Pune Times

When I was leaving US for good half a year ago, my Indian friends there asked me where I was going. Learning about Pune, all of them told me that Pune is a good place to work and live. We arrived in Pune with a mix of skepticism and optimism in equal proportions. Skeptic about the good things we heard and the amount of truth in them, and optimistic, believing an age-old Bengali proverb.

It was late May, so the city was literally scorching with a temperature of around 40 C. I had an idea that the Pune summer is very pleasant, but first-hand experience proved something else. The heat was like that of US Midwest-without humidity, and hence, without perspiration, but very difficult for going outside. The heat will burn the skin and cause irritation. In order to protect the skin, the people were dressed strangely. Their faces were covered entirely except their eyes. They had a strong resemblance with the Maoists, as we saw their pictures in the newspapers of Kolkata.  Almost all the women we saw had the same appearance.  The percentage of Maoist-looking men, however, was much less.

 The number of two-wheelers in Pune is huge. Almost everyone has a scooter or a motorcycle, or at worst, a Scooty. Previously, I thought that Scooty was strictly for women in India (just like VW Beatle is for US women). But here, men happily ride on a Scooty, and nobody bothers about it. Unofficially, Pune is known as the “two-wheeler capital” of India.

Being new, we did not have a cell phone connection. Nowadays, life is incomplete without a cell phone, but we thought that just like Kolkata, we’ll see STD booths all around and hence will manage till we get a connection. But we were proved wrong. Combing a radius of 3 kms around my office, we did not find a single STD booth! We were informed that STD booths are extinct in the city, and an elderly realtor said, “Booth kahan milega aapko? Jabse woh cellphone wali bhrastachar aayi hai, boothon ki zaroorat kya hai”?  (Booths are nowhere. The “rotten” cell phone came, so the booths are no longer needed). We were stunned! This was really unexpected. But help came from a security guard. He gave us his cell phone for talking purpose. I haven’t seen such a friendly and jolly security guard before.

In my brief encounter of six months so far, I found that the Puneites are a friendly lot. They will help you without any vested interest. Communication with them is not a problem. Usually, they start a conversation in Marathi, but happily switch to Hindi or English on request. This is unlike the South Indians, who pretend to know only two languages: Tamil and Silence (I have been to Chennai twice and the experience is not that good). During our initial setup period, we got a lot of help from the people around our residential society. In general, they are good people, devoid of petty dishonesties.

Unlike Kolkata, every grocery store in Pune is a “Super Shoppe” (I don’t know why they put the extra “pe”, because they do not have the charm or quaintness which an authentic Shoppe should provide), named after the owner (Mahesh Super Shoppe, Manju Super Shoppe etc). Apart from the usual stationary items, each one of these “shoppe” sells vegetables. However, the price of vegetables in the “shoppe” is higher than the market prices. Initially, we did not know that and paid high prices. The first time I bought rice in Pune from a shoppe took me Rs. 60 a kilo, while the market price was Rs. 36.

Pune shopkeepers do not like bargaining. In Kolkata, we are used to this practice. Even a reduction of Rs. 5 from the asked amount is a victory from the customer’s point of view in Kolkata. But here, bargaining is a strict no-no, except maybe with a fishmonger. The person from whom I buy fish sometimes gives some reduction, mostly to round up the amount (Rs. 870 reduced to Rs. 800, for example). But he is a character and needs detailed cultivation (according to our beloved Mr. Jatayu). May be I’ll write a post about him later.

It is not possible to dwell upon all the characteristics of Pune in a single post. So I am planning to write some posts covering various features of the city. The opinions will be based on my experiences and my feelings. The only thing which I can tell with certainty right now is that my initial skepticism has largely reduced and the amount of optimism is growing gradually. Let me see what lies ahead of this journey.