Posted by
Ech Kay
at
11:39 PM
Bangalore...Ahmadabad....Where next? This has been the question on everyone's mind since the double terror strike left the entire nation stunned. Nagpur, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad...Every big city is now being looked at, as a soft target...
What crossed my mind was, I had been Pune since 2 days... Two separate cities had been targeted each day... What next?? Could Pune city be next on the hit-list of the insane death merchants? Could Pune city become just another statistic on the "terror-hit" list of cities around the globe?? Could it be Pune city where the next few lives would be lost to terror??
It is with these (disturbing) thoughts that I started day 3 of my short visit to Pune city. I woke up early (earlier than I had planned to, owing to Baba's phone call who managed to call me up before the alarm could do its job :( ). I had the e-litmus test this morning (the main reason, forwhich I am in Pune). I had a bath, and reached the place (Ravivar chowk...Some God-forsaken place in the oldest part of Pune city. The buildings and houses there are so dilapidated that even mere sutli-bombs that we burst during Diwali, would bring them down! (This is NOT a suggestion for the terrorists, but just a small observation!) After a few minutes of asking around, we (Gaurav and Abhishek also took the test with me) finally found out the test center. (The school building was equally run-down...) The 2 hour test was to start at 10 am and we reached there before 9! An hour of Bakar later, we got to enter the exam room in the school.
Our exam center was Sanghavi Keshavlal Manilal High School. It is a Gujrati-Medium school run by a Gujju menejing komitee. It felt nice to be back inside a school room with a black-board and the walls adorning charts and similar stuff. On settling down in the class room, I first noticed the black board on the wall. Apart from the regular date written in the top-left corner and the T-P-A statistics in the top-right corner, what caught my attention was the thought written right at the top. It read:
"Apart from God, We Belive in Matemetics" !!!
Mate-metics?? I couldn't help but stop myself from laughing out! And to top it all, we had a visibly pregnant lady for invigilating purpose! What an irony!! With all due respect to the young lady who's expecting a beautiful baby, I just could not help grinning to myself! Mate-metics!!!
The test was tough, so to say. Far tougher than what we had expected it to be. I felt as if I was taking another of the many Prac-CATs that I took at PT last year. After 2 hours of struggling to come to terms with what was supposed to be the "e-litmus test", I was out of the room, all dazed and confused!! I had made a mental note to get back a photograph of the black-board, but the exam left me so dazed, that I forgot to do so.
Once we were out of the school, we were greeted by a traffic jam in the narrow and claustrophobic by lanes of Raviwar Peth. Moreover, the "high alert" issued because of the terror threat, meant that there was a sizable police presence on the streets. That was when I felt the first chill go up my spine. All sorts of questions starting coming to mind...What if a bomb went off right next to where I was standing? What if I suddenly regained sense some 10 days later to find both my legs bandaged at the knees where my legs used to be, earlier? What if I didn't live to see another day??
It is not that I was being selfish, or I was thinking only about myself. But still, I couldn't stop such thoughts from clouding my mind.
We left in an auto in search for lunch... After a lot of deliberation we decided to go to Cafe Good Luck on FC road. We ordered omlette sandwiches and when we were mid-way through our meal, we were told that we would not be served snacks anymore since it was lunch time now!! Some things in Pune city are just so weird!!
With a half-empty stomach we exited Cafe Good Luck and started walking down FC road. Again after another round of deliberation (and utter confusion!!), we decided to go to Cafe Coffee Day (our fav hangout!!) Although the ambiance there was the same that we enjoyed at PC, back in Nagpur, what really impressed me was the staff member there. Hats Off! We spent about an hour and a half there talking about general stuff. Stuff about college, friends, daru, gals etc was all that we Bakar-ed about!!
After about an hour at CCD, we decided to go back to our respective places. Gaurav and Abhishek took a bus to Nigdi, and I decided to walk down back home. The rain ensured that I was fully drenched by the time I reached home about 20 mins later.
"Pariksha samplya kshani mala phone kar"... My cell phone had buzzed with this SMS from my mami when I was sitting at CCD. Once I was back home, I called back only to learn that Pune Police had issued an SMS alert urging people to avoid going to crowded places et al. It was later learnt that the police had NOT issued any such message, and that it was the handiwork of some prankster. As if the police have less things at the back of their minds to be troubled by unsolicited trouble like this! Their's indeed is an unfortunate lot. I'll be writing about my observation of the working of the Police, a few days later.
A small mention here, about my Maushi's (mom's sister) house, where I am presently putting up, in Pune. She stays in a 103 year old bungalow in Sadashiv Peth. The place is huge and spooky. It has large rooms, an old-fashioned slanting roof; and is home to every small animal that you can think of! The timber doors are heavy and creak a bit when opened or closed, thus adding to the eeriness of the place. Over the last couple of days I have encountered rats, squirrels, mongooses, cats and frogs too! And these stupid creatures have a knack of popping out in front of you at a time when you are least expecting it!
Having said this, this place becomes real spooky after darkness falls and everything around you goes extremely silent! It's past 11:30 pm here and I can suddenly hear mice squeaking all around the house and frogs croaking outside the window behind me!
I'll quickly wind up my account of the day before the unnerving silence of this house really unsettles me and before I chicken out completely!
~'Nighto!
