Old Pune City Culture Walk

Cultural Tour Of Pune (old city, pre 1750), conducted by ChaloWalks

Tour description by Maya Tate

I had a great experience on my tour of the Culture of Pune, lead by Mr. Rashid Ali. Right off the bat, you can tell this will be quite an interesting experience. Although, he says, Pune is not the biggest tourist destination, it has got quite a lot of culture hidden between forests of cement. He explains that as he gives the details and the (religious) backgrounds of the places, he is quite willing to acknowledge other explanations given by the tour group. After a short car ride, we arrive at our first stop, the Junglee Maharaj Temple. This temple is the final resting place of Junglee Maharaj. It also contains a box with his footprints embedded in it. To give you an idea of the story behind him, but without spoiling the fun of listening to the story from an experienced mouth, I will give you a timeline of sorts. Junglee Maharaj was a huge man, 7 feet tall, and an imposing figure. Through penances, he had attained special powers. He would use these extraordinary powers to cause mischief. People would scatter in his path. Then, one day, he saw a sage he thought to be an ideal target for his tricks. However, no matter how hard he tried, he could not do anything to the sage. The sage turned, and Junglee realized the sage was of a much higher spiritual level than he. He asked the sage how he had avoided these tricks, and the calm sage turned and told him not to use his powers for mischief. Junglee then went and meditated in the jungle in which the temple now stands. When he came out, he was called Junglee Maharaj. Do you know the reason people ring a bell when they go into a temple? Take a guess! Mr. Ali will be sure to ask you.

Second stop, the Pataleshwar Caves. This is really a temple inside of ancient caves. The Pataleshwar Caves are a huge, cavernous space, all hand chiseled out of the igneous rock that forms the Deccan plateau. The inside of the temple is a bit smoky from all the sweet smelling incense. Make sure you see each and every room, because there are some pretty darn amazing idols inside! There really isn't much more culture that I can explain without screwing up your brain for good, so I'll leave that job to Mr. Ali.

Next, we took rickshaws to Kumbharwada, a charming little potters village. The village, Rashid will point out, is quite safe. The people there love pictures of themselves and their children, however, do NOT take pictures of the washerwomen. Don't. Anyways, it was quite an amazing experience. Mr. Ali knows the names of almost all the villagers, and he will introduce them to you when he is showing you their work. Be sure to pay attention to the evidence of Muslims and Hindus living harmoniously together which Mr. Ali will point out, as it is a contrast to what one reads about India. There are stacks on stacks of pots, fired, and some of them painted. One woman was putting a sort of whitener, made of Plaster of Paris, tree gum and water, on little Lakshmi figurines. In another place, we saw a woman that had to make, whiten, and hand paint 10,000 of those figurines by the end of the next month! Alone! She was very kind and courteous, and spoke excellent English. We continued walking for a bit, taking a good many pictures, and then we were off to our next stop, the Idol Makers.

The Idol Makers make some darn impressive statues and idols, particularly of Lord Ganesh. They can be Huge, or they can be small. They are all made in molds, then hand painted in a rather stinky smelling but glossy finishing paint. If you look carefully, you will notice that one of Ganesha’s tusks is always broken. Ask, and perhaps Mr. Ali will tell you the story. One shop in particular has hundreds of statues, huge and small(ish). The owners are a charming family of about 6, but they do not speak much English. Take a moment to look around and admire their handiwork, because you will soon be leaving to another destination...

A local street market! Again, do not take pictures of any of these people. You will walk down a huge road filled to the brim with fruits and vegetables that shine like jewels in the sun. Mr. Ali may ask if any of you are Veg. If you are, or if you are squeamish, I would recommend speaking up, because you may go to a meat shop. All I will say is, it’s quite cool, but.... well, I’ll let you discover that particular part on you own. Heh. Well, take it all in, and don't strain your ears too much, because there is a noisy treat in store for you.

