Sangli- Miraj are twin cities just like hyderabad and secunderabad. The only difference being that of scale. For good measure AK decided to get married there, and since it was just an overnight bus ride for me I decided to attend it.
I boarded the bus around 6 PM and it reached Kolhapur at 6 in the morning. There are no direct Volvos between Bangalore and Sangli, so I booked one up to kolhapur. For good measure makemytrip also was offering 20 % cash back, hence the total cost turned out cheaper. From kolhapur I took the State transport bus up to Sangli, which is I guess about 40 kms from there. I was in Sangli then at around 7 in the morning. Had a nice footpath, sweet tea.
Sangli falls right in the middle of the Sugar lobby part of Maharastra. The south-maharastra region owes most of its growth to sugar cane and Sharad Pawar. Conversely Sharad Pawar owes most of his financial growth to this region. He has been an honest politician, one may say. He has contributed to building good colleges and educational institutions in the nearby region. We have come to such a passes in the Indian politics that we accommodate a corrupt politician who has done some good for us than those who merely are raw power mongers.
Coming to sweetness, everything in sangli is very sweet or very spicy, because of the sugar canes. Sugar cane is a funny crop, it required the most amount of water to cultivate and though may be profitable in the short run, in the long turn, I guess agriculturists generally discourage its plantation.
I also had the famous kanda poha near the bus stop and more sweet tea. From there AK's cousin dropped me to a hotel room, where the Bombay gang was already lodged. It was morning for me, but for them , the middle of the night. They had come in a second class compartment drinking cool drinks and snacks. The intelligent buggers had mixed some alcoholic beverage in that. For the world they were drinking a cool drink. For themselves alcohol. The biggest joke was that they claimed that no one realised they were high on alcohol. Obviously they were drunk.
We had our breakfast in a sweet shop around 11. For me it was my second breakfast of the day. Before I forget we were four jokers each dressed in a different way :
S: typical marriage dressing . tie and suit boot , in south maharasta , in an afternoon, in February. Some people let nothing come between the weather and their protocols.
PA : Normal office going formals, no tie no suit. But the bugger was running his office from there. He works in a cellular company in a marketing function where I guess he mostly collects data on Roaming usage etc. The thing which pisses of a sales guy more than anything is a marketing guy telling him what to sell and how.
DB : Sherwani. Recently his brother had got married and his hangover was not yet over
Self : Jeans and Kurta.
So when one imagines all four walking towards the marriage hall, a circus in motion.
The one thing which all the guys wanted to do was dance in a marriage. But the agenda of the marriage did not have a dance program, though there was background music, but other than us, no one else wanted to shake a leg. That was a damp squib.
We had our lunch in the marriage hall, spicy food, by default 3 gulab jamuns etc. You could ask for any more as you wish. And then BD and S went in an auto to find a pan shop to have Pan and bring them for us.
The autowallah again fleeced us.
In the evening we visited the Mahalaxmi temple in kolhapur. I had the famous usal pau in dinner .As luck would have had it, I got the same konduskar volvo with same driver and the same cleaner.
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