As a Mumbaikar staying in Pune, there is always the comparison between the two cities playing on your mind. Walking through the streets, how the trees look, how the people smile, how the cars honk, if you observe closely, they really are different.

Today, walking back home from college in the evening I did something for the first time, I looked. I realised I never really looked at this street, despite it being my daily lane back home. Today I did. An uncle on the balcony of his bungalow saw me and smiled. For no reason at all. And it was these two thoughts that have led to me writing this right now.

I realised what Pune is. A complete city. A city of those who have made it and are happy with where they are. A city of old money teeming through the walls of those old and newly rebuilt Prabhat Road bungalows. With CA, Dr, or Adv. written before every name on the doorplates. A city where you don’t need to look for peace. Where peace finds you on its own as you walk through its quiet streets on an overcast evening.  

If you want to know what I really mean, try listening to ‘Kun Faya Kun’ standing in a Mumbai local sometime. And then listen to it strolling through a Pune street in the evening.

You feel your ambitions merge with your very being. Your dreams become one with you.

You still feel like running, but you don’t worry about if you will reach anymore, or where you’re going. You realise it’s all a leap of faith. And just one day, if you dream strong enough, you’ll own a bungalow on that street too. One day, perhaps, you can smile at an over pretentious kid walking through the street in front of your own balcony.

I recommend you find your street too, and that day, you’ll realise what Billy Joel meant by “Vienna waits for you.”

-       A.G.