By Quaid Najmi, IANS,
Pune: As the refurbished clock tower in the busy and historic Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Market here strikes the hours, it reminds thousands of Pune families of a school excursion that turned into a tragedy over 17 years ago leaving 38 children dead.
Counted among the worst in the country, the death of 38 students, whose bus was hit by a train at an unmanned railway crossing on the city outskirts, had numbed Pune residents for months and many of the parents are yet to come to terms with their individual and collective losses.
Former Congress municipal corporator Satish Desai decided to erect a memorial clock tower to keep alive the memory of the students and remind others to share the tragedy of the grief-stricken families.
Accordingly, a unique clock tower was designed and constructed above the statue of the legendary freedom fighter, Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, in the market near the Shaniwar Peth area. The huge clock showed the time as usual but also had a four-and-a-half foot image of a boy in a school uniform, who emerged every hour to sound a gong.
“Whenever we heard the gong or saw the boy, we remembered our little children and silently prayed for them,” said Shailesh Joshi, who lost his six-year old son Vicky, then studying in Class 2 in the N.H.P. Primary School.
Almost 18 years after the tragedy, Joshi’s eyes moistened as he recalled the school picnic on the cold morning of Dec 11, 1993.
“I still remember that day clearly, the children were so enthusiastic about going to the school picnic to the Ashthavinayak Temple at Theur and then to Ramdhara,” Joshi told IANS.
Barely three hours later, Joshi and other parents heard the stunning news that the bus had been hit by a speeding train at Phursungi.
Desai, a then Congress corporator, decided to do something to immortalize the memories of those children that had shaken the collective conscience of Pune city.
“After much thought, I decided to construct a clock tower, but it would be an extraordinary one. It would include a small naughty-looking boy coming out of the door of his home, in his school uniform and a bag with books on his shoulder, and ring the clock bell every hour,” Desai told IANS.
He discussed the matter in depth with Mukund Joshi of the now-defunct Pune Watch Company, and Joshi managed to implement the technically difficult but challenging idea.
Set up at a cost of nearly Rs.150