OUR STORIES for our stay in
Delhi - Wednesday (Blog) / Thursday (Blog)
/ Friday (Blog)
(LAST INDIA POST IS HERE (12/April/18 - Amritsar and wrap-up of India Trip)
Pune: wow, so much to
say. We went there to meet up with Sidhee and her little sister Gargee. This
was a highlight for us. In our first meeting, Sidhee arranged for us to meet a
group of her uni friends. They are all studying Computer Engineering. The conversations
were so interesting, ranging from their roles in the new India, to Trump and
our anger about how he is dividing and destroying America. We moved on to a
restaurant with Sidhee and Ash; the other two had to get home with a one-hour
commute, and uni tomorrow. They do Saturday morning classes as well. Aussie
students take note!!! More wonderful conversations with these interesting kids.
The second event was
dinner at the Hande household. All intelligent women. Gargee, now in grade 7
sang “The hills are alive” from the Sound of Music in her beautiful voice.
Confidently maintaining total eye contract with me. I told her that she would
be my next “Maria” for sure. It was a very moving experience for me.
Mrs Hande, a research
scientist, now working in management in the insurance industry (based in
Australia) was also so interesting to talk with. She starts her shift early,
getting up at 3am to match the Australian time zones. With her mother, she
cooked us a delicious meal.
We also received
beautiful India shawls as gifts.
The third event was a
group with Sidhee and her friends from the university magazine, interviewing
Terrell. 4 hours and 2 pizzas later, I think they had some great material.
Then there was the
Sikh Uber driver who had lived in Australia. He was quite OK with Lahore. This
is the question that gets asked, by me, as a somewhat anxious mother and a son
heading off there.
And we also saw a
movie in a luxury theatre, called “The 15.17 train”. About a train shooting on
the way to Paris, which was interestingly, acted by the actual people involved
in it.
Pune 13 – 20th February
Not exactly sure when we decided to add Pune to our three-month travel of India. Sidhee was a computer student of mine in Dalian a very years earlier, she was one of the few people out of more than seven-billion people on earth who liked some of my textual-photo-art I have been posting for years and making eBooks of, so of course, she was at the top of my list of people to visit. My artist sister has liked some of my stuff too, (thinks sis) and that is for the world. Enough of me (as some would say). Visiting Sidhee and her family was a stop that we are glad we made. As Narda spoke of above, she had her sister in chorus and we had met their parents at the Chinese school. I had been communicating with Sidhee for at least six-months prior to leaving Adelaide for suggestions for our India trip.
Pune is not a tourist city, for example, our fridge at home is covered with magnets from places we have visited (the front and the sides – we may need a new fridge soon for more magnets) but in a week I did not find one. Perhaps the first place ever not to find one. Not being a tourist city gives a great chance to be local. However, saying all that…there is one tourist type that comes here. The 1970s ashram loving group that followed Rajneesh, an Indian spiritual guru, considered as a Godman; the Orange People, where a world-wide hippie-seeing phenomenon. Rajneesh later changed his name to Osho which is how he is referred to now. The Osho Centre is in Pune, near where we stayed. There was a rather large group of his followers in Adelaide. From 1981 – 1987 I was a tofu maker (really – see http://tofu.neuage.us/) and they were one of my customers. They did not have a very favourable reputation in Adelaide. In Oregon they had an even worse reputation. Wikipedia goes on to say “Rajneeshpuram was an intentional community in Wasco County, Oregon, briefly incorporated as a city in the 1980s, which was populated with followers of the spiritual teacher Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, later known as Osho.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajneeshpuram He did have 93 Rolls Royces (here is an image of them); which he said allowed him to “ride in a tranquillity that compares with the peace by Buddha,” and he was escorted out of the country at some point – interesting reading.
Nevertheless, Rajneesh is popular where we were staying. The people in charge of our airbnb let us know that they were his disciples. One of them liked to give long winded discourses about their hero. We brought up the scandals and Rolls Royces but our man-on-the-ground, in his purple robe defended the dude and said his many books he wrote are the thing to run one’s life by. We did not go to the ashram itself as not only is it expensive, but you have to pay for an HIV test on the way in because of their ‘touch therapy’ and etc. they are known for. There was a large poster of Rajneesh on the wall next to our bed that we put behind on a chair, as well as posters, cards of Rajneesh’s sayings around the flat. I never did get a fridge magnet. Bottom line, Rajneesh is still going strong even though the body of Rajneesh has left (which is how they say it). Our host said there was a big party as the cremated remains where tossed into the Mutha River across the street from us.
On our second day we crossed the bridge, got on a random bus and said we wanted to go to a shopping centre. The conductor found a seat for Narda, on a crowded bus, and after twenty-minutes or more stopped in the middle of the street in front of a large western style shopping centre, Phoenix Market City, we were nervous about getting off in traffic but realised there was no other way to get across the street. Narda found several women at a stall and managed a bit of discourse with a couple of them.
We were in hope of finding an English film but there was none available, so we just enjoyed the luxury of air-conditioning in a large modern mall that had more people working in shops than there were customers in the whole place. Not knowing which bus to take home we got a tuk tuk, auto-rickshaw, home.
As Narda said above we had a few times with Sidhee including a lengthy interview with me about technology and life in general. As one who is not a stranger to talking, especially about myself, I thoroughly enjoyed our visits. Sidhee will be one of the folks at the centre and head of technology. She is studying computing and is taking an interest at university in bio-tech which is our future. I totally expect here to come with nanobots that will make my brain better, perhaps helping me to download my brain, well, parts of it, so I can re-upload an enhanced version of it. Considering I am now seventy, I am putting a bit of pressure on Sidhee and her generation to get on with it. She wrote an article for her school’s magazine P.I.N.G titled ‘RNA nanodevices, programming living cells’, so she is well on her way. https://issuu.com/p.i.n.g./docs/ping13.1_digital_ pages 29 - 30.
We had our interview lunch at the Yoga Restaurant, a short walking distance from our flat. It is expensive and caters to ‘our type’ with pizza and the like. Another day we took another random bus and said we would go to the end of the line, which was a dirt road with the usual mixture of farm animals, people and vehicles.
Not being intimidated by not having a clue
where we are we proceeded forward. A few blocks later we were in an upcoming new housing residential real estate projects in Keshav Nagar. Dozens of twenty or
so floor apartment buildings. I forgot to take a photo so just picture a lot of
very modern buildings amongst old market stalls, dirt roads and farm animals.
It reminded us of when we lived in Dalian, China, where there were so many new
apartment blocks tossed about the landscape. Wondering what they looked like we
went into an office and said we were interested in viewing an apartment. When
asked where we lived we said where and the agent I suppose thought we were
local enough and she showed us through. The apartment was quite large with
ten-foot ceilings, a couple of balconies, and of course I asked if there was a
gym, fitness centre, so we were showed that and the swimming pool. The
three-bedroom apartment was twenty-five thousand rupees ($383 USD) per month
rental and the two-bedroom was 19,000 ($291USD). I was interested in the
three-bedroom apartment and being so cheap, outside of living on a dirt road
with farm animals and our having no intentions of living in Pune, at least at
present, I thought we had landed a great deal. We took her card and got a tuk
tuk to a nearby shopping centre for lunch.
Another day; they tend to blend on holiday, we took Uber to the old section wandered around, took some more random buses, found the Bund Garden cinema to watch “The 15:17 to Paris”. The theatre was ultra-luxurious with five rows 8 seats per row, totally reclining seats like a flatbed on a plane. Large and comfortable – 350 rupees ($5.37) for the two of us.
