Fading of testosterone ageFriday, June 25, 2010,12:37:58 AM
The Marlboro man was there when we were growing up in boarding school, and for many of us all it took to become a man from boys was a puff. Or so we thought. The Marlboro man is not here anymore. After being a silly, blonde homemaker, working wife, live-in partner, Barbie is happily single again. She has worked her way up from a typist to teacher to doctor and a serious executive. Barbie is every woman’s avatar now. She is Punjabi and Gujarati ....
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Life in a crumbling wadaThursday, June 17, 2010,09:09:47 PM
Seventy years is not a long time for a structure to crumble, but for people it is just a matter of generations. The house would have its own story to tell. Lives, marriages, childbirths and deaths. There was a flood which did it in 1967. But you can sense all those moments lived and left behind. Ample greenery and signs of life — a toddler playing, a bright green shrub sprouting next to a wall, a ....
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Bhopal: Offence, so bailableThursday, June 10, 2010,11:08:19 PM
This kid would have been alive, if Bhopal didn’t happen to him. He could have gone to school, probably played hockey in old city maidans, would have possibly adjusted to some job and, finally, settled down in some mohalla. He might have had his own children by now. But the nightmare of Bhopal refuses to go. People, who were convicted for criminal negligence, have been ....
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Million mutinies and thenThursday, June 03, 2010,10:27:04 PM
From Bangalore to Shimla in North India, one thing we consistently see are outlets of Indian Coffee House, which used to be a Coffee Board chain, turned later into a successful cooperative of its employees. In Pune, we have other places for filter coffee. These clean, affordable and warm places don’t just attract clients and patrons across the social classes, but also made serious ....
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We earn our leaders, and pay... Thursday, May 27, 2010,10:49:54 PM
Many years back, while sitting in a tiny fort of a Rajput clan near Gwalior, a professor of political science was quizzing me about the making of modern India. We had started talking about the major works this country had taken up, post independence. Interestingly, most ‘modern temples’ came up in Nehru’s times. He was more sahib than most Britons, perhaps, and passionately chased his dreams and vision about the setting up of a modern India. The ....
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Jumping the gun could hurtThursday, May 20, 2010,11:54:26 PM
It is difficult to think of London without its tube — the underground railway system. It is that integral, indelible and life-enhancing part of the city, its living and its imagery. So much so that ‘poems of the underground’ is an institutionalised people’s movement, with some literary taste. The people there are important enough to be a part of public policy. If people of Pune were taken into confidence, ....
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Clean, green and riskyThursday, May 13, 2010,09:52:11 PM
An office-going man was single-handedly pushing a car on a hot Monday during rush hour on Senapati Bapat Road. This was a rare sight, for several reasons — for one, most cars don’t need to be pushed these days, as breakdowns are rare. And the person was doing it alone. Now, cars have probably become easier to push and so no one was helping him. Moreover, it’s hard to get people ....
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The Brown Sahibs Macaulay left behindThursday, May 06, 2010,11:32:05 PM
Read the following part of a speech. Wonder what Pune has got to do with it. “Within the last hundred and twenty years, a nation, which has previously been in a state as barbarous as that in which our ancestors were before the Crusades, has gradually emerged from the ignorance in which it was sunk, and has taken its place among civilized communities. I speak of Russia. There is now in ....
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The chemistry of greedFriday, April 30, 2010,12:43:30 AM
Do you really ask yourself which glossy, shiny apple to believe in? Which to bring to your dining table for your family and your children: Washington apple or our own desi Shimla variety? Will it really keep the doctor away? If this banana is good to look at, is it fit to be eaten? And the famous Alphonso? We will soon be getting export quality grapes at cheaper rates because the European Union has ....
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Give this cat a nameThursday, April 22, 2010,11:21:00 PM
A global city should have skyscrapers. So should Pune. Permissions are already in place and projects are underway to change the skyline with high-rise buildings. There is a little glitch. The fire department doesn’t have enough facilities to reach the top floors in case of an emergency. You know how emergencies are: you can easily see, what has not happened here yet, because it ....
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Framed in a sentenceFriday, April 16, 2010,01:31:35 AM
R R Patil, the home minister of Maharashtra, dials 100 and gets no response! How do you react after reading the above sentence? Angry with yourself? Given up? Bitter? Sorry? Karmic? Cynical? Worried? Scared? Concerned? How does the sentence read to you? How do you read it? Which emoticon flashes in your mind when you read the sentence? Of course, they may not want to read ....
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Flat business on the highwayFriday, April 09, 2010,12:52:42 AM
As you come in to the city from the old highway, you would see a puncture repair shop every 500 metres. Occasionally, they would fight for transgressing each others’ zone, but they are united by one common, vested interest: keeping the road in bad shape — just ‘that bad’ which keeps it running. And just ‘that bad’ which keeps the punctures happening. Like the sad old Ajit joke, where Loin (Lion) says: I will drown you in liquid oxygen. Liquid won’t let ....
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The bandobast of terrorFriday, April 02, 2010,01:15:56 AM
We can see the progress. Koregaon Park is reeling under a new kind of terror. As if it is responsible for the unfortunate event. It is being punished for the event, by the agencies that should have prevented it in the first place. Had PMC not allowed encroachments in commercial places, this wouldn’t have happened. Why the officer in the PMC, who was supposed to check this, is not held responsible? Why was he turning a blind eye to this? What was he ....
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Many battles of paani-cutFriday, March 26, 2010,12:15:28 AM
Tankers are not part of advertisements we see around in the emerging boomtown of Greater Pune, the seventh Indian metropolis. Good looking girls are. As part of our first-world dream of Italian-sounding condominiums, which are immensely photoshopped, water tankers are a third-world reality you have to live with. Water cuts are round the corner. Summers reveal to us the ugly underbelly of urbanisation thrown at us and in which we ....
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Who’ll love a little sparrow? Who’ll love a little sparrow?Friday, March 19, 2010,12:04:10 AM
Fight for the tiger, but don’t forget the sparrow, which is slowly disappearing from our collective consciousness. This little fellow is not just a bird, but a symbol of life as it must be — green, pristine and joyous. The best thing about sparrows is you never see them. They are part of our ancientness. Some moment they come really close, steal your attention, get noticed and you ask ....
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A passage to PuneThursday, March 11, 2010,11:21:31 PM
Everyone is a migrant in a city in transit. New Pune is a work in progress. It has been a great host and home to people from all over the country and abroad. They have scripted the journey of this city into a fine cosmopolitan place, thanks to defence installations, industry hubs, foreign collaborations and education facilities. Pune remains the first choice of an urban settler in the state, if you go by ....
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Hidden truth of CCTV cameras Friday, March 05, 2010,12:46:37 AM
Just count the pictures you see everyday. You are surrounded by cameras everywhere and you see many pictures. On your mobile phone, television, Internet sites like YouTube, Flickr and Picassa and in newspapers; still pictures and moving films, creating an overload on your memory. Because of this, you do not forget the airplane crash of the Indian Navy, blast in a bakery, vandalism of ....
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The joke is on us Friday, February 26, 2010,12:28:09 AM
Some of us are laughing, but I am sure the joke is different. As you can so clearly see there are no socks to pull up. Yes, there is a lathi to charge the terror bomb away. If this cop was put on bandobast duty post the German Bakery bombing, as a confidence-building measure for the unnerved public here, we have a new metaphor at hand. To get the joke, stop thinking about the missing socks and think about the bigger security issue at hand. And laugh if you can. ....
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I am going through Pune Mirror’s file of the last three months, randomly looking at stories and trying to grasp a sense of the city through various, apparently unconnected, stories. One is about the city seeing enough rainfall, but dams are still empty. (By mid-June, Pune had received its average rainfall for the month.) And only a minuscule number in the city give a damn about rainwater ....
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