-HK
11:43 pm, 27th July 2008.
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What crossed my mind was, I had been Pune since 2 days... Two separate cities had been targeted each day... What next?? Could Pune city be next on the hit-list of the insane death merchants? Could Pune city become just another statistic on the "terror-hit" list of cities around the globe?? Could it be Pune city where the next few lives would be lost to terror??
It is with these (disturbing) thoughts that I started day 3 of my short visit to Pune city. I woke up early (earlier than I had planned to, owing to Baba's phone call who managed to call me up before the alarm could do its job :( ). I had the e-litmus test this morning (the main reason, forwhich I am in Pune). I had a bath, and reached the place (Ravivar chowk...Some God-forsaken place in the oldest part of Pune city. The buildings and houses there are so dilapidated that even mere sutli-bombs that we burst during Diwali, would bring them down! (This is NOT a suggestion for the terrorists, but just a small observation!) After a few minutes of asking around, we (Gaurav and Abhishek also took the test with me) finally found out the test center. (The school building was equally run-down...) The 2 hour test was to start at 10 am and we reached there before 9! An hour of Bakar later, we got to enter the exam room in the school.
Our exam center was Sanghavi Keshavlal Manilal High School. It is a Gujrati-Medium school run by a Gujju menejing komitee. It felt nice to be back inside a school room with a black-board and the walls adorning charts and similar stuff. On settling down in the class room, I first noticed the black board on the wall. Apart from the regular date written in the top-left corner and the T-P-A statistics in the top-right corner, what caught my attention was the thought written right at the top. It read:
"Apart from God, We Belive in Matemetics" !!!
Mate-metics?? I couldn't help but stop myself from laughing out! And to top it all, we had a visibly pregnant lady for invigilating purpose! What an irony!! With all due respect to the young lady who's expecting a beautiful baby, I just could not help grinning to myself! Mate-metics!!!
The test was tough, so to say. Far tougher than what we had expected it to be. I felt as if I was taking another of the many Prac-CATs that I took at PT last year. After 2 hours of struggling to come to terms with what was supposed to be the "e-litmus test", I was out of the room, all dazed and confused!! I had made a mental note to get back a photograph of the black-board, but the exam left me so dazed, that I forgot to do so.
Once we were out of the school, we were greeted by a traffic jam in the narrow and claustrophobic by lanes of Raviwar Peth. Moreover, the "high alert" issued because of the terror threat, meant that there was a sizable police presence on the streets. That was when I felt the first chill go up my spine. All sorts of questions starting coming to mind...What if a bomb went off right next to where I was standing? What if I suddenly regained sense some 10 days later to find both my legs bandaged at the knees where my legs used to be, earlier? What if I didn't live to see another day??
It is not that I was being selfish, or I was thinking only about myself. But still, I couldn't stop such thoughts from clouding my mind.
We left in an auto in search for lunch... After a lot of deliberation we decided to go to Cafe Good Luck on FC road. We ordered omlette sandwiches and when we were mid-way through our meal, we were told that we would not be served snacks anymore since it was lunch time now!! Some things in Pune city are just so weird!!
With a half-empty stomach we exited Cafe Good Luck and started walking down FC road. Again after another round of deliberation (and utter confusion!!), we decided to go to Cafe Coffee Day (our fav hangout!!) Although the ambiance there was the same that we enjoyed at PC, back in Nagpur, what really impressed me was the staff member there. Hats Off! We spent about an hour and a half there talking about general stuff. Stuff about college, friends, daru, gals etc was all that we Bakar-ed about!!
After about an hour at CCD, we decided to go back to our respective places. Gaurav and Abhishek took a bus to Nigdi, and I decided to walk down back home. The rain ensured that I was fully drenched by the time I reached home about 20 mins later.
"Pariksha samplya kshani mala phone kar"... My cell phone had buzzed with this SMS from my mami when I was sitting at CCD. Once I was back home, I called back only to learn that Pune Police had issued an SMS alert urging people to avoid going to crowded places et al. It was later learnt that the police had NOT issued any such message, and that it was the handiwork of some prankster. As if the police have less things at the back of their minds to be troubled by unsolicited trouble like this! Their's indeed is an unfortunate lot. I'll be writing about my observation of the working of the Police, a few days later.
A small mention here, about my Maushi's (mom's sister) house, where I am presently putting up, in Pune. She stays in a 103 year old bungalow in Sadashiv Peth. The place is huge and spooky. It has large rooms, an old-fashioned slanting roof; and is home to every small animal that you can think of! The timber doors are heavy and creak a bit when opened or closed, thus adding to the eeriness of the place. Over the last couple of days I have encountered rats, squirrels, mongooses, cats and frogs too! And these stupid creatures have a knack of popping out in front of you at a time when you are least expecting it!
Having said this, this place becomes real spooky after darkness falls and everything around you goes extremely silent! It's past 11:30 pm here and I can suddenly hear mice squeaking all around the house and frogs croaking outside the window behind me!
I'll quickly wind up my account of the day before the unnerving silence of this house really unsettles me and before I chicken out completely!
~'Nighto!
-HK
11:43 pm, 27th July 2008.
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Labels:
E-litmus
,
Humour
,
Pune
,
Test
,
Timepass
1 comment:
ya!i agree with u abt puna on the cafee gud luck incident!hehehehehe!
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