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.

Six Seater ???

There is a shudder going through my body, I sit meekly at one place .. am surrounded by seven or eight other people, some looking directly into my face. Looks ranging from surprise .. to contempt and to plain boredom. I look at my watch ... and wonder how much more time has to pass. There are people coming along from different directions. I am squeezed between the already seven people, but I still want that pan-chewing kaka to stop waiting in vain for the PMT bus and step foot into the “The Six Seater”, than am being a part off.

Yes, I am currently sitting in “The legendary Six Seater of Pune city” and am waiting for the driver to make a decision and arrive at the conclusion that the vehicle is now perfectly full and that he could proceed with the ride .. but till that time, the engine goes on, with the now familiar shudder through my bones, the loud rattling noise of the six seater chassis against other humans and spare parts residing inside it. Five minutes have passed, and by that time .. my heart has switched places with the right lung and the kidney is shoving it’s way up the oesophagus. Gawd !!! Let this goddamned contraption get going and save me from being a “jumbled up” human being.

These Six Seaters (or SS, as I would prefer calling them through the rest of the blog) are God’s gift to Pune – the perfect folly to rude and insolent rickshawalas. These majorly ply in the outskirts of the city, where our majestic rickshwalas refuse to drive on – or refuse to charge by the meter. But there is catch (I know it can’t be all that good and yet be good), these contraptions come with an unlimited seating capacity and probably at an average seat a dozen people at any given time. The question still haunts .. Why the f*** are they still called as “Six Seaters” ???. But still – no issues with it as they charge standard rates (ranging from 5 Rs to a maximum of 8 Rs for five to eight-nine kilometre ride), pretty cheap, eh ? But not at the surgery cost of rattled bones and organs ... am still looking out for my pancreas. :P