If someone were to put Koregaon Park in poetry, he or she would do it during the afternoon. Afternoons are sleepy, and in certain ways, they are also very quiet. Quiet in the sense that they never really embrace you with loud claims of or sunrise. They don't even incite you to come out of the cool shelters of your home listening to the consistent sound of your ceiling fan.
Afternoons, very silently, inconspicuously, and mildly, put you to sleep. Or make you sleepy. Or sometimes, even keep you awake. But whatever they do, they do very silently. And I think; when afternoons are being so afternoony with you, and you can’t find the drive to do absolutely anything, and you are just happy, or even numb, and content to ease away, write about KP. You would know why it’s is perfect reply to the torturous pampering of afternoons.
Shadows bathe the pathways that hush them as little and big cars stroll lazily. A few stranded pedestrians return the nonchalance of the rejecting auto riders with indifference, which vainly tries to disguise the disdain. A single sunbeam escapes the darkish clouds that envelop the city, and falls gently on an iron pillar at a junction. And just as one leaves the conversations and warmth of the carelessly placed chairs and tables of a coffee shop, a sudden surge of gusty wind escorts him to the smiling tar of the sleepy streets.
If the ridiculous one way streets irritate the daily commuters, I am pretty sure that the new ones would be delighted, simply because they give them an excuse to see some more streets. And then there will be quaint paintings of Indian villages and jungles giving a glimpse of the basic sameness of imagination, irrespective of a city or village.
It’s not like I haven’t seen wet roads go and vanish into a very close horizon with trees at either side bending down to form a tunnel in green, Bombay has them in galore. But for some reason, it’s just prettier in Pune. Probably because unlike in Bombay, one knows that wherever the road ends, it won’t lead to a starkly contrasting supposedly big street with potholes and bullying buses, but another green tunnel.
Potholes would be there, but they wouldn’t threaten, cars would be there, some of them would be as rash, but somehow, they would be different. It’s not far from reality, it’s the same things that one gets to see anywhere in this country, but the sameness somehow feels different. Comfortingly different.
KP is a musical experience. No, I don’t mean that everyone here swears by Dylan and philosophically articulates the other side of the moon. What I mean is, the ‘coolness’ here is ingrained, and not adapted. It’s a place where you wouldn’t be surprised if an odd Barista starts serving you beer.
Quirky pubs which play U2 in a way that the walls absorb just the right amount of music because well, they enjoy it too you know. Hell, there are coffee shops with posters of jazz artists and it fits in so perfectly that you start smiling.
I’m going to be leaving in a couple of days and though I’ve been here for 3 years, I’ll miss afternoons (and coffee spoons), about sleepy roads with names like lane 5, or the smell of beer mingled with the sound of A Hard Day’s Night
I’ll miss the red and brown mixing into each other in wet and heavy soil and fervent conversations between Ashoka’s and Gulmohars. Or cool winds slapping you as you get out of a claustrophobic flight, and streets dedicated to loafers. Or a very old two storied house filled with old books in fading yellows and bindings reminding of granddad, nurtured by an ancient man in suit who makes you an “old friend” after fifteen minutes of Ruskin Bond and D.H Lawrence.
It is perhaps, about a song waiting to be sung by Billy Joel. I don’t know.
