Some Local Sights

Today I took a bit of a walk – 3 kms out and 3 kms back – to look around near where I live.  To the west of me is Koregaon Park, somewhere I know pretty well now, an upscale area (for Pune) of restaurants and shops.  Today I headed east to see what I could see.

There was no shortage of livestock out today. Here a young man was leading a herd of goats. Goat-meat here is called mutton; in US, UK and most western countries we take mutton to be sheep or older lamb.

I saw many buffalos as well, like this large specimen browsing at some trash:

These animals just burst out into traffic, I had to scramble to get a shot as they galloped by:

(Where they ran out of was the access road to the Hard Rock Café.  Perhaps they know something about the culinary practices there that we don’t?)

This station was setup on an empty stretch of the road, apparently a service provided by the government:

An impressive list of ailments, to be sure.  None of the locals seemed to be interested, however.

I passed a playground, with kids playing, and older women in saris sitting by and watching:

A more common sight is this, where kids in humbler surroundings play with whatever is to hand: stones, sticks, an old tire:

About half-way out on my jaunt I saw this lady:

I expect she was coming from the market, which I reached just a bit further on:

There were many fruits and vegetables here, and doubtless more workaday goods in the lanes and stalls further back.

Anyone who comes here will quickly get used to billboards like this:

I have to say I find the juxtaposition of these fantasies of luxury with the day to day reality of corrugated metal lean-tos and goats in the backyard to be more than a little jarring.  I’ll have to do a post dedicated to this; like the sentiment above, “Only the attitude is real”, these Indian ads intensely emphasize pampering yourself, that you deserve luxury, and that indulgence is good.

I’ll close with another ad I saw, one a bit more practical:

Now that is real.