Welcome to: The Tambat Agli Metalworkers Village! Tambat means copper, but there is aluminum and steel work as well as bronze and brass, alloys of copper.This village is quite the noisy one, as one might expect. Rashid will most likely point out one particular worker, who has the fastest and neatest of hits on the pots he makes. The metalworkers hit the pattern on to the pot on an iron pole of sorts, so that the pattern hits itself at itself, in a way.The pots themselves are beautiful, not to mention the handiwork that they make. He will probably show you how they are made. It is quite interesting. A sheet of heated copper is put on a metal lathe, then pushed against a mould with a stick. It is then taken off, and a pattern is hit onto it. One particular man makes a type of hit on the pots that only 5 people in all of Poona can do. He, says Mr. Ali, is the master metalworker. If you get to visit his shop, I suggest possibly buying something. I myself bought a little trinket box, just because of the hit work on it. The guy is really a nice, kind, jolly fellow, and if I knew Marathi, I would probably be able to say a lot more about him. In his office, if you did happen to buy anything, are some pictures of things he worked on or made, like a fountain, and a Ganpati Crown. At this point, I, being younger than everyone else by a good many years, was beginning to get quite tired. My happiness was quite fading. However, Mr. Ali cheered me up for the time being with a delicious cookie/bar/cracker/brownie that Jan Ali made. Mmmm. Well, after some more time admiring the work, (and one or two more brownies), we finally left for our next stop, a wada, or mansion.

There isn't much to write about this, because you are not allowed to enter. I don't even know who owned it. In the entrance, a little ways back, you will see a wooden structure. This, I believe, is the family temple. Look closely, and you might see the family crest(?) on the entrance of the temple. It is quite a nice one. Also on the grounds, but that requires a little more hard viewing, you will notice that there is an apartment building. This, I thought was just a bit funny. Anyways, we are moving on to our last stop, the Kusbapeth Ganesh Temple.

The Kusbapet Ganesh Temple was the first temple to be built in Pune. The story goes as such: When Shivaji was a little boy, he was living at Lalbaug, with his mother, Queen Jijabai. One day, Queen Jijabai noticed that some herders were doing puja to a rock. When she asked why, they replied that it looked like a Ganpati. She was impressed with their dedication, and so ordered a temple built on that spot so that they could do puja properly. It is also the start of the Ganpati Procession. The rock looked a bit like a shapeless lump, no offense, although they had painted it and enhanced it to look a little more Ganesh – like. It's almost a bit like the eggplant seeds and toast that look like “Jesus”. But still, quite an interesting story, and a beautiful temple. Unfortunately, no pictures allowed!

It was at this point that Mr. Ali and we decided to end the tour. We had asked so many questions and talked so long with so many people that we had run out of time. Plus,I was getting very tired, and he had to go pick up his daughter from school. We did not get to see the Tulshibaug Market and Ram Temple, which I had seen on another occasion. In all, I had a great time! Thanks Rashid, and have a great time to any one who goes on the tour!

Maya (12)

Cupertino, CA, USA and Aundh Camp, Pune

The ABCD's Revenge

I just found this, I'd written it in 1995.

We've all heard at least a part of the full form of the somewhat derogatory term "ABCD" used by Indian immigrants to refer to the offspring of the previous generation of immigrants. I have found this version: 

American Born Confused Desi

Emigrant Family Gujarat

Hotel In Jersey

Keeping Lotsa Motels

Named Often Patel

Quickly Reaches Success

Through Underhanded Vicious Ways;

Xenophobic, Yet Zealous

In loving response to which, we have DCBA – Desi Confused By America. I've extended it to

The ABCD's revenge (To the tune of The Spam-Strangled Banner)

ZYX, WVUT, SRQP, ONML, KJIH, GFE, DCBA

Zindagi Yahan X-iled –

Without Voman Until Today,

Slyly Reading Quality Pondies
Of Naked Masturbating Ladies.

Knowing Just Indians Here,

Graduated From Engineering,

Desi Confused By America.

MY FAMILY IS OTHER ANIMALS

MY FAMILY IS OTHER ANIMALS, AND SO CAN YOU!

The resort sits on the eastern side near the end of a south-tending peninsula, which defines a shallow bay north of the Konķaɳ. The cottages are dispersed in a eucalyptus grove in a hollow somewhat protected from the mid-day sun. The grove looks very alluring when you get there in the middle of the day, only later do you recall the deathliness of eucalyptus outside Australia. Its fresh leaves provide no sustenance, the fallen ones allow no plant or tree of any other kind to grow, the straight trunks provide no foliage cover till about 10' high. No birds nest in its branches, there is no animal life, no plants, not even grass. No Indian butterflies have use for it and not many monarchs migrate from Mexico to Maharashtra. Its wood is useless as building material, seeing use not even for scaffolding. However, we see village women who collect the fallen leaves in giant baskets and carry them off - to burn them and then to spread the ashes on the rice fields. This exposes the incipient runnels down the hillside and the footpaths – you can imagine them eroded to deep gorges in a few years time.

