell” can’t be worse than riding a bike in the Pune summer heat! Breaking News: Akshay kumar will be using sun bathing in Pune as one of the upcoming dare stunts in the next season of “khataron ke khiladi”. Wait for it; you will burn while watching it!
3) Driving manners – Mumbai is full of lousy Sunday drivers on a Sunday while, Pune is full of such Sunday drivers everyday. There are no traffic rules in Pune, unless a traffic cop is visible on the horizon. Driving on the wrong side of the road is a way of life, as much as bad parking or tripling on motor bikes is.
4) I have 2 hands, 2 legs, and 2 wheels – Imagine that Pune is this huge bee hive… then the myriad scooters and bikes would obviously be the bees, coming in from every direction. Fact is that Pune has more number of bikes than all of Mumbai’s vehicles put together. Keeping that in mind, Yash chopra is planning on making Dhoom 3 soon and most sequences are to be shot on Pune roads, because they won’t need extras for the group biker scenes, and almost every punekar looks better than Uday Chopra.
5) Ninjas on Bikes – If you haven’t noticed this sub-specie of humans that mostly likes to travels on bikes alone or in pairs, wearing masks and arm warmers - fully covered from face down to arms, and legs – then you seriously need to consider improving your observation by meditating or something. This rare specie of neo-humans is also known as a ninja, and is mainly found in and around Pune. There are rumours that some of them ninjas have migrated to Ahemdabad and Surat, thanks to similar heat conditions found in those cities. This hominid species evolved due to the unbearable rays of the sun and the effect it has on their fair, and lovely skin.
6) Road side celebration concerts and social events – Whether it is a wedding baraat, or Ganesh utsav, an unknown hindu festival, or simply some other occasion to celebrate, the punekar does it in style! Their recipe for celebration involves a road (any road, regardless of the ongoing traffic situation), a truck/ trailer, 10 big speakers that collectively make enough noise to send signals to intelligent life forms on the moon, and a DJ – and to this add a few hundred people frantically dancing on the road. And you have a full on concert, not just a Ganesh utsav visargan or durga puja! If you haven’t seen this, try visiting Pune during Gokulashtami, or durga puja and you will know how annoying noise pollution + uncontrolled traffic can get!
7) Rain that never pours cats and dogs - Pune serves a quivering environment for a calm & sober hopper but the rains play very little role in this. Since, here it's never going to rain like it did in “The Day After Tomorrow.” Unlike Cherapungi, Pune’s rain mostly seems scanty or such that it will rain heavily for a few minutes, and then steady down to a drizzle, but this drizzle which will stay long enough to get you wet like Shahrukh khan in a love song from a Kjo movie.
8) Customer is not god, only human – Like most other tier II cities, Pune too is very low on customer service. Whether it be a semi posh restaurant, or your regular paan walla, the management won’t bend their rules to wow you. So what if you are a customer, after all you are human too, just like everyone else. The only saving grace is that atleast they don’t shut shop during the afternoons for their private naps, the way gujjus in most of Gujarat do.
9) Thank family & neighbour it’s Friday – Life rapidly changes the moment the weekend kicks in! No restaurant, mall, theatre, or park is found empty from Friday night onwards all the way till Sunday! Weekend is all about foot fall in Pune primarily because the Punekar likes to hangout in groups. I mean large groups. Even for an ordinary outing to a mall, He likes to take his wife, kids, wife’s sister & her husband and their kids, and sometimes the parents and neighbours too!
10) Bakeries by the dozen – Yes yes, I know you thought of the terrorising german bakery blast! But hey, that’s not the only bakery in Pune. Almost every street has a couple of bakeries and they all sell the same stuff! For instance, there is a ‘Poona bakery’, and then there is also ‘New Poona bakery’! Try it, and enjoy the similarity!
