A tour of Pune's back alleys

On the last day of our course in Pune, India, most of us were sick of curries. Although the curries served at the training centre was generally excellent, I have never been a curry person in the first place. Butter chicken, rogan josh, mutton curry etc. Whatever.

So we went to a quiet place called Swiss Cheese Garden restaurant which was located in an alley with other funky-sounding restaurants called Soul and Kisha. Pizzas, pastas and other carbo dishes (read : no curries) were the order of the day.

On the way back at 11.30 pm, someone wanted to check out the redlight district in Pune. The ladies in the group were game and who was I to argue? Anyway, checking out the seedy, underbellies of big cities always give you a balanced perspective of the city's social fabric. It is like Singapore. Beneath the glamour of Orchard Road, posh Dempsey and spanking new Vivo City are the dark alleys of Geyland and Joo Chiat where sex trade flourishes and foreign workers from China or India hunt for affordable meat. Incidentally, what is the face of Singapore? A bit of Shenton Way and Geylang, I guess.

Pune is considered the Oxford of India since many grand learning institutions are located here. But if one is truthful, it is just another big hot and dusty city. Not as overpopulated as New Delhi but not as steeped in culture and history as Jaipur. A first timer to India will easily be overwhelmed by the cacophany of noises and the energy sapping heat. Waves of unwashed humanity flowed around you relentlessly. Dirty street kids and beggars with babies knocked at the windows and gave you the muted look for help. The streets are dirty and traffic is death-defying. Cars are always honking (even now at 2 am, the cars are blasting their honks non-stop at motorists or no one in particular to get out of the way).

I have seen them all before really. But the red light district in Pune takes human depravation to a new depth.

The streets are darkly lited, narrow and filled with rubbish that have not been cleared for days. The walls of the houses are beyond dilapidated. Run-down is an understatement. Prostitutes lined the streets in their dirty sarees. One is not sure whether they are begging or looking for business. Dirty children roamed like animals around their mothers who stood around passively. All of the women are not attractive and some appeared to have given up on life itself and sat numbly in some dark corners. Groups of men roamed the honey-combed streets but they don't appear to be looking for pleasure; perhaps just browsing or just enjoying looking at the misery of others. Homeless are lying on the roads in some corners, trying to sleep away their lives. It is really the kind of heart-breaking poverty that I read about in old books about India, Bombay and Calcutta - pre-Independence from the British. It is hard to say anything when desperate poverty is staring you in the face. While Geylang is sleezy with all those Chinese women standing around in skin baring shirts, at least it does not exhibit the kind of human suffering that the back streets of Pune do.

Our driver joked that the place needed a "wash". I think the place needed not just a wash but a full-blown fire storm, followed by an exorcism and then a Toyota automobile plan to cleanse it of the filth and hate as well as to give employment to the women.