Brandspeak

The chief of the PMC Slum Improvement Department, K D Marathe recently learned the wisdom of what his seniors had imparted to him when he was still a newcomer.

Last month, a group of slum-dwellers from Satara Road, led by corporator Sunil Kamble barged into Marathe’s office and gheraoed him. They were protesting over the diminutive plots they were to be allotted by the PMC. Marathe expressed his inability to provide bigger plots for their rehabilitation.

The irate slum dwellers abused and manhandled the officer. Municipal commissioner Ramanath Jha had to rush to Marathe’s office and extricate the officer from the angry mob.

Scarcely 15 days later, the slum dwellers from Shantinagar slum in Kothrud who were rehabilitated at a plot in Sagar colony by the PMC, called on Marathe, inviting him for a function. Not knowing what to expect, Marathe, nevertheless made it a point to attend the function.

To his surprise, he discovered that the function was orgnaised to accord him a grand felicitation. The slum-dwellers even held a procession in his honour and presented big speeches eulogising the officer, repeating over that it was because of him that they received a shelter.

Want a lift?
The public relations officer of a charitable trust used to regularly urge a scribe to visit the trust’s institutions, observe the work they did and write about it.

When the PRO recently approached him again with the same request, the scribe frankly confessed that the trust’s institutions were located far from the city and therefore he would not find time to travel that far.

`Don’t worry about it, sir,’, came the ready reply, `I can arrange an ambulance for your travel’. The reply stunned the scribe but only for a while. For, immediately, he realised that the charitable trust ran a hospital and often used its ambulance to transport guests.

waste not, want not
Time is precious. True. And PMC additional municipal commissioner Deepak Kapoor was quick to realize this when the election for the post of the PMC standing committee chairman was in progress.

It so happened that Mayor Vatsala Andekar, who is a Pune Vikas Aghadi (PVA) member, was chairing the special general body meeting held to elect the committee chairman. The meeting began at 3 p.m. However, PVA member Shivaji Kshirsagar was hell bent on contesting the election through the party had announced their support for the Shiv Sena candidate Ramesh Bodke.

The PVA leaders prevailed upon Kshirsagar, urging him to opt out of the fray. They were sure that they would be able to persuade Kshirsagar, but, the problem was that they were running out of time. The mayor extended a helping hand by extending the time for withdrawals till 3.15 pm. But the PVA leaders failed to obtain the withdrawal within the time allotted.

The mayor further extended the time for withdrawals till 3.30 p.m. Sensing that this process might continue, Kapoor asked his peon to bring the files, official proposals and other documents that were pending for his approval on his table in his office.

His guess was right on the money! The mayor kept putting off the deadline till 5 p.m. when the PVA leaders finally managed to obtain a withdrawal letter from Kshirsagar. In the meanwhile, Kapoor had cleared his official files sitting at the general body meeting.

Yes minister!
What does one do when there are over 15 speakers, not at a seminar on some current topic, but one where a prominent figure has to be felicitated for celebrating his 60th birthday? Such was the case at a function held in the city on Sunday where the overwhelmed lot could not resist showering the noted personality with praises galore, but in the process completely ignored the passage of time.

So it came as a pleasant surprise when a person was posted in the wings with a permanent board stating `Wind up – you are exceeding your time limit’. With every speaker taking the mike, it was a race against time as the shuffling of feet nearby had them hurrying through the speech. Not surprisingly, the chief guest, School Education Minister Sudhir Joshi took due cognizance of the note and wound up his speech in just a little over five minutes.

Attaboy minister!! Echoes of Panipat
Political analysts in various newspapers offer any number of theories on why Sharad Pawar could not gain support from within the Congress to lead the party as its president.

They may even point out to various political equations that forced Pawar to surrender before Sonia Gandhi and be content with the post of opposition leader in Parliament.

But according to a common autorickshaw operator, who has been a strong Congress supporter, one can trace the origins of such strong opposition to any Maratha strongman down the annals of local history.

“It’s all in Panipat,” opined the auto operator, catching this hack totally by surprise. And while the grey wheels between the ears rolled, attempting to decipher the link between the political theories with the town of Panipat, he promptly explained.

Navigating deftly through typical Puneri traffic, he zeroed in on the third battle of Panipat in which the Marathas had lost the war, “We lost Delhi when we lost Panipat in 1761,” he claimed.

These are the fruits we are reaping for not mustering support of the other Hindustanis against Ahmed Shah Abdali.

“The same thing happened to Yashwantrao Chavan, and Pawar’s case is just another echo,” he summed up, adding rather sadly, “Pawar will never make it to the top.”

Tailpiece
Friday night, the weekend has already begun and those who have made no plans for the evening and others whose plans for the evening have fizzled out, make rounds of the theatres – if that wasn’t the plan already.

With The Titanic and Chhota Chetan running houseful, the next best option turns out to be Kull the Conquerer, on at Vijay theatre.

KTC happens to be an anachronic period film based on sometime in the dark ages where the life of the barbaric heroes run to soft beds and hard battles.Strictly for Conan the Obnoxious types, the movie is however, equipped with smaller thews and a lycra plot that stretches as it goes. It is amusing to watch those leather-and-chain-clad characters carry on with an American accent, hurling twentieth-century expletives around.

What takes the cake however, is the heavy metal background score. As a young viewer from a North-East hill state puts it after the movie, "I was confused. I didn’t know whether to sit and watch, or to headbang!"
Contributed by Abhijit, Anuradha, Camil and Dnyanesh. Compiled by Edwin Skau.