Report from Pune

Pune is not Bombay, but it is close, only a couple of hundred kilometers of winding, hill-strewn rail-track away and getting closer by the day. The hair-cutting saloons here will do a facial on the cheap and pare your moustache to a fine needle to give you a lean, hungry look. You must buy that expensive looking briefcase if only for the evening groceries. Leather shoes must be polished continuously and pinstriped shirts do a roaring business.

But if you wear a necktie you are only a salesman.

By the time I step out on the road looking fresh-scrubbed and managerial, the city is already in full swing. The Ganesh temple has already rung out with morning chants, and great hoards of two-wheeler riders have started storming the city center from their murky, voluptuous worlds in the far-away suburbs. A few of them try out a Namaskar to the idol at full speed, swerving, almost losing their balance in the process.

They all wear pinstriped shirts.

The window of my bus allows a regular cool stream of fresh air on my face, bringing tears to the eyes, too pleasant to shut off. Three other managers, in their pre-action daze sit at the back, oblivious to the world shaping up around them. The shaky bus is not of a very modern make, but it’s cozy. You can fall asleep in it, comfortable in the hierarchy.

We pick up working girls as we go along. Mostly young ones, prim and closed, wearing a buttoned-down look. All hints of sensuality are strictly forbidden, meticulously erased from their faces, bodies. When they come upon a manager, their faces break into dutiful, adoring smiles. The married ones are allowed to look a little more sensual, and some of them even wear lipstick. But even they pull their saris tightly across the other shoulder and stare primly ahead in the distance, living pictures of haute Indian womanhood.

With his unshaven face and blood-shot eyes, our driver looks like the denizen of the rougher regions of the underworld, but with so many scooters and bicycles around, he is more sinned against than sinning. He drives with an intense, competitive gleam in his eyes, his pointed right shoulder constantly challenging oncoming vehicles, and with just a tiny mistake, sparks would fly. With every such encounter he mutters under his breath. But poor man sits surrounded by women on all sides, so that all that he can allow himself aloud is "You Tomato!” when he is spoiling for a more choice expletive.

The road in long and sinuous, half of it through the narrow city center, and then onto the rich fat highway to Bombay, which decides the course of so much of your regimented life. Every inch of space along the sides is occupied, if not by shops then by hutments, where little boys constantly run to the grocer and back. The women are busy cleaning and tidying; the tobacco chewing, semi clad men stand in the doorways, yawning and stretching, resolutely idle. The road has continuously improved over the years, and in some areas plush white designer business centers have come up. These have green lawn patches in the front, with American style sprinklers going full swing. The tall bored guards stand in the doorways, looking sleepy. You can see long white foreign cars on display in the privileged parking lots.

But now the bus goes past another residential area, which has a string of mutton shops along the road. The peeled pink carcasses with their liquid-crystal membranes hang in the doorway for inspection. Each of these shops has five or six lambs tethered on the doorstep, ready for slaughter. The lambs continue to nudge each other playfully. The vegetarians mutter. The women in the bus look resolutely away.

The uneven, patchily paved road is flowing over with vehicles of all types and makes now. Children in school uniforms, packed seven to an auto-rickshaw, barely able to move or breathe. Others hanging on for dear life to their sari-clad competent-looking mothers with muscular arms on Kinetic Hondas. Middle-aged managers in middle age crises riding in middle-aged Fiats. Plump tycoons with smooth fat faces reclining in their deluxe cars on spotless white upholstery, often with a white man riding along. These seem to mutter continuously, cursing the traffic and probably the system as a whole. Right along ride young workers on rusted iron bikes, often late and out-of-breath. The traffic is broken once in a while by bullock-carts. But these are few and far between these days.

As the bus nears the factory, the managers wake up one by one, frown at the sun. Their faces slowly take on the taut, expressionless mask of command for the day. As the bus stops, the guards salute. The head of security steps ahead and starts talking with a rapid anxiety with the general manager. The girls move with bowed heads to the daily muster and then to the workstations. Another day of greatly accelerated production has started.

Our shirts are not grimy and sweaty. We have not breathed too many noxious fumes, nor waded foot-deep in squalor. The sky continues a beautiful blue and you can see mountains in the distance. Light still dances off peoples' bodies and they laugh often. Pune is not Bombay yet. But it is close, very close.