8230;and all came tumbling down!

PUNE, June 18: Mobo's Hotel has been in the news over a long period of time for various reasons. In the 1950s, it was a leading westernised ...

PUNE, June 18: Mobo8217;s Hotel has been in the news over a long period of time for various reasons. In the 1950s, it was a leading westernised hotel patronised by race-goers. Even Raj Kapoor put up here many times during his sojourn to Pune. It was at Mobo8217;s that Pune8217;s first ever drive-in restaurant was born in the 1960s. It was also here, in the 1960s, when Pune witnessed a discotheque. Subsequently, the hotel shut down and government offices sprouted here.

Recently, Mobo8217;s was in the news because part of the building which housed the crucial staircase leading to these offices was on the verge of collapse, thus endangering human life. Recently, these offices were finally shifted, after a year of dilly-dallying. And all this happening to a building which has not skipped the keen eyes of the Pune Heritage Committee. The hotel falls in the Grade II category of the heritage buildings in Pune.

Now what?

Well, the story has got sadder by the day. The imposing structure looks wounded all over. The portion housing the staircase has been demolished by the Pune Municipal Corporation PMC, on the grounds that it endangered human life. The offices of the sub-divisional magistrate, the special executive magistrate and two sub-registrars were shifted last month, to the new administrative building opposite the Council Hall.

The PMC is justified in pulling down a dangerous structure where at least 300 people worked and another 200 visited, for work purpose. Each monsoon led to further deterioration of this building. The point is: it is a heritage building, according to the list prepared by the heritage committee.

The list, prepared in 1991 by the previous heritage committee the later one was born on October 1995 and is headed by former municipal commissioner P S Palande continues to gather dust, due to procrastination in the finalisation of the heritage list.

This is a stark example of how dilly-dallying in important matters led to the premature death of a landmark of the city. Soon, Mobo8217;s Hotel will be labelled an old and shoddy building, thus erasing its chequered history from the face of this soil. Now, only the notaries can be seen, tucked like mushrooms, in front of this building, awaiting customers for attestation. The glory seems to have faded forever.