Kolhapur’s answer to the Spice Girls of the world. The sign post outside this particular hair cutting saloon would in the strictest traditions of phonetic transpositions from Marathi to English beg you to consider the insides of the shack as “ B-A-V-D-A B-O-Y-I-J” – the best salon in the entire good god’s creation to get a haircut (strictly for men). That was the first sight that greeted me as I sojourned into the Maratha heartland on a quick recon mission to know more about the place that I would be calling home for at least the near future. Kolhapur comes across as quite the quaint little town that you would think of it to be. It comes replete with its set of “you-call-them-roads?” roads, obnoxious spelling neon signage, tremendously ritualistic Mahalakshmi temples, surprisingly board-able cheap hotels, shacks which pass themselves off as supermarkets (of course they still insist on spelling it as supar-markit) and last but not the least scores of shops selling those marquee Kolhapuri chappals. Nothing out of the ordinary at least to someone who has spent a good part of the entire of last year in the by-lanes that make up the rural map of the country but still there’s something in the air that makes this place stand out among all the places that I have been to yet.
The first reason for Kolhapur to be in the special mantle would of course have to be that for the first time in more than one and a half year, I have been stationed at a place long enough to unpack and lay my toiletries on the shelf. The company finally decided that enough was actually enough and it was time that the menace called me was fixed to spot so as to localize and try to minimize the disastrous consequences of my bare minimum presence. So I found myself taking up the post of a design engineer at the machine building unit of the company which they could have located anywhere in the world actually but then thought of the most non descript locale to make people rot and thus this unit was born. The town boasts of an airport which has the silliest reason for existence till date – a single flight! Yes that too an Air Deccan (aptly renamed Air Dhakkan by the enterprising souls of the place) which decides to land or not purely on the whims of the pilot or the stewardess or any other passenger! Lore has it that they actually have a raffle on board (you know Deccan. They are too “no-frills” to organize a lottery) to pick up the passenger who gets to decide whether they want to stop over at the place or not. Once you are over the initial shock of the airport, the national highway number 4 – part of the Golden Quadrilateral (the signpost tells you in decaying letters – much like Vajpayee’s knee) greets you and you realize that this has to be the birthplace for all traffic rules in the world. You know how they tell you that the scientific method to solve the problem begins by defining the problem first? Well then this highway happens to be the very definition of traffic chaos. They have a notional divide for the left and right side of the road but someone forgot to mention to the drivers here that this separation was not meant to make 2 roads out of one. I guess they took the entire ideal of buy one get one free a little too far.
The highway gives way to the town road and every bone in your body is tested for fatigue failure in a stretch of about 2 kms. Guess where the army got the entire idea of obstacle courses from? If you survive this shock and your heart is still somewhere within the rib cage, then “Welcome to the City of Chatrapati Shahuji Maharaj”. Thankfully they only used the highway to hell as an entrance to the city and decided that the souls brave enough to have weathered the road deserved better treatment once inside the city limits. So they paved the roads. God bless the local authorities. As you enter the place, it’s like any other town that I have seen till date. Dhabas lining the road waiting for the truck drivers to have their breakfast greet you with their “in-your-face” banners, petrol pumps doing brisk business and of course long abandoned police posts. The scenery that greets you inside the confines of the town are reminiscent of any town that was forgotten when they decided to follow the Gregorian calendar and thrust upon its existence the fact that the rest of the world is now in the 21st century. Given a fruitful representation in the Gregorian council, I am sure the Chatrapatis of the place would have bargained for a derailment of the process of setting the clock of human progress ticking by a good couple of centuries. But here I am one of the most optimistic of the gods few good men and I always look at the bright side of things. So let’s forgive and forget and move on shall we?
Next on the list has to be dwelling for the initial few days and I am pleasantly surprised (an emotion that has all the more significance for me because of the amazing rarity with which it decides to manifest itself in my life) to find hotels that are not only cheap but eminently board-able. The rooms are airy and best of all, the hotel staff has not yet come to realize the ideal of all men being created equal the effect of which is that you are treated nothing less than a god or a semi/ demi version of above or in my case a pay per use customer (who in most cases takes prominence over the previous two). As remarked earlier in some post or the other the cellular revolution seems to have caught up well with the junta here too and they are well on their way to a revolution because of the same. I am sure that your eyebrows have done their arching exercise at the mention of Kolhapur and couture in the same sentence but let me elaborate. I am convinced by the very rate at which Kolhapuris are answering their mobile phones that they are well on their way to designing a dhoti with a pocket for the same and if that is not a fashion revolution of the highest order then I don’t know what is.
While I am still considering the ins and outs of Hicksville, I am surprised to note a Mercedes Benz zip by. I tap my head on one side and dismiss this as a hangover of Indonesia where they were plying as lowly taxis. A few steps more and I am distinctly made aware that a Prado wants me to scoot my heavy frame off the road so that it can cross over. No doubt mere hallucinations these. Another few steps and I dare not say those words for I am afraid that I might have to search for a Marathi shrink before anything else in this place. Is it a streak of light, is it a phantom menace? No it’s a goddamn DC redesigned Mercedes S Class in all its splendor jostling for space on the road with a cow who has decided that the particular piece of tar it is presently standing on contrasts with its complexion quite nicely and that this is where it shall attain nirvana. So hell to all the humans and redesigned Benz’s can go jump into the lake. The riddle gets solved next morning when I learn that the region happens to be extremely prosperous on account of the cash crop farming especially sugar cane and so it is that Prados and Benzs are quite the short change for these fellows and had the road authorities been kind enough to build ones that had a lifetime more than a 16 day insect, I am sure all the hullabaloo over Tendulkar’s Ferrari would have gone quite unnoticed.
Slowly the image that emerges from the dust of the roadside is not very rustic if I may put it that way. The string of pleasant surprises pleasantly enough continued through the rest of the sojourn as I discovered a Smokin’ Joe’s Pizza outlet and a Café Coffee Day inside the municipal limits of the city (and for someone who goes by the name of Saurabh Dey, the discovery is as epochal as Newton discovering gravity or Archimedes’ Eureka moment albeit with clothes). So it is that the last few days have been not at all bad even though I am in constant fear of losing the touch with Bengali (my mother tongue) what with all the ikdun and tikdun Marathi that I am constantly having to mouth for daily subsistence. Another thing causing a tremendous amount of concern is the red as oxygenated blood mixed with iron oxide for added effect Kolhapuri cuisine especially the dum biryanis that these fellowa dish out with such fanfare. For someone who is not accustomed to these parts, my insides have on their own learnt that red means danger. (take that you biologists – claiming that cell differentiation took away the power of rationalization from all somatic cells of the body other than the brain. Guess their insides never shook hands with Kolhapuri dum birayani.)
The coming days promise to unravel a lot more about the place and am looking forward to reveling in the friendly winter sun of the place. And of course there is the unending excitement of being an esteemed customer of Bawda Boys isn’t there?
The first reason for Kolhapur to be in the special mantle would of course have to be that for the first time in more than one and a half year, I have been stationed at a place long enough to unpack and lay my toiletries on the shelf. The company finally decided that enough was actually enough and it was time that the menace called me was fixed to spot so as to localize and try to minimize the disastrous consequences of my bare minimum presence. So I found myself taking up the post of a design engineer at the machine building unit of the company which they could have located anywhere in the world actually but then thought of the most non descript locale to make people rot and thus this unit was born. The town boasts of an airport which has the silliest reason for existence till date – a single flight! Yes that too an Air Deccan (aptly renamed Air Dhakkan by the enterprising souls of the place) which decides to land or not purely on the whims of the pilot or the stewardess or any other passenger! Lore has it that they actually have a raffle on board (you know Deccan. They are too “no-frills” to organize a lottery) to pick up the passenger who gets to decide whether they want to stop over at the place or not. Once you are over the initial shock of the airport, the national highway number 4 – part of the Golden Quadrilateral (the signpost tells you in decaying letters – much like Vajpayee’s knee) greets you and you realize that this has to be the birthplace for all traffic rules in the world. You know how they tell you that the scientific method to solve the problem begins by defining the problem first? Well then this highway happens to be the very definition of traffic chaos. They have a notional divide for the left and right side of the road but someone forgot to mention to the drivers here that this separation was not meant to make 2 roads out of one. I guess they took the entire ideal of buy one get one free a little too far.
The highway gives way to the town road and every bone in your body is tested for fatigue failure in a stretch of about 2 kms. Guess where the army got the entire idea of obstacle courses from? If you survive this shock and your heart is still somewhere within the rib cage, then “Welcome to the City of Chatrapati Shahuji Maharaj”. Thankfully they only used the highway to hell as an entrance to the city and decided that the souls brave enough to have weathered the road deserved better treatment once inside the city limits. So they paved the roads. God bless the local authorities. As you enter the place, it’s like any other town that I have seen till date. Dhabas lining the road waiting for the truck drivers to have their breakfast greet you with their “in-your-face” banners, petrol pumps doing brisk business and of course long abandoned police posts. The scenery that greets you inside the confines of the town are reminiscent of any town that was forgotten when they decided to follow the Gregorian calendar and thrust upon its existence the fact that the rest of the world is now in the 21st century. Given a fruitful representation in the Gregorian council, I am sure the Chatrapatis of the place would have bargained for a derailment of the process of setting the clock of human progress ticking by a good couple of centuries. But here I am one of the most optimistic of the gods few good men and I always look at the bright side of things. So let’s forgive and forget and move on shall we?
Next on the list has to be dwelling for the initial few days and I am pleasantly surprised (an emotion that has all the more significance for me because of the amazing rarity with which it decides to manifest itself in my life) to find hotels that are not only cheap but eminently board-able. The rooms are airy and best of all, the hotel staff has not yet come to realize the ideal of all men being created equal the effect of which is that you are treated nothing less than a god or a semi/ demi version of above or in my case a pay per use customer (who in most cases takes prominence over the previous two). As remarked earlier in some post or the other the cellular revolution seems to have caught up well with the junta here too and they are well on their way to a revolution because of the same. I am sure that your eyebrows have done their arching exercise at the mention of Kolhapur and couture in the same sentence but let me elaborate. I am convinced by the very rate at which Kolhapuris are answering their mobile phones that they are well on their way to designing a dhoti with a pocket for the same and if that is not a fashion revolution of the highest order then I don’t know what is.
While I am still considering the ins and outs of Hicksville, I am surprised to note a Mercedes Benz zip by. I tap my head on one side and dismiss this as a hangover of Indonesia where they were plying as lowly taxis. A few steps more and I am distinctly made aware that a Prado wants me to scoot my heavy frame off the road so that it can cross over. No doubt mere hallucinations these. Another few steps and I dare not say those words for I am afraid that I might have to search for a Marathi shrink before anything else in this place. Is it a streak of light, is it a phantom menace? No it’s a goddamn DC redesigned Mercedes S Class in all its splendor jostling for space on the road with a cow who has decided that the particular piece of tar it is presently standing on contrasts with its complexion quite nicely and that this is where it shall attain nirvana. So hell to all the humans and redesigned Benz’s can go jump into the lake. The riddle gets solved next morning when I learn that the region happens to be extremely prosperous on account of the cash crop farming especially sugar cane and so it is that Prados and Benzs are quite the short change for these fellows and had the road authorities been kind enough to build ones that had a lifetime more than a 16 day insect, I am sure all the hullabaloo over Tendulkar’s Ferrari would have gone quite unnoticed.
Slowly the image that emerges from the dust of the roadside is not very rustic if I may put it that way. The string of pleasant surprises pleasantly enough continued through the rest of the sojourn as I discovered a Smokin’ Joe’s Pizza outlet and a Café Coffee Day inside the municipal limits of the city (and for someone who goes by the name of Saurabh Dey, the discovery is as epochal as Newton discovering gravity or Archimedes’ Eureka moment albeit with clothes). So it is that the last few days have been not at all bad even though I am in constant fear of losing the touch with Bengali (my mother tongue) what with all the ikdun and tikdun Marathi that I am constantly having to mouth for daily subsistence. Another thing causing a tremendous amount of concern is the red as oxygenated blood mixed with iron oxide for added effect Kolhapuri cuisine especially the dum biryanis that these fellowa dish out with such fanfare. For someone who is not accustomed to these parts, my insides have on their own learnt that red means danger. (take that you biologists – claiming that cell differentiation took away the power of rationalization from all somatic cells of the body other than the brain. Guess their insides never shook hands with Kolhapuri dum birayani.)
The coming days promise to unravel a lot more about the place and am looking forward to reveling in the friendly winter sun of the place. And of course there is the unending excitement of being an esteemed customer of Bawda Boys isn’t there?
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