The restaurant is on a promontory and overlooks the bay, with its skeletons of dying mangroves. The last bit of the footpath leading to the restaurant consists of crushed shells that glow white in the moonlight. The surrounding hillside is littered – Minute Maid (TM) juice boxes, plastic Bisleri (TM) and Aquafina (TM) water bottles, the ubiquitous plastic bags. 

As we sat for lunch, a few stray dogs and a stray cat came around. The cat, after miaowing from under the tables, came on to the table. In an effort to impress us, the head waiter, Krishna, an immigrant from the Nepali foothills, came charging out with a broken wooden table leg and thwacked one of the dogs, who took off yelping. Another dog limping around we had already noticed keeping its distance. A waiter grabbed the cat, dangling her 20 tense, sharp points out by her tail at arm's length. Krishna took a swing at her and missed, but Maya, our 6 year old, born and brought up in the US, saw him and started bawling, “What are they going to do to her?”, terrified for the animals. In turn, Elsa, her younger sister started crying for Maya. While their mom tried to calm the two of them, my sister, protector of nieces as well as of stray cats, jumped up infuriated and started berating the waiters. The Indian nieces and nephews – immune perhaps to displays of violence towards animals – sat unfazed through the whole thing, even the 3 year old, who looked mystified at her older cousin's upset.

After that, at least in our presence the waiters left the animals alone. Our one felinophobic cousin left the next day, and the rest of us accustomed ourselves to the animals, mostly ignoring them, except for my sister, who talks to the cat; and Elsa, one and half years old, who squeals, warbles and trills and bobs her head while making calling gestures with her hands, almost throwing herself out of my arms in her efforts to interact with the dogs, cats and crows.

A couple of days later we had fish for lunch. Maddened by the smell, the cat miaowred hideously through our meal. The moment I finished and sat back, she jumped on my leg and onto the table without scratching me, hunkered down and started eating the fish bones off my plate. I pulled the cat off the table with her jaw full, by her scruff but not in the correct immobilizing hold, and she nicked me, drawing blood.

“You are the second one to be scratched by that cat – the other day Papi was scratched too!”.

“This cat?”

“And what about that crow that pecked Nima on her head?”

“Where did that happen?”

“Arrey here only nah.”

“Yah, lucky for us the chipkali fell on the dining table before our food was served.”

“This place is filled with animals, I found a frog in the bathroom.”

“A frog! That's nothing, you won't believe what I found in the bathroom.”

“What?”

“I had been shaving in the bathroom, when I heard a rapid ghasar-pasar near the window and a chipkali darted in, the head of a snake an inch behind it when the gecko managed to climb around the frame and escape along the wall to hide behind the water-heater. The green-brown snake, thumb thick and 3' long, slithered in and out again immediately and I thought it was gone for good, but it climbed the window slats on the outside, coiled its hind part around the top slat, levitated itself off that and swayed two feet into the bathroom, looking for its recently escaped prey. I had been petrified and now futilely waved a plastic mug in its direction. The snake noticed me, coiled back and reptated back outside.”

Now people noticed that the cut was bleeding and suggestions started: “Rub some salt on it.”, “No, no! That will sting, just squeeze some lime juice on it.”, “Just crush some of that raw onion, that will also work.”. Then the suggestions left the immediate vicinity of the table and expanded outwards to the kitchen and the larger world beyond: red chilli powder, cumin powder, haldi, neem leaf, calendula and everybody's favorite ayurvedic or homeopathic remedy. I squeezed a couple of more drops of blood out, as my dad suggested, rinsed it and, since I had had a tetanus booster recently, forgot about it.

I imagine the same scene in the US, people discussing the relative antiseptic merits of relish and ketchup.

A morning in India

Thomas Friedman's head is flat

Elsa, our 15-month old, is up soon after 5AM. She is calm, so I keep hoping she will go back to sleep, but after an hour of her tossing and turning next to me, raising her head up to check if I am awake, I pick her up onto my chest, where she starts patting me. The light is now coming in, our jet-lagged 6-year old is up too, up to going for an early morning walk up to the gate defining this gated community.

Elsa sits in a sling on my hip, we draw a lot of curiosity – very few men can be seen carrying a child. Unlike in the U.S., where strangers compliment me essentially for doing my job, here the curiosity is silent. Elsa warbles and barks at birds in trees and dogs being walked by their owners' servants. Maya plucks a flower off each tree and names some – powder-puff , hibiscus, pomegranate – that she has learned from my mother and sister. I show her the yellow bougainvillea sprawling 25' up the silver oak and the tamarind with unplucked fruit only on the higher branches. Isa points upwards into a bamboo grove and we see the double hole of a half-finished baya-bird's nest, abandoned.

On the roads in the society, we pass domestic maids in 9 yard saris on their way in to work, gardeners on bicycles, the newspaper deliveryman and the milkmen on their motorscooters. From the main road a 100 or so yards away, we can hear the near-incessant high-pitched braying of the auto-rickshaws and the insistent baritone of trucks' horns. If you filter out the distant sounds of traffic, you can hear numerous birds – a flock of “seven sisters” exchanging family gossip, totas – the ubiquitous long-tailed green Indian parakeets, various finches and flycatchers and others unknown to me.

The air is still cool as we spot the sun glutinously disconnecting itself from the horizon, orange-red from the dust ¾ ever-present. Soon we will rotate further under it; freed of the dust, it will regain its familiar white and the silent heat will beat down. Just outside the gate, we see cowherds pulling out the neat garbage bags from the trash container, ripping them open and tossing them to their cows, who will munch the previous days Sensex numbers and produce milk to feed the kids of the global Indians – both NRIs and RNIs.

Further along, we see a couple of donkeys browsing the dry brown grass of the posted army land between our society and the village. Isa pulls out the camera and manages to frame a donkey between the scraggly branches of a thorn tree, cutting out in the foreground the man squatting in the drain and in the background the shiny glass buildings of the local outsource city – software complexes and call centres – filled with the appropriately accent-corrected, newly upper middle class “Sid” and “Angie”, gorged and pudgy from burgers and pizzas like the Americans whose jobs they are in-draining.

As the day warms up, you can hear a one-per-second “twoop-twoop-twoop”, the meta-period is: on for a few minutes, off for a couple. I imagine the chakki, the flour mill in the village, its canvas belt a little loose, slipping regularly on the pulley, women bringing in their grain bought in bulk to be ground to order, queueing up, getting a light coating of the flour as they wait their turn. It is a sound I have heard seemingly all my life in the towns of the plains and plateaus of India. Later, at home, I ask my mother about it, thinking it would be nice to show Maya a flour mill. My mother looks at me with a quizzical smile and says, “That's not a chakki, that's a woodpecker!”

What else am I so grossly mistaken about?

If you go

If you go to India and

• have never been in a largish American city
• travel to Delhi by your lonesome midwestern selves
• attend a wedding to which your hosts - the family of your boyfriend's Indian office mate in the US - has been invited
• wear your memorable bright red tight sleeveless dress with lots of decolletage, which was very appropriate for dancing on the tables at a wedding in the US, because it will “keep you cool”
• wonder why the women are not dancing
• dance with the men in the baaraat anyway because “they asked me to”,
• wonder why you were then shunned by the women for the rest of the function
• wear that same red dress to Red Fort
• get separated from your boyfriend who saunters on ahead while you visual-graze in the shops in the crowded entrance
• are confronted by someone in uniform who does a double handed simultaneous boob squeeze (on you), then does namaste and walks off
• fly to Pune, take an autoriksha instead of allowing a local contact to pick you up at the airport
• lose your camera bag (with the camera bought especially for the trip) and glasses
• are unaware of the number of bags you are traveling with (“the big black one, the small red roll-on, that green one”, “the samsonite?”, “No! The one we bought for the trip to Mexico, the shopping bag from Dubai duty-free, the medium dark blue one with the clothes for the wedding, ...”)
• not check behind the seat when disembarking from the autoriksha
• accuse the (unknown and long vanished) riksha-wallah of being a thief who intentionally put stuff behind the seat
• eat a sandwich for lunch at 11:30AM because you “always do”
• refuse to eat with the rest of the family at 1PM because you “just ate”
• go, again in the infamous red dress, when you could've replaced it with a modest salwar-kameez for $2, to a small locals only shopping area to buy a sari
• enter the dark sari shop,
• are puzzled when a young child starts screaming and crying, yelling something that sounds like “bhoot, bhoot”
• insist on hot water for a bath, or at least for hair, because “it's been three days in the dust and heat”, and complain about the length of time it takes,
• then after washing hair, complain about dinner being late, on a specially arranged trip to see tigers in the wild at an undeveloped preserve, at a “hotel” with obviously only one coal fire...

...Never return. Please.

