At the expressway146;s end

The three-and-a-half-hour commute 8212; it would be a half hour shorter if we could cut out that half-hour halt at the food plaza en route 8212; is a snap. It isn8217;t just the hourly, airconditioned Volvo service run by the state road transport corporation, no less. You can take your choice of three express commuter trains, including a Shatabdi with business-class seats and white-gloved service, every morning and evening. And there are no wait lists here. Walk to the platform in Mumbai8217;s grand, gothic Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus five minutes before departure, buy a ticket and board the train.

Of course, you can shave up to an hour off the bus or trains and simply zip across the expressway at 120 kmph but watch for tyre bursts.

There8217;s mobile connectivity throughout the 180 km route. AT038;T, BPL Mobile8230; the provider names on my phone8217;s screen change ceaselessly. One breezy night in Pune, a cousin from America 8212; she8217;s doing a corporate internship here 8212; happened to marvel at the variety of cellular-service providers and the ease of switching from one to the other. In the US, she explained, you are locked into a contract of at least a year with your cellular company. India, everyone at the dinner table agreed, was the ultimate cellular free market.

The expressway, the express trains, the express communications 8212; they all speak of an India that is very first world. Of course, an outsider cannot miss the video blaring on the Volvo, the sight of mass morning ablutions as you wolf down the cornflakes and milk on the Shatabdi, the stubborn, wheezing trucks blocking the fast lane on the expressway. But that8217;s for outsiders. Such infirmities don8217;t really register with us after seeing them every day.

But I couldn8217;t help noticing how quickly first-world India tends to dissipate as the Volvo slows dramatically on Pune8217;s outskirts. The expressway8217;s expanse is swallowed by a once-graceful city8217;s urban explosion. Speed is back to a more Indian 40 kmph as the roads fall back to two lanes and weave drunkenly through a mess of unauthorised shops and shanties.

The entry to Pune is decidedly third world 8212; and it8217;s getting more so. Even the order of the city8217;s sprawling cantonments is looking increasingly ragged. Cross the road from many areas of spit and polish, and you can8217;t miss the dispossessed.

Some are ragged drifters, but most disturbing is the sight of entire families 8212; a haggard and exhausted father and mother, accompanied by a bevy of grimy children 8212; sprawled around a campfire of twigs. They are everywhere: at the bus station, besieging you at the train station, outside the upscale shops and restaurants. What8217;s new, you might ask? Just this, I have never seen so many homeless in Pune before, I had never seen so much hopelessness on their faces. This was a city known for its learning, its modest but supremely neat living.

Now, there are Banjara women begging, wizened old men in white dhotis and Gandhi topis turned a dirty brown, children who ask for alms with the clear diffidence of newcomers to the street. It8217;s all very different from the organised gangs of beggars and infirm in Mumbai. They live on the streets too. It isn8217;t my case that they are better off, it8217;s just that they live by finely developed wits.

Many locals confirmed my suspicions: many of Pune8217;s homeless were newcomers who had lost the battle for survival in the parched, forgotten and overpopulated plains of India8217;s richest state. That explained the hesitancy in begging. There was no grimly determined drone for handouts, no skip-and-jump to the next car, as you see with the urchins at Mumbai8217;s traffic signals.

At Pune station, Madhavrao Patil told me what being lost was all about. Stick in hand, leathery skin and leather chappals worn to shreds, his dispossession was clear from his finely twirled white moustache and neat beard. The grime on his kurta and dhoti couldn8217;t hide his pride. He stood before me mutely, holding out his hand. I gave him a Rs 10 note and hesitatingly asked him his story. He told it freely. Patil was a peanut farmer until four months ago, somewhere in Pune district. The crop dried out, he had loans to repay. When he couldn8217;t cope, he simply locked his house and came here with his wife and four daughters hoping to make some money instead of just getting by. He had never done this before, and now he didn8217;t know when he would go back. Here, at least the entire family scraped together Rs 80 a day. There were, he said, many from his drying village who had locked up and left.

You can of course see the new migrants in the roiling tides of people surging into Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and every Indian town and city. As they get wiser to the ways of the city, they find the slumlord, the community support structure, the hope of a better life. It8217;s a quiet swarming, accelerating all around the growing cocoon of first-world India.

Why talk of Pune? That8217;s because the Pune-Mumbai agglomeration is seen by pundits as India8217;s first supercity, a mass of humanity strung out across diverse, ancient landscapes, but linked inexorably by the chain links of technology, economy and communication.

But if Pune-Mumbai and its fecund economy can8217;t cope, do you honestly believe anyone else can?