Tales From Sabz Baug

ABOUT THE BOOK:- These stories are about people I met in Pune or dreamed I met. People I knew or imagined I knew and whose lives I glimpsed or thought I peeped into over the years I visited the place. Pune caught my attention because it was so unlike the cosmopolitan metropolis Mumbai, where I had spent almost all my adult life. Pune was growing into a big city over the years I frequented it, but it never arrived at that cosmopolitan point. Only in the area around the old army cantonment, called Camp, did one ever see a Christmas tree, buy a Ramzan iftar treat or realize that Eid was around the corner. Only there have I overheard passersby speak to each other in English, hardly ever in the official national language, Hindi. For the rest it remained largely a city where students and people who had arrived from the hinterlands of Maharashtra for education or work, stayed on and had done so over generations. The language of intercourse remained Marathi even in sophisticated looking gyms that came up less than a decade ago. People also warmed up to you only if you spoke Marathi. There was something quaint, something quite charming about all of that, much as I believed I belonged to good old, mixed-up Bombay.