young entrepreneur - Tirtesh

negotiating the best price

Yatindra Jewellers, Centre Street

Pavit's friend Tritesh is the young owner/manager
Cool to see him deal with the customers - buying jewelery for weddings/ occasions, or an odd mad-cap wanting some special stringing, etc. done (guess who :-)
He has this interesting story about an eunch who sometimes may buy silver/jewerly from him

Every thursday the entire jeweler's street observes thankgiving by sharing with the poor, Tirtesh's grandfather believed money is not the answer instead they distribute biscuits

He is upto to interesting stuff himself (when not in Goa with Pavit and others), a bunch of them decided to collect newspaper raddi , sell it and donate the money to charity
best wishes!

Simran(centre), Sharan & Tirtesh(yellow shirt),
in the background is Dhaniram, his assistant

treasure trove : Centre Street / Pune Lashkar

this is it! shop lined street
the top floors are(use to be ) the living quarters

stringing my "bhor mala", the options - glass or hexagonal silver poth/ silver tubes
poth are minute beads

silver poth looked the best

next door, these little girlies were getting a new set of earrings with their grandma

Centr Street/ Pune is one of those great old bazaars- this is more of a jeweler's street
very fascinating - old building, with wrought irons grills and window lattice,
very nostalgic
small time vendors, sitting outside shops, like this stringing expert - did my bhor mala
and this other "tanka"(soldering) expert, who also may doing piercings traditional style
yumm!! lots of silver and gold to ogle at

and also this cool cloth store - Haji A. Gani Hiroli
356 centre street Pune lashkar
established 1896
has wonderful handloom - checks wala pune suits and sarees, mangalgiri, south maharashtra and norht karnatic textiles, block prints, kalamkari, etc.
and incresingly lots of well packaged powerloom too :(

lashkar means cantonment

chAos to CALM

The Jama Masjid/Bandra/Mumbai

its so Mumbai - looks contemporary, a marble and cement structure
on the busy junction, with all the urban strappings - cell towers, hoards of people, vehicles....
yet has fine carvings, detailed in traditional style

its stands out in the middle of the busy Bandra link to old Mumbai,
...almost like a crossing point

train journeys

middle India 1000hrs

Thane creek, entering Mumbai 1600hrs

Delhi Mumbai Rajdhani

thanks to the gujjar agitation in Rajsthan our train took a detour
we got a Bharat darshan
after Mathura the train came via Agra, Indore & finally backtracked to Baroda
the train reached Mumbai Central 8 hours late!

The 17days of agitation the last count i read was
INS15Crore losses to the Indian Railways (as on 9th June 08)
51 passenger trains cancelled
damage to property

holding the country to ransom and for...
getting a retrograde reservation status !!


for eg. they served us lunch on board just that cost them atleast 15,000 bucks !!!
plain dal chawal