I take so much pride in being a puneri...and along with it the fact that people consider me to be maharashtrian......Papa tells me that rather than Hemant Thakkar , i should go with the name of Hemant Joshi/Nene/Lele...........i.e. some typical mahrashtrian brahman surname........he says that pichle janam me main Sadashiv Peth ( old city part of pune) me rehene vala brahman tha.....mom has stopped trying to make me eat gujju/kutchi food...........cooking in our house has a distinct maharashtrian touch to suit my tastes..........
purnachi poli....anik gar dudh
phulke nahi.....only polya......
tup poli sakhar
sadha varan bhat....amti bhat........pithla bhakri......lasnachi chutni.....ani mirchi cha thecha......ok i gotta stop....enough!!!!!!

spoilt????? yes i am .....perks of being the only kid.....

it just does not surprise me though.....i guess when i look back if i would not have ended up like this i would be surprised......everyone in my family is very fluent when it comes to spoken as well as written marathi..reading comes along without any question....results of studying in marathi medium.......my ma a bombay girl who went through convent education at J.B Petit and then later a Xavierite has taken to marathi like a fish would to water.....ma and me do have to make a little more effort to read and write marathi.......where the language is very oooncha....results of convent education ....conversations in my house make the transition from kutchi to marathi in the blink of an eye and we dont even realize it.......not that we are not fluent in our own mother tounge........

i dont like people calling my city poona........its pune!!!!..because thats just not how its meant to be....sometimes i hear some say ki they dont think its necessary to know how to converse in marathi even though they are in puneites......to them i say go back to where you came from....if only i could do that....i dont know where these radical extremist thoughts come from..i think punekars are like this.....or atleast i am..........i know kutchi's, gujju's, maheshwari's , ayyer's and orthodox syrian christians ( punna.... this one's for you) who speak fluent marathi and deshpande's who cant......how can people be so ignorant????????? amazes me.....

When P.L. Deshpande ( or PuLa as he was affectionately known ) asks Punekar, Mumbaikar ki Nagpurkar.........you know what my answer is.....with a capital P !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!