Adhi Potoba

They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. In Pune, however, breakfast almost seems to be a second thought. It’s something you do between getting dressed for work or school and leaving the house. I for one have been brought up on a steady breakfast of Carbury’s drinking chocolate (the one that came in the blue tin) and Britannia Nice biscuits . (Hello diabetes!) Shoving the biscuits in my mouth and washing it down with chocolate milk hot enough to take the top layer off your gullet. All this mostly while the school bus would stand outside honking the horn and my mother, trying in vain, to ask the driver to wait just one more minute till her son got his shit together. Unfortunately, no matter how old you get or where you go in the world, breakfasts might change, but the chaotic morning scene remains the same. On the weekends however, we try to bring back some sanity to our lives and what better way to start than with a healthy, hearty sit-down breakfast. Ingredients 3 cu...

The Osho commune is the brainchild of "Rajneesh" Chandra Mohan Jain and self-proclaimed “Bhagwan”. The spectacular commune looks more like a spa or resort than a religious center complete with waterfalls, exotic flora and fauna and bold architecture. And the beautifully landscaped Osho Park created out of a swamp is just breathtaking. Bhagwan Rajneesh was infamous for his teachings as they encouraged communal sexual indulgence. Here’s a man who took the bumper sticker “Make love, not war” a bit too seriously and turned it into a religion. I for one totally support such thinking. Osho ashram has brought a lot of good things to Koregaon Park. The best thing to happen to Koregaon Park as a result of the ashram, however, is the German Bakery. Situated right on the entrance to Koregaon Park, it looks like a beach shack situated on a main road. Although from the name, you’d think they serve German snacks, it is still Pune city, and the menu is a mish-mash of anything goes. On m...

"Panchang, menu, arogya, dnyana,   Upayukta sahitya pratyeka paana." The radio ad for Kalanirnay promised more crap than 16 years in school can throw at you. Kalanirnay is a calendar that most Indian housewives cannot live without. It is published in 13 different languages and contains just as much useless information on the calendar side as it does on the back pages. The 3 sq inch space for each day includes information on solar and lunar cycles, any insignificant holiday that might fall on this day (complete with obscure illustrations) and most importantly for the three people who understand what it is, concise information on ‘Rahukal’. The backside of the month’s page is where the real fun stuff is. Redundant information relating to the month, including medical advice, puzzles, religious information, recipes and lessons in arts and crafts etc. printed in 7 point, blue type are what make up the backside. I have never visited a house in Pune without a Kalanirnay on the kitc...

Before the ‘spectacular’ express highway, the cheapest and most convenient way to make a Bombay-Pune journey was with a ride on the Deccan Queen . A 180 km journey that took anywhere between 3½ - 4 hours on a good day. The journey would actually begin way before the day of actual travel by a trip to a little place known as the booking office. A small self-standing structure in the middle of nowhere, where you were served by indifferent civil servants from behind rusty windows. Some of the things you were never served, however, were proper information, prompt service or, heaven forbid, a smile. The chances of you actually getting a reservation instead of being wait-listed were pretty slim. Even as you enter Pune Station through parking, it looks like a haphazard mess. As you arrive inside you see that the rails and platforms thrown together by some eager engineer who made the mistake of believing himself. 6:30 a.m. is probably the most bearable time to be there, as people who fell asl...

When I was in junior college, Pirangut (which is now almost in city limits) used to be a destination for day trips. En route, one could drive for miles of lush paddy fields and open land on both sides of the road, the monotony broken only by a lake, a river or the occasional small body of water. You would have to slow down sometimes as herds of sheep walked alongside the road, blocking most of it. Village folk sat under the shade of tamarind trees waiting for the greatest form of rural transportation—the S.T. bus, known to most of the junta as the Laal Dabba (red tin can). The road took you straight to the village of Mulshi, where the Mulshi dam is located. There is a village on the way named Disli. In Marathi, Disli means “I see it.” The reason it is so named is that as you take a turn to enter the limits of Disli, you can see the walls of the massive dam for the first time. Just before the village of Disli is the village of Pirangut and also the home of one my favourite joints, Bunin...

As a little boy growing up in Pune, I became aware of the fact that the raw green mango (kairi) and the deliciously sweet, ripe mango in spite of being the same fruit are completely different animals. I also understood that a mango stolen from someone else’s yard tastes infinitely better than a store bought mango. It is popular knowledge that the best green mangoes inevitably come from the trees that are in the yards of the meanest people in the neighbourhood. These trees are usually guarded by some of the house’s senior gentry, who will come after you with sticks—making stealing mangoes from the neighbourhood one of my favourite summer sports. After the annual examinations in April one quickly discovers that two months of summer vacation is in fact really boring. During our vacation, the area kids would gather to pass their afternoons with a game of cricket, carrom or cards. A good afternoon’s cricket is really incomplete without a good snack and the raw mangoes that were in peak sea...

This is the story of how yours truly was involved in an incident that almost closed down Residency Club. In the summer of 93 I started what was my first job, an internship at an industrial design firm in our building. One of the assignments I was working on was to build a permanent Mandap for Residency Club. Back then; Residency club was a newer, cheaper alternative to Poona Club and the Royal Connaught Boat Club . Mr. Tanna, the owner of Residency Club had solicited the help of Blueprint Design to build a permanent Mandap over a courtyard that was surrounded by rooms for club guests, so that he could rent the courtyard for functions even during monsoons. Blueprint design had delivered a highly futuristic concept for a Mandap using a tensile structure . Tensile structures are made of strong sheets of synthetic fibers stretched and held together with tension wires. Blueprint design had come up with a design that worked really well in theory. If all went well, this would cover an area o...