KAHIHI

Hinjewadi, a large land mass made of farms, hillocks, mountains, and greenery all around, has witnessed staggering growth in last 6-7 years. The property prices have gone up 300 times. A farmer at one time who hailed his bullock cart as his pride, today drives Boleros, Scorpios, Fords – plurals because a single farmer owns and has the capacity to maintain multiple vehicles. The only greenery or the green shades you can see today are the green paints, if at all used, on the exteriors of the constructions that have sprouted like a swarm of locust on the same farmlands.

Jai Ho IT, Information Technology or simply said Software, Computers et al.

Hinjewadi and the surrounding areas are now thickly populated with IT professionals, an elite mass enjoying the pride that banking professionals enjoyed once upon a time. By elite I mean, one who doesn’t care how much is spent and being ignorant of the fact that they are the biggest contributors to the prevailing inflation, at least in Hinjewadi and surrounding areas – one kg of tomato in a near remote area costs Rs. X, the same will cost Rs. X+2 in an area where IT professionals reside; just because vendors think IT guys are rich, and also because IT guys don’t bargain, it’s against their pride to negotiate.

Yes, it does sound foolish.

While this habit of IT professionals does agitate me, I might still pardon them for negotiation is skill, and not everyone can master it. However, what stirs me up ecstatically is that these professionals who pledge to work “for the logic”, “by the logic”, many a times go “off the logic”.

Once a beautiful, peaceful pensioner’s paradise has now turned into a mess full of traffic, pollution. While the advent of IT in Pune has kept India shinning, the residents of are left whining. I have heard many lament about “amchya velela hey asa nhavta” (it wasn’t like this during our times). I will explain.

Reaching Hinjewadi IT Park requires you to cross a bridge, if you are coming from Wakad or Aundh. That the traffic chokes at the ends of the bridge requires no logic to understand. Also it is exciting and despicable of course to see that a bridge has been built perpendicular to the Mumbai-Pune-Bangalore highway, imagine there is a signal on a national highway. I don’t understand which engineer’s (again a class that takes pride in being logic and calculations maestro) analysis and implementation that is.

Now these IT guys flock to office in the morning and are rushing home in the evening. Everyone is in a hurry. Thus begins overtaking. Bikers are experts in this (Pune has also been known for its two wheeler population), they don’t leave a narrowest gap in which they don’t creep in, perhaps they can even ride their two wheelers on Shilpa Shetty’s curvy narrow waist. In the angst and the quest to find gaps, each one tries to get into the opposite lane thus blocking the traffic coming from opposite direction. A long serpentine queue progresses then on their side. It gets real chaotic on the middle of the bridge from where neither can you take a U turn nor can you jump off the bridge. In the haste to save few minutes, hours are wasted in that traffic congestion. But nobody understands this logic. No one wants to follow the traffic rules or the lane discipline. And all this by the same IT professionals who when in foreign countries (onsite) follow minutest of the rule. However, as soon as they land in India, discipline shreds off, logic is dumped in the trash bin, and hypocrisy creeps in.

“Oh it’s so pathetic in India. Go and see in that country, how everything is perfect, no traffic, no pollution,” they crib sitting in the car on the same bridge on which they had once tried to overtake and now are spitting out gargles of Bisleri water.

You utter a word in Marathi and they would empty the backdoor godown of appreciation if you are a non-Maharashtrian. See the Marathi channels. That’s how many Maharashtrians are.

To go a little back, when Chandrababu Naidu was a toddler, coordination was par excellence among Telugus and Marathis. The basic union movement was raised on the foundation and pillars that Telugus constructed. They knew and spoke Marathi so well, that after an hour long lecture when the orator’s name was declared as say, Reddy, the workers, attending the meetings, had an expression of awe on their faces, unlike a one-word-wow of the day.

Construction worker in building construction business was too a Telugu specialty. They gave their sweat to Mumbai, literally. Anybody might have ruled Mumbai and Maharashtra, yet there was no clash among them and Marathis, whatsoever, as they worked honestly, establishing brotherhood with local people.

On this backdrop, the ex-Chief Minister of Andhra comes to the border as if invading a different country, eats biryani, sleeps in an air-conditioned room after that, and later goes back to his state, declaring that Maharashtra police beat him up! In the history of human hospitality, no atithi has lied so promptly after a solid food offered to him.

“Put on your dancing shoes” – was a famous and popular song during the high-school-attending days of Chandrababu Naidu. Failing to recall that, he tried to act by rolling on the ground, complaining about beds. He was seen sleeping with his shoes on instead!

Maharashtra, with a large heart, didn’t object to Andhra’s dam that had brought the backwater well within the Maharashtra territory.

With such a pack of loose script, the Neta decided to shoot his lousy drama on the backdrop of Krishna water and had to run away before the Muhurta clap. Instead, he heard other kind of claps shooing him away from the scene by the local residents of the location, i.e. Babhali. That was very much cinema style.

While shooting ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’, a 1984 Hollywood film with our own Amrish Puri as a villain, in Kamshet near Lonavala in Maharashtra, 3000 people of the region helped director, Steven Spielberg with total cooperation. In Babhali those many people whisked away Chandrabbu. The difference in between the Abhineta and Neta is clear.

The second schedule of this runaway Neta was in his territory. Many mob scenes of delirium were there. But his chief minister under orders of 10, Janapth did not allow to shoot the sequel. So also the people from the Karimnager are opposed Chandrababu, which is obvious from the letters of protest appearing in Deccan Chronicle.

In 230 BC, Saatwahans of Junnar near Pune ruled Kotilingala, now Karimnagar of Andhra, a part of Telangana and part of Krishna Godavari belt. Chandrababu has come to visit and claim the water after two and a quarter centuries.

His father-in-law, NTR was an Abhineta who acted in more than 300 movies. He had seen his ups and downs after entering into politics. In the time of Chandrababu’s childhood many of the auto biographies written with titles like ‘My Son’s Father’ or ‘My mother’s Daughter’ or likes.

Chandrababu, if decides to write an auto biography could take above mentioned title. The relationship has no genetic connection as it is for the titles having son, father, daughter, mother etcetera. So it is very apt. NTR was a great actor or showman first, and a leader afterwards. That Chandrababu is not. He is a leader first and an actor afterwards, now a flop, albeit.

What a difference!