Know No Neighbors!

I drove down the picturesque Mumbai-Pune Expressway, thinking about the meeting that had gone well that day, the client that we had bagged, and longing for a hot shower and a good book. Taking the sharp bend where the expressway ends and Pune begins, I smiled as I remembered how, not so long back, this little stretch was a deserted piece of land, with a single two-lane road running through it, the monotony interspersed by the occasional village kaka wobbling past on a decrepit bicycle, or the desultory horn of an aging truck. Today, thanks to the super-boom of real estate that Pune and other similar Indian cities are experiencing, this once-desolate stretch of Wakad has turned into an unrecognizable melee of construction and hoardings promising swanky lifestyles to Pune’s up and coming urban populace.