Pune Diary

On the road home from college, I saw this board, stating:

This road is maintained and repaired by MSRDC.

Now don't get me wrong, we see these kinds of boards in Mumbai too, especially the new concrete ones. On several of these boards along Link road in the Western Suburbs, the BMC has pasted its own logo, because they claim that they have done the actual work. The new roads are much better than the old ones, and both these authorities are trying to claim the goodwill of the public.

Not so in Pune. This particular road - University road- is nothing to be proud of. It has portholes, the size of graves, and the metaphor in my opinion is entirely appropriate. The traffic is so bad that it can take up to 25 minutes for a distance of about 400m. Not bad considering the road has been narrowed down to less than 5m due to construction activity, which has already extended beyond its completion date. In short, this ain't no expressway.

This would raise the important question: why would MSRDC claim that it maintains this road, when it is clear that it does not?
Methinks that this board has been put up by the PMC rather than the MSRDC.
Let me explain. Pune has horrible roads. They are narrow, Unplanned, with an excessive share of two-wheeler traffic. The buses that run on them look so broken down & ill-maintained, that would not even be accepted in Sub-Saharan Africa. The portholes are so numerous that it is hard to figure out which is road, and which is a porthole. They would be an excellent training ground for WRC enthusiasts. A common joke in Pune goes thus: 'In the rest of the country, you drive on the left of the road. In Pune, You drive on what's left of the road.

So it's no wonder that the PMC has been facing a lot of flak, with the mayor even threatening to resign, if the roads were not repaired. Some Guy in the PMC must have realised that if there was a way to decrease the brick-bats, it could at least name the road that were not under its jurisdiction. It's like when we were kids. If some toy broke, we would say, "Don't blame me, he was playing with it"



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On the 7th of Sep, there was a small function to sing 'Vande Mataram' in my society. Now I live in a sort of old-age home, with a majority of the population over 60, so you can imagine that there was a lot of enthusiasm to celebrate it.
I happened to be wearing a crème coloured T-shirt and my brown coloured Shikari Shambu shorts. Some one cold have easily described me as a cross between Jeff Corwin and a RSS volunteer. Further more I was the only fellow below the age of 30. So it was no wonder that people were looking at me with wonderment.
A large tricolour was attached behind the podium, and there were speeches noting the history of the song. Before we sang the song, it was announced that keeping the sentiments of certain people in view, only the first and accepted verse would be sung. The Old Timers were visibly dejected. Further more the anchor explained, that the song would be sung to the original tune. The Old Timers smiled.
Then people began to sing. I haven't heard such an out of tune, inharmonious song before. People were singing it on their own tune, at their own speed; it was total cacophony.

But it's the though that counts.