My Tryst With Pune – 1

September 27, 2018 by Venkat Ramakrishnan Leave a comment

3:30 AM – 5:00 AM

On a wet Thursday early morning, my flight to Pune from Bengaluru landed like ‘Bump-bump…bump….’ like an auto navigating a Bengaluru speed-breaker, as my inner self screamed ‘Nahinnnnnnnn…‘ like a Hindi movie heroine chased by the villain. I still remember my first international flight from Mumbai to Frankfurt (Thank you Delta!), which landed in Frankfurt like a finger on butter. Sigh….How do they even give flying license to these ‘Yahaan ka local temperature hai Pacheezz degree Centigrade’ kids?

My Ola cab driver was polite and very human. I used my Hindi skills to navigate him through the roads, At the end of the ride, the driver was reluctant to press the back button twice in the app. to get to the ‘end the ride’ screen. When I asked him to, he said ‘app bandh ho jayegee’. I said ‘Bhaiyaa, aap vo nahin karenge tho kithna paisa kaise pathaa hogaa’. He blinked and agreed to tap the back button twice to get to the swipe button.

Finally there I was, at 4:00 am in front of a heavily locked Secured Hostel Base Facility (I should not see FBI/CIA themed Hollywood movies often). Thanks to the organizer, who didn’t leave a phone number to call the manager, I was stranded with my suitcase, my backpack and my sweet self in a foreign town, surrounded by 4 dogs.

The dogs immediately accepted me as part of their tribe (at least as part of THAT part of the street tribe), didn’t make even a bit of a noise, and start sleeping as though nothing happened.  I sat down on the platform, and started browsing the very useful Facebook posts that my ‘friends’ had posted, and there comes this dog from the OTHER part of the street, which wants to re-establish the boundaries using ME as a Trump card.

Then starts this war between the two brotherhoods, which almost woke up that section of the town, with me standing watching in amusement. You should see to believe how the ‘home’ tribe was trying to protect me from foreign aggression with fiery fury!  Finally, the foreign army backtracked and I was able to continue my world’s important work with spurious interruptions.

(To be followed)