Mountain Medicine

--- In ...@yahoogroups.com, Tapas <...@...> wrote:
>
> What? I tried to 'save' you guys? Must have been out of my mind or maybe i
> just wanted that stuff for myself.

Arrey Tapas, I had been trying to save your current reputation as a wanna-be-bad-boy, but you are forcing my hand:

Himankan '82, Pahalgam valley.
(Side note: Who was it that tried to "protect" potential employers from the truth that he was just a participant (and a cribbu one at that) on a trek and disguised it by claiming to have been an expedition leader? Someone claiming to have very high, upstanding moral values etc etc?)

When we were in Chandana-wadi, word somehow got around, since we weren't trying to "protect" anybody from any truth and were not particularly discreet, that Misha and I were trying to score some Kashmiri stuff. We had been tasked with this by our wingmates, and advanced the then astounding amount of Rs.40!

Tapas, that dear boy, found out about this, and already planning his campaign as Sports Sec ("I personally saved one of our top triple-jumpers from a life of dissolution by keeping him from destroying
his lungs, and, look at him now! He can almost reach the pit! Vote Tapas!"), anyway, Tapas approached the Doc, with whom we hung out a lot, and asked him, "Doc, You are good friends with these two boys, Misha and Tate. I am concerned about them, they are young, they know not what they do, they are trying to buy some hash, and you know it will destroy them. You, as an older, more mature, trustworthy and responsible doctor, and their friend, you spend a lot of time with them. So just prevent them from buying any pot or hash or grass." And it was true, we were quite friendly with the Doc.

Evenings, after dinner and duties, while most others would be participating in "good clean fun" listening to some kitschy crap on the mouth organ, some of us would go hang at the chai-wallah.  Until our last evening in Chandanwadi, Misha and I had been completely stymied in our efforts to obtain any stuff. That evening, the chaiwallah wished to thank us for what one of us had done for him and the other villagers and asked how he could repay us. We asked him if we could get any hashish. After a patient explanation to us that the end of winter was hardly the season for any hash, let alone "fresh" hash (Collective "Ohh! Fundas!" from us.) he agreed with his brother to get some from their personal stash. There were two problems, one, his village was a day's march away and we were taking down camp and leaving for Pahalgam the next morning. Two, he could only sell us a hash quantum, known as a golon, for Rs80, and Misha and I only had the Rs40 that our venture capitalist Nikunj had invested in our enterprise. Luckily, we had an obvious and richer co-investor right there, with his savings from his residency pay, who would happily put up the other Rs40 and take his half of the golon. So chai-wallah's brother ran all night to his village and back, and by breakfast chai the next morning we were the proud and sole co-proprietors of 1 (one) golon, a fist sized prolate ellipsoid, hard as old clay, and without any bouquet. We divided it in two right there, and almost fainted from the aroma, but Misha and I could not honestly sample and thus cheat our fellow wingmates. Luckily, our co-investor had no such constraints, was eager to try it out and happily shared with us. Good stuff, man. But not anywhere as good (by a factor of 5 I would say) as the CaliMari you get here. The VC in Bombay was quite happy with the results, as I recall.

Two years later: Bhaiyya, Mayya, Misha and I plan a private expedition to Poorvi Ikualari (Yeah! yeah! Serves me right for the sidey Chandana-wadi joke at Tapas' expense.). Mayya gets bitten by a dog, and is forced to stay under observation to ensure that the canine doesn't contract rabies, and so he can learn to drive. On our way back from the Ikualari basecamp on the Milam glacier, after an expedition that was not only unsuccessful but also non-epic, we stopped two nights in the town of Milam - it used to be a District Court town during the Raj, now, in summer, only a third of the houses were occupied. Already, on the way up, I had acquired the reputation as a "doctor" because the townspeople had seen me treat a bloody infected blister I had on my foot. On our way back, the morning after we reached there and spent the night in the village headman's house, there was a line of 30-40 people who had come to see the "doctor". The nearest real doctor of any kind was 6 days march and half a day's bus journey away. Luckily, Misha had learned something from the Himankan doc, from what he had done that had earned us the Chandanwadi chaiwallah's favour. It devolved on me to clean and dress all the open wounds and for the others, those with more mysterious, internal or imagined ailments, Misha proceeded to listen attentively to each villager's complaints, and then tell me "One pain killer and two multivit.s" or somesuch and I would count them out and hand them to the villager and repeat any instructions that Misha had given.

Until we got to the guy on the litter, with the broken femur.

Family trip to India

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