Why I call Pune Home

I am what people would term as a hard core Bombayite . I have spent my formative years there. I now look back with a total sense of disbelief when I think of those split second train timings… that hectic pace to Life where every moment was spent in the fray to get to some place , which though well connected, inevitably took some determined effort and considerable time.

Then I went away to Dubai. Another city with a character all its own. A perfect amalgam of the old world that quaintly co-existed with the enthusiastic fervour of the new and the modern. Then just as it had carried us off to this interesting city of Dubai , kismet turned us around to point us homewards. Since Bombay no longer was 'home' after the passing on of my father, we decided to look to Pune for familial comfort. A lot of our relatives lived in Pune . That and the greenery beckoned to us to make it home.

So one rainy day in July of 2000 , two boys and dog in tow , we hauled ourselves up five flights of stairs along with our rather heavy baggage to our home . No electricity . So no lifts Our very first orientation with the whimsical electricity supply in Pune that invariably got washed out with the slightest hint of rain !!!

Of the next few years I spent time ....getting telephone lines ..then making sure they were working. Getting all my required appliances in place ..then making sure we had the electricity to run them !! If the phone lines were working and the electrical supply uninterrupted ..then I spent time getting corrections to the astronomical bills that were high enough to have given enough talk time and electricity to a small time industry !! During this time I met all sorts of people ..some rude ..some helpful..some concerned ..others nonchalantly carrying on with indifference to rules. Like any other city .

Life has now eased a bit . Quite a bit. The boys are both now strapping young men. Both into their maiden year at being employees ! I now wake up to a black and white wagtail pecking noisily at my window every single morning. Mornings are spent quite often over a leisurely cup of coffee while mildly wondering what different avian species might I be treated to today. Will it be a kingfisher? Or a frog heron ? Or a Bharadwaj? Will that noisy raucous gang of parrots make an appearance today ? Camera and binoculars always handy, the morning sun and the dusk always offer much for the bird watcher.

With an inverter in place , the dark clouds no longer threatened. They along with the rain bring along with them brilliant flashes of a poetical streak that make me wax lyrical as I hear the cool raindrops sizzle on the parched soil of the garden. I hear the old timers creakily commiserate about the non existent winters. To me the gentle sun of a December morning in Pune is comfortingly warm. No shivers and chattering teeth for me. I spend morning looking for good art exhibitions to visit…enthralling music concerts to attend ...an occasional play to watch. . I look on with amusement at the antics of the dahi handi brigade at Gokul Ashtami. With fatalistic resignation I face the music at Ganesh Chaturthi. My maternal instincts are touched when I watch little ones enthusiastically participate in the various cultural presentations made during that time.

Soon it is Navratri and the colorful gaiety heralds the coming of Diwali around the corner with the clicking of the dandiyas by revelers going in circles for the raas. The festive lights of Diwali turn the city into a fairy land at night as the twinkling sparks scurry back and forth feverishly on most windows . And star lanterns dress up a balcony or front yard bathing it in a fond indulgent glow. I hear the azaan and I know it is time for Iftaar. Christmas will be here too...
and one and all will wait eagerly for delicately flavored fruit cake . Then it will be the next year...new certainly ..but with comforts of the familiar ...for Pune is where home is ..where heart is!

By Shubha S Nafrey

More about home

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What do I call Home

When I wanted to buy my own place in a country partially alien to me, I thought back to about two decades back. Having spent only a small part of my early childhood here, I did not know what to expect of the old motherland. But ever since my mind was made up about getting back here, even if it meant a series of unavoidable upheavals, there was little on my mind other than getting a place to call home.

The time I spent here had been all about sunny corridors, running along the said sunny corridors and jumping into tanned arms at the end of sunny corridors. There are bits about being held over basins to brush my teeth, and more rot that festers there but I suppose the sunny corridors bit is entirely about India. I suppose there are a million reasons why I felt the urge to return here. Maybe it was spiritual healing, maybe some isolation, maybe self-discovery. The thing is, chorusing "O Canada!" and having a Canadian citizen status did not quite make me non-Indian.

Then I stepped on a alien homeland! Not that I was not amazed at the change in the people here. Sure, the air is heavily laden with pollution it tags me down with it, and sure, there are a lot more voices and background scores than my sanity had to cope with. Perhaps it bothers me that the people are unreasonably surlier, and more bent on hoodwinking me at every step though they are less discreet than the oil farmers of my land. But, for all my faith in things sorting themselves out, I was unnerved by the cultural shock that awaited me and my accent.

But then I came back.

Pune is not fabulous because it is fabulous. It is fabulous because it works for me. It grew on me, and I am very much in love with what appalled me just a few months ago. Pune is not about a broiling mix of emotional tensions which must erupt on any given day to vent it all in a nice little riot. I know I waited for that bit, but it never came. My friends did help me with my adaptation but I suppose there is only this much that friends can do. I also suppose there is no universal remote to switch myself on or off. There was just a gentle gradient that helped me acclimatize to Pune, and from a feeling of being seasick all day long, I went on to being at one with the world again; which incidentally is what life should be all about.

Now Pune is home, And I am no longer a foreigner to my own motherland. She accepts me as one of her own, and there is no joy greater than being accepted as one being a part of a whole.

Now all I need is a wife.

Nikhil Jay - Writer...Finding himself in Pune...

Home Coming

It is a hot day in July…. We are packing our bags for our annual trip to India. You see the schools in the Gulf close for nearly two months during July and August. And that’s when we make our sojourn to India to visit our near and dear ones. My two boys are happy. They love being spoilt rotten by their grandparents, uncles and aunts. Enjoy spending time with their cousins. India is a fun place. They manage to indulge in a lot of activities that they wouldn’t have in the desert city of Dubai. Climb trees, chase squirrels, pluck vegetables from the kitchen garden, wander under the umbrella in pouring rain.

Two years later – one more hot day in July…and we are packing our bags. But this time the mood is a little different. There is a sense of anticipation in the air. Our trip to India is for a longer stay. My husband and I have decided that the boys will go to college in Pune, Maharashtra. A lot of our family and friends are surprised. Most Indians would gear their kids to be able to cope with further education in the West, either the U.K. or the U S of A.

But here, despite having already traveled some distance west, we were actually turning around and heading back home – and to Pune !

It was a big decision for all concerned. For the boys Dubai was home. The younger one had turned two a couple of months after we had settled there. And now sixteen years later he was to leave these familiar surrounding that he grew up in. But that was something he had to do even if he were to go elsewhere for his education. For us as parents it really was one of those things that one ponders and ponders about, hoping very hard that the decision taken will prove to be the right one.

I laid it out as plain and simple and as gently as I could in front of my boys. So far India had been a holiday for them. They may have spent a lot of time here during their holidays, but never lived here as such. They had so far been visitors here and never integrated into the way of Life here. So far they always went back home, to Dubai. I wanted that to change. I wanted that the family and relatives mean more to them than familiar faces and that they truly bond with their cousins and other relatives and appreciate the close-knit ties we Indians share with our families. I wanted that they no longer be stranger to their country and know it for all its good and the bad. Logic being very simply that tomorrow even if they ever emigrate and settle in any other country, they would always be known as Indians. So it was necessary for them to know India !!!

By Shubha S Nafrey