Pune Traveler

Talking more about travelling in Pune, thankfully I was spared of a major part of it because the lucky dog I was, I was allowed to live in the office (which was housed in a 1BHK apartment in a residential society with t he much needed eateries just downstairs) itself by my internship company boss. So it went more beyond the oh-so-convenient “Work from Home” .. Mine was more like a “Home at Work”. A daily day at office was more on lines of an algorithm

1. Wake up
2. Wash and wear clothes :P
3. Office starts
4. Office ends (by around 7 PM everyday)
5. Home starts
6. Sleep
7. Goto Step 1

It did save a lot of travelling time and trauma associated with it, but I never experienced the numerous joys of travelling to work, jostling elbows in the fifty percent women reserved PMT buses, or shuddering my way in a six seater or getting fleeced by autorickshawala ....and am thankful to God for that. Amen !!!

Traveling in a PMT bus

Having friends interning in Pune as well is a good way to spend evenings .. but sadly all the action lies in the core of Pune and the place I lived in was more dead than a dodo. This led to some interesting journeys to the core of Pune – FC road, JM road, Deccan using various means of transport.
PMT buses and their signboards just make a mockery of common sense and play with the conceptual models of a regular BEST traveller from Mumbai. How in the world would I know where a “Ma Na Pa --> Ma Na Pa (Circle route)” bus is headed? Or where a “NDA --> Shivaji Nagar --> NDA” bus is headed. Plus to add to that the bus number is written in between the origin stop and the destination stop name (if they are , but different). So you have bus boards which say “Ko De Po --> 164 --> Hadapsar” (Ko De Po = Kothrud Depot) and mind you, this guideline is regularly flouted and you have buses with weirdest of boardplates possible.
There is a mystery about travelling in PMT buses .. Travellers and people who ask questions to fellow bystanders about the destination of a freshly arrived bus are usually invisible. No one bothers to give you a look or take heed of your inane question. You have to get into the bus to find out where it goes .. otherwise, you’d be left alone at the bus stop, asking the same question all throughout the day.

PMT bus conductors are a breed apart. They usually have nothing personal to do with the fellow passengers and are basically cool with people climbing into the bus from any entrance and getting off anywhere from anywhich door. Now couldn’t the BEST bus conductors learn some cool lessons from their PMT fellowmates? They usually are not bothered by the rush in the bus and cooly move around trampling the toes of the standees in the bus like Godzilla goes around crushing little dimwits in some ill-fated city.

Question : “Nal stop kadhi yenaar toh please sangnaar ka?”
Answer : “Ass Aynd Dee Tea (that’s SNDT pls) chya stop nantar”

As if, I knew where the SNDT stop is in the first place. Ask a stupid question and get a stupid answer. From that day, I asked fellow passenger who managed to communicate with me after some coaxing and some determination from my end.

Buses in Pune usually don’t take you completely to your destination. You have to get off at some Naka / Chowk / Bridge and pursue another excruciating wait for another metal container to come by, take you in and thankfully leave you at least a kilometre from the place where you left for originally.

I prefer to walk in Pune. Walking is good for your heart, mental health and emotional disposition.