Our local neighbourhood here in Pune is a lovely one.
As part of our introduction to the area we take guests on a neighbourhood walk to help familarise them with the some of the local people, temples and shops and to try and make them more comfortable walking around in a different environment on their own.
I love this walk, anytime in India you can see amazing stuff, and a lot of it happens right on our door step.
Yesterday I went with Sailee and Dinaz two of our local staff girls who live in Phule Nagar on the neighbourhood walk introducing our six new staff members to where they will be living.
Alandi Road is a busy main road, it has two-five lanes of traffic depending on what time of day, how many cars bikes, lorries, vans and bikes are out there. Crossing it can sometimes be pretty tricky. We now have the convenience of a bridge over Alandi road saving us from the nightmare. But it is a skill everyone should learn. How to safely cross the road in India takes some bravery, committment a little bit of stupidity and then just going for it.
I rather enojoyed the teenage boys hitching a ride on the top of the truck in the above pic. They were waving at me taking their photo. Everyone wants their photo taken in India.
The lovely Sailee and Dinaz on either end of the group tour!
First stop on the walk was to one of the houses on the opposite side of Alandi Road. Padma who is one of our ladies who works in the kitchen (and makes us all awesome food) lives there with her husbands family.
This is Tarabai. Padma's mother in law, and
also a former Sangam staff member. She is 84 and her husband is 94. She
speaks great english and welcomed us all into her home.
It's
really good that we get to vist local houses. They are always so
wonderfully looked after and the families welcome us so warmly,
answering all our random questions and introducing all the family.
Tarabai showed us into her kitchen with her huge variety of cooking
supplies and utensils and also inside her spice tin. Which smells
delicious!
We then walk into the Phule Nagar colony, it is considered a middle class colony and homes around 300 families, many of Sangam's staff live here.
This lady was setting up her vegetable stall on the corner of the road. I liked that her stall was actually a bed frame. Everyone has creative ways to use different things here.
Sailee then let me talk about Ganesh as he is my favourite Hindu God outside his Temple. I love Hindu God stories and there are so many of them. How Ganesh got his elephant head is always a good introduction story to the mysterious ways of the Gods. I also like to ring the bell hanging in the entrance to let the Gods know I am there.
We walk a little further up the road and there is the Mosque and Dinaz tells us about the muslim prayer times and that they face west when praying towards Meccah, and then backing directly onto the Mosque is a Church, and then across the road another temple this one dedicated to the Godess Durga, and further down the road is a Buddhist Temple. It always amazes me that in this one small neighbourhood so many religions live side by side with no issues. UK and other countries should all visit Phule Nagar to see how easy it is to love your neighbour no matter who they are. Everyone is the same on the inside!
We walk further and wave to Sailee's mum who is outside their house, she asks if we are here for a visit but not today. We just point out which house so the SVs know for future visits.
We walk past the corporation school, which is closed for the summer holidays, noticeable by the amount of kids playing out in the streets. Running around playng cricket, on bikes and chasing each other with pots of water in the heat.
We show the Svs our Doctors office, hopefully no one needs to go there anytime soon.
Stop at the rickshaw stand and wave to some of the familiar faces there and then it's time to actually cross back over that busy road to get back to Sangam.
Miraculously the cars and bikes, lorries, buses and every other mode of transport seem to melt away and we stroll across quite casually, arriving at the Datta temple one of the last stops on the tour where a wedding has been held recently and everyone is clearing away all the decorations and mess from inside.
Sailee then leads us along to the entrance of Indira Nagar, which is the slum community that is right next door to Sangam which was formed in the 1980's as an authorised to clear the streets of Pune for the arrival of the Queen. Totally sounds like something the British would expect right?
It is a legal slum meaning the government owns the land, and permits people to live there, and the houses belong to the occupants. It is a middle to lower class colony and has the same amount of land as sangam which is 7 acres, yet houses over 10,000 people in this small space, which I find incredible. Again many of the Sangam staff live here and the mosque we hear the regular call to prayer to is very close to the entrance. You can see the minaret in the picture below.
