Homesick and loving it

I am officially homesick. It will be the fifth weekend that I have been travelling and I am so missing my weekend trips to Pune. No matter, where I have been– I log in everyday to read Pune365.com, Pune Mirror and my Facebook timeline filled with all my Pune peeps. The husband has been teasing me for being ungrateful. “I take you all over the world, giving you a curated experience of the best spots in the world and all you do is want to get back home.” And I wonder where home is… Mumbai, Pune, India? So I like to borrow how the husband describes it even though we return to Pune only on every weekend. “We earn in Mumbai but spend in Pune.” And the address on my new passport does cement it officially now!

When I look back I wonder what is it like to be a Puneri or to call Pune home? Unlike many, I wasn’t born in Pune or had family there… We moved when I was 12 because my dad needed to be stationed here and to be honest, the initial few months were rough. After living in huge villas all our growing up years, to live in an apartment was an exercise. I missed having my own garden and the peace and quiet that came with living in a small town. I would often want to go to the Chittranjan Vatika (in Model Colony) to get a fresh breath of air and feel free.

What made it even rougher was suddenly discovering that Mom did have a life besides looking after us kids. For years of having mom around everytime we got home from school, suddenly – watching her joining multiple courses and then finally become a teacher took her away from us. I didn’t give up without a fight. I made it miserable for my mom – refusing to run any errands, going to the grocery or even stepping out for social occasions with them. I hated the city and I wasn’t about to let my parents forget it.

But Pune, much like its rain, won me over with its gentleness. A story I like to narrate is how we left our house keys in a stationery shop in Deccan Gymkhana while shopping for our schoolbooks. For those who lived in Pune two decades ago, siesta time and shutting down for the day by 8pm was considered more important than any task of the day, forget extra revenue or additional business. But the owner was found, his meal interrupted and dragged back to the store to help us get the only pair of house keys we had. He did so without complaint and I know – I was grateful we got home. Today, I look at it as also a perfect lesson in work-life balance.
Pune also exposed me to a life beyond running wild, getting lost in books and playing board games with my sister. Suddenly I found out who the Beatles and ABBA were, discovered a magical game called basketball and fell in love with swimming lessons. For the first time, I made friends with people way much older than me and didn’t have to call them uncle and aunty but just by their name… It felt super cool.

When my teenage years left me painfully shy and quiet is when I saw what having a connection in Pune could do. I suddenly found myself being surrounded by new friends in school because my Math teacher Ms Chandravarthy took matters in her own hand and suddenly Kavita, Ruchi, Ayesha were eating lunch with me instead of letting me disappear into a library. My mom nudged me to spend my summer holidays working as an intern in the erstwhile ‘The Word’ Bookshop because she knew Ajay the owner. Besides having to talk to people and overcome shyness, I finally also discovered answers to all my questions about sex mostly by hiding myself in an alcove to read The Kamasutra in a quiet corner (Things one had to do without Google – I tell you!).
The accent on culture left me goo-goo eyed. We had to learn Marathi to get around, make friends and even deal with house-help. And as I write this column in Paris, where the locals refuse to speak in any language but their own, I cherish the pride Pune has in its roots even more. Standing in line for umpteen cups of coffee for the Sawai Gandharv Festival, watching people discuss the nuances of Pu La Deshpande’s writing, being amused by R K Laxman’s cartoons – the days of yore were exciting for a teenager discovering her own self through the city… And slowly but steadily the city became home.

As work and life took me to Mumbai, I’ve often not come back for months… often got lost in neighbourhoods that come up (Aundh Annexe seriously?!) or violate traffic rules (one-way routing on Fergusson College is so annoying!). I have run away due to claustrophobia and how everybody in the city is separated by 2 degrees of separation or dealt with the perils of Pune’s dating scene being quite a circulating library… and returned to deal with much in a more grown up way…

But what makes it home is that unlike any other city in the world – where I am the biggest worry wart you may meet – in Pune, my heart level slows down and the stress recedes. What makes it home for me is that friends and acquaintances still greet me with as much warmth as if we met yesterday, though I haven’t seen them in years. Or the fact, that people accept into the fold because they love the husband so much and hence by association, love me. Or the fact, that the Uncle at Maharashtra Bakery in Model still has a twinkle in his eye every time he greets me even though I go across to buy bread maybe once in a few months…

How can Pune, then not be home?

Nidhi TapariaNidhi Taparia has a day job as a senior executive working with a leading transnational. A weekend Puniete, Nidhi left the city 16 years ago to fall in love with Mumbai – but Pune still is her first crush. Diary of a Weekend Puneite appears every Saturday. The views expressed here are personal

 

Nidhi Taparia