DONKEYS and the proverbial IRONY of LIFE!!!

The recently concluded CYG-08 games in Pune, not only catapulted Pune into the limelight as a city which can host sports events of international repute but did loads for the improvement of the infrastructure in the city. As was predicted the area immediately in the vicinity of the games village was polished like never before and to give a biased view, the most significant change which happened in Pune was to SUS ROAD.

I know there is a grammatical error in the last sentence of the para where I have written “which happened in Pune was to SUS ROAD” and that the purists would argue that as SUS ROAD is a place the sentence should have read “which happened in PUNE was at SUS ROAD”, but then I am referring to the actual ROAD and not the place J

I have been in Pune for the last 6 years now. I did my engineering from Pune and after 4 years I was pretty confident that I at least heard the names of all the places in Pune. But when I started hunting for my living quarters after I came back from Mysore, I heard of SUS ROAD and I made a face which conveyed not only disdain but outright dejection too. When I was taken to Sus Road (by my broker of course, without him I would never gone there to get a flat) these were the things which I saw:

(Forgive my level of detail, but then I was very skeptical of the place and was eager to take in every single detail)
1) A few completed buildings with people staying in them….good sign :)
2) 2 hotels and a few road side hawkers. 1 hotel had a bar…..awesome :)
3) Many garages….whatever…(I didn’t have a BULLET then)
4) Infosys, Wipro buses parked at the side of the road…cool…less of walking
5) Shepherds…(STUMPED??????)

The 5th item really hooked me onto Sus road. Hang on, the shepherds were not herding goats or cattle but DONKEYS!!!!!

I tried to relate one thing to another and found out how the Sus Road ecology needed the DONKEYS so much. There were many construction sites which needed a constant supply of bricks and other building materials. But then the obvious question; what happened to the trucks? Well the DONKEYS carried the material as a supplement to the trucks. Also with the apparent lack of dogs on Sus Road at that time, the DONKEYS found it a less menacing place.

A bit of deep thinking on the DONKEY issue gave me immense satisfaction. Sus Road was (and even is today) thronged by software professionals, the exponents of the so called KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY of INDIA. Having hordes of DONKEYS (considered a symbol of foolishness and stupidity) alongside them (or should I say us) was LIFE’S way to humble these KNOWLEDGE WORKERS!!! The proverbial IRONY of LIFE!!!

However the ecology of SUS ROAD was disturbed some 25 days before the games began in Pune. Kalmadi’s men took over the road and changed the face of Sus Road. Let me tell you, CHANGED is a very subtle word to express the changes which happened. The roads were widened, pavement with power-blocks were made, dividers were introduced, signages and neon signs were put up, zebra crossings were painted (even if there were no traffic signals, for future expansion I feel :) ) and most importantly the road was cleared of all the hawkers who on the earlier narrow roads were contributing to traffic snarls. There was one more thing which was changed maybe for ever, the DONKEYS vanished, without a whimper, without a bray L

“Ekdum foreign main hai aisa lagta hai”, “This must be Pune’s best road, dude” were some of the comments I heard from people.

After the games, the hawkers came back to there old positions. The power block pavements serve them well. The widened road with streetlights help smoothen the traffic, the benches fitted after every 100m at the far end of the road comfort the love birds.

But there are no DONKEYS around anymore :( . The IRONY of LIFE which was staring the KNOWLEDGE WORKER in his/her face is lost :(


But then wait do I sense an ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN coming….