an evening in pune

 
yesterday evening was nice. rather the day itself was nice and productive and sweet! why? couple of reasons.
one year anniversary of our engagement :D with no sign of marriage happening soon :D :D
and i made something in bits and pieces at my editing class. well, i go to my friend for it, and its not a big deal that i can do a little bit of  video editing- but still, a small yay! for my efforts :D


but apart from that, i walked down FC road yesterday evening, and saw a different so to say- flavor- of the road. its usually a colorful, busy, young and screeching road, with lot of attitude, lot of westernization, and lot of bubbling bursting multilingual heterogeneous youth. yesterday the road was still colorful, very busy, people rushing, but still, no westernization, no screeching, and attitude of a different kind. there were no vehicles on the road as they were being stopped and road was being vacated. people, most of them middle aged, traditional middle class or even lower middle class maharashtrians, were standing  all along the way in big mobs and bigger excitement. rather spiritual one, you could say. or, with devotion, you should say. the reason being the annual pandharichi wari has started, and the palakhi was going to pass from the road. 

well, i am not a newbie in pune, i have been witnessing this phenomenon for past 23 years- that is all my life. But i must say that every year i find deeper and deeper things in there and realize something that hasn't been understood till then. i saw the aam aadmi. the one who, despite the ever growing problems, doesnt change his old idols and the feelings. I saw the rich cultural hertage. i saw how can devotion change people. i saw the most unprivileged class of society walking all along till pandharpur. i saw that some of youth IS taking active part in waari and i also saw that doing video coverage of waari has become an 'in' thing. 

i saw the innocent faces of really young kids who were brought by the parents to see and if possible, touch the paalakhi. i saw people who were stuck in connecting lanes( WHO  MUST HAVE NOT WATCHED THE NEWSPAPER TO KNOW THAT THE ROAD IS GONNA BE CLOSED FOR SOME TIME) murmuring how all these processions should be banned. they destroy traffic. i saw lots of  'wanna be politicians' trying to shine it off. i saw the faces of politicians glaring from various hoardings wishing waari and all the devotees. 
I also saw a well known pune based young singer, who was walking on FC road, to catch a glimpse of waari, and i felt nice. i saw that at least sometimes, celebrities do act like normal humans. and once i passed this whole stretch of road, i also saw people who were oblivious to all these thing happening and burried in their coffees/ icecreams/earings shopping. well, they ofcourse do make an interesting element in all this. after all, the entire universe cannot be centred around any one thing. there gotta be some people like it. 

where was I? lets say, i was not a part of the real mob, nor did i wait there to watch paalakhi. but i walked down the road in those interesting 15 mins, in which i witnessed a world of feelings, concerns, emotions, people. in short, i became a common man in R K Laxman's cartoons. the one ho is present everywhere and the one who does not talk or act, but silently observe. and probably sings- an evening in Pune!!!