pune

Week before I received an invitation from an expat group I belong to, Everything Expats.  Everything Expats provides relocation services for expatriates and as part of that they also maintain a mailing list, host a forum where expats can trade info, and from time to time host get-togethers where foreigners can meet both other foreigners and local folks as well.  The invite was for the running of the Theur Hamlet Cup at Pune Racecourse on Sunday 4 August.  Seemed intriguing, so off we went.

The day was overcast – the monsoon is not quite done – and we had light mists of rain all through the afternoon.  Here’s a view of part of the Member’s Area and the public grandstand beyond:

Like many things here, the racecourse has an old-timey feel – one could easily picture Nicely-Nicely Johnson, Harry the Horse, or any other of Damon Runyon’s characters placing a bet at the tote window.  Horse racing has been happening in Pune since at least 1815.  In 1870 a Major General Burnett donated the current race course lands to the West India Turf Club; the race course is in the middle of the Pune Cantonment, a military district established by the British in 1817 and today maintained by the Indian Army.

Nowadays the race course is part of both the Pune social and commercial scene.  The “Theur Hamlet Cup” was sponsored by a local real-estate developer, Theur, who was promoting a new development, “The Hamlet”.  Far from Elsinore in both distance and conception, The Hamlet features horseback riding and also high-end bungalows with solar panels and other eco-minded features.  But the real-estate angle hardly impinged on us, mostly we wandered about, mingled and generally had a nice afternoon:

This is a turf club with real turf.  After each race a crew would slowly pace the grass of the track, fixing up the divots made by the race horses:

We all noticed that it was the women who did all the fixing; the men just trudged after dragging their rakes and talking.

What was the financial upshot of all this?  Well, despite losing Rs. 100 on the first race I bet – on a long-shot named Salsa – we had a winner and a placer on the two next races, greys picked by Morgan and Kim named Four-Star General and Hachiko respectively.  In the actual Theur Cup race, Mars was the favorite and Fortune Favors the #2.  Hoping boldness would be rewarded, I put another Rs. 100 on Fortune Favors to win, but it was not to be.  If not for that last bet I would have been up a big, big Rs. 30 (about $0.50).

I should have used a more scientific method, like these guys:

While you can get meat at Western-style supermarkets here, local people in India prefer going to a traditional butcher.  There are many such shops here, at different scales; the smallest are streetside stalls where passersby risk spatter from the butchering activities.  This picture is of the shop our driver Rupesh brought Kim to and that I visited first time last weekend.  Here you can get goat, lamb, chicken, plus an assortment of fishes.  On this day I got boneless lamb, which the butcher hacked off a hanging leg, then cubed for me with authoritative whacks on top of the stump cutting board. Price for 1 kg was Rs. 580, or just under $5 / lb.

This restaurant is next to the barber shop I patronize here in Pune.  I haven’t mustered the courage to examine the menu.

This helpful sign we saw at Rajiv Gandhi Zoological Park, here in Pune.  Based on the detailed description, we all assumed that perturbing, enticing, needling, nagging, riling and rankling probably would be Ok.

Of course, when the representative animals are like this:

it is probably best to leave sleeping snakes lie un-rankled, as it were.

Last weekend I went to do some shopping on MG Road.  (Mahatma Gandhi Road, virtually all cities in India have one.)  In Pune MG Road is a great place for shopping; if it’s physically for sale in the city, you can find it there.

A cute knick-knack sort of thing I saw:

A musical Lord Ganesha, with mouse accompanists.  (Like Lord Shiva rides a bull, Lord Ganesha rides a mouse.)

Shops you’ll find on MG Road range from typical Western brands – Adidas, Nike, Levi’s and the like – to a much greater range of Indian shops.  There’s also places like The Bombay Store, that carry Indian goods but cater to tourists or higher-income Indians.

Something that will seem odd to Westerners – certainly was odd to me – is this:

Notice how there are two shoe stores right next to each other?  This is kind of like having an Athlete’s Foot next to a Footlocker in the US.  Why open next to your competitor and give buyers the opportunity to easily comparison shop?  Apparently the logic in India is people won’t bother to make the trip to a place where there is only a single vendor – competition right next door is implicit proof this is a going commercial concern.

I saw a lot of things on MG Road.  I really wanted to just get a sense of what was there, though I did have one idea for buying, namely: Simple things I could bring back to US as presents.  India is famous for textiles, so I thought maybe scarves or simple kameez would make good gifts.  Another thing on my mind was shirts.  I have read several times that garments can easily be custom-made here – one place I read this was in IBM-colleague Bob Carlsen’s book Sacred Dust on Crowded Streets.  That was on my mind as well.

As it happened I found myself in this tiny place:

Like many Indian shops it is very narrow – 2, 2 1/2 meters side to side – but very deep, stretching back 20 meters or more.  This was a cloth store and the shop-man, a Mr. Gobinda, was very excited to show me all he had.  It now occurred to me that kameez was too ambitious of a goal – all the female recipients I could think of would very much prefer to take their own choices rather than mine – but scarves seemed a doable thing.

And there were a lot.  Here are some I ended up with:

These are sheer silk, all with paisley patterns.  I also obtained some shawls, like this one:

These shawls are made of a fine wool thread; the company that makes them is named Oswal; I got 5 different color combinations.

Thinking of shirts I inquired of Mr. Gobinda.  To no one’s surprise, shirts could be had.  Excellent shirts, the very best.  Made precisely for you. Our shirts are famous, famous I tell you.  Observe this cloth, sir, please feel it.  What, the color does not please you?  I remove it, I discard it, I send it far away.  Perhaps these other colors?  And trousers, sir … ?

Excuse me, I digress.  40 minutes, several cups of tea, and one short stroll to the tailor shop later, I had arranged for 3 Western-style business shirts, of 3 colors in simple cotton, and 2 kurta-style shirts, in coarse red and brown silk.  The results you see at the top photo.

The cost of all this?

•  10 silk scarves, each 21” x 72” (plus 1 “for free”): Rs. 1000 ($19).

•  5 fine wool shawls, each 38” x 82”: Rs. 2,000 ($38).

•  Fabric for 5 shirts, 3 cotton (blue, cream & white), 2 silk (red & brown): Rs. 3,100. ($58.50)

•  Sewing of 5 shirts, 2 kurta-style with simple collars, 3 Western style with business collar and cuffs: Rs. 1,000 ($19).

As I recall the cotton was about Rs. 200 or 250 per meter; because I had long-sleeved shirts I believe 3.5 meters were needed per shirt.  The silk was more, ~ Rs. 300 a meter, I can’t recall exactly, but I needed less because of short-sleeves. Off top of my head I have no direct reference points for buying fabric.  But I buy shirts from Land’s End, LL Bean, etc. all the time.  There a single shirt is at least $30 – let alone 5.

Finally …  tailoring for 5 hand-sewn shirts, for $20?  It boggles the Western mind, until you do the math from an Indian perspective.  The tailor has made a great many shirts before, so he knows what he is doing.  As a guess, maybe it took him 2 full days to make my 5 shirts.  If he is able to work at this level 30 days out of each month, he makes Rs. 15,000 per month, as much as a driver or many other average Indian people.  And if because of his skill and experience, it only took him 1 day in all, then his earnings would be Rs. 30,000 a month, even better still.

I’ll let people draw their own economic conclusions.  I’m still thinking of all the scarves and shawls, the tiny 8” x 8” tailor shop, Mr. Gobinda’s cheerful mercantilism, and the straight-line stitching on my new shirt-collars.

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.