Shanivar Wada

Shanivar Wada is a fort built by the Peshwas of the Maratha empire in 1746. Everything inside the massive outer walls was destroyed by fire in 1828, leaving a solid stone gate adorned with some carved wood decorative elements and a large open area of various levels which was once the interior of the palace complex. You can walk around the top of the wall and on one side is the old city of Pune and on the other people are relaxing under the trees, reading, having conversations or picnicking with their families. It was a very relaxing place to go on a Sunday afternoon before I went out walking in search of some spicy food from the street vendors.

Perhaps I'm looking a little older or maybe the children of Pune are just extraordinarily polite but a young boy came up to me and wanted me to take a picture of him and referred to me as 'Uncle' in an endearing and respectful way. Within a minute he was joined by several friends who were all cheerfully trying to get my attention and speaking to me, mostly in Hindi and with a few English words thrown in. I told the first boy he could take my picture with my camera, thinking he might find it fun. I think he did but I forgot how heavy it was and I was a little afraid in his nervousness he might drop it.

I then took a photo of the kids, who seemed to enjoy posing for it even more than the sight of the picture itself. One of the boys Mother's was there standing to one side and she scolded the children, laughing, saying they had "no manners"! They were actually charming and very polite. I wanted to send them the photo by email. None of them had an email address, which surprised me a little, as it seems so many people have cell phones and are very technologically up to date. It made me wonder about the income levels of the visitors to the fort.

Public spaces, like the Shanivar Wada fort in India have one fee for foreigners and another, much lower rate for locals. I paid 200 Rupees and I believe the Indian fee is 5 Rupees. I'm not sure about children. My impression is that this price is low enough to make it a family friendly attraction and not prohibitively expensive for many local people. This is not dissimilar to Vancouver's Grouse Mountain, which also offers a different package for locals. The price difference between the tourist and the local rate in Canada is not nearly as drastic as in India but I think the discrepancy here is fair and reasonable, although I was somewhat taken aback at first. 

The old center of Pune is built near where the Mutha and the Mula rivers meet and flow east toward Solapur into a reservoir called the Yashawant Sagar, caused by a large dam. The college where I work is on Solapur Road on the outskirts of Pune. The Mutha river near Shanavar Wada has a wide bank on one side covered in lush green grass. Some cows grazed below me as I observed from the bridge. Perhaps 500 meters further there was a temple but here in the middle of a city of millions and 150 km from densely populated Mumbai where real estate is known to be extremely hard to come by, the cows had this big meadow more or less to themselves.  Perhaps in the rainy season the banks are flooded and later on the grass will dry up. I will wait and see how the seasons unfold here. In the mean time, the cows seem to have it pretty good.

On Friday the students and staff are going home to celebrate Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, which culminates on Thursday October 23rd. Two days remain this week to bring the current class project to a close. We are battling various technical goblins as well as the growing excitement about the approaching holiday. Tomorrow is going to be an interesting day!