Musings

I came across two 'Wagle worlds' in my younger and not so younger days. The first was inhabited by a septuagenarian couple, and the latter was a potpourri of several characters -- predominantly female and ably supported by a dog and a goat. The Wagle couple lived in a bylane off Ghole Road, in a quaint, squat bungalow. Bungalows like theirs were quintessential Ghole Road. It had a small patch of garden in the front and an assortment of flowering plants in pots (kundis) neatly arranged on the veranda. The compound had a wicket gate and a cobbled pathway of tiles led up to the veranda These were houses that were built for 'personal consumption' and had all the moods and trappings of 'personal taste'. No fancy Carrera marble, no lavish driveways, no French gardens and other displays of grandiose shrieked for attention. No, houses like these were imperfect in design and possibly had a kitschy mix of unrelated bric-a-brac, but they housed a fierce sense of being root...

What else can I recollect about Pune 4? Its arterial roads--those deadly, pock-marked, asphalt stretches--unusable after every monsoon? Its snarling and angry traffic? The rush hour for bakarwadi outside Chitale? Sambar at Vaishali? Strangers alerting you with "aho shook shook" (excuse me)? Maybe all this and something else, which quintessentially carries a sense of the place. Something old-world and slightly worn out like a favorite 'waati' (steel bowl). Pock-marked with dents and slightly lusterless from use, but creates a sense of belonging. Pune 4 is a virtual Pandora's box. It throws up a lot of the past, and if you are not especially alert can well mix it up with the present. It is as much a place as a sense of it. I lived in a Pune 4 that was steeped in bourgeois sensibilities. One studied, worked, married, procreated and did all the 'right' things because that was what was expected. Of course this is not to preclude the flames of individuality that...

So picking up from where we stopped earlier -- Balgandharva and its vicinity.  Back then, you could catch a magnificent sunset over the Mutha which flows behind Balgandharva. This lissome snake hurries along to meet her twin Mula.  Watching Omkareshwar (popular Shiva temple) across the river as its resident crows settle in noisily and bats make way for them can be a moment of awakening, not only in a metaphysical sense, but surrealistically speaking as well.  Of course, this is a treat from the past.  Today, both rivers have been reduced to veritable gutters clogged with plastic and other rubbish that the city so uncaringly dumps in them.  If you are brave enough to ignore the stench and venture close to the river bank, be prepared to be sucked into a quagmire of detritus of the most unsavory sorts. The sorry state of affairs has of course come to pass over several years of misuse and disrespect. And it will take as many if not more to (hopefully) reverse the sc...