pune on the weekend

saturday morning dad, meghana, sonal and me were part of a fleet of cars that headed to pune for a ‘kelwan’.. a meal given to a girl before she gets married by her family.. the girl in question was my cousin meghana. in one of the cars that followed was her hubby to be ashish and his sister hetal. the other cars had other hyperventilating members of the family who all descended at a hotel called shreyas where after a lot of agitated discussion we finally settled in 5 rooms.

lunch at viju maushi where i tried to avoid khashaba the dog, discussed animation with manish, and spoke a lot to the adorable medha and priyanka – my cousins from amravati; slept in the afternoon and drove to m g road in the evening to buy books- then flew back to the hotel where everyone was supposedly waiting all ready to leave only to find them all in front of the tv watching football.

it got truly complicated, hilarious and traumatic trying to co-ordinate 8 cars getting to a club outside the city for the function. no one knew where it was and there was confusion big time before we ended up at this spectacular location with a terrace under a half moon and stars-some mattresses, candlelight, many aunts, grandmothers, cousins, uncles from various sides,- a skit by my aunts, some singing by my mom and sis, some performances by the bride and groom to be and appam and mutton stew and radhikas mango mousse.

salient features of pune..

• cultural capital of marathiness
• where i am accused of trying out my rustic marathi accent much to the embarrassment of all around me
• college heaven and so lots of interesting looking people everywhere
  
• tech wannabe city like bangalore- but better (so say the puneits)
• scarved mad women daaku two wheeler drivers who stick their legs out to signal turns
• pompous marathi fair green eyed men who pontificate the greatness of marathi culture
• roads that seem like they go around in circles
• buildings that are two storied high claiming to be ‘heights’
• a superior disdainful attitude to all bombayites who are either too commercially minded or too uncultured or too much in a hurry- and they are probably right
• nicer weather in summer evenings.
• too many of my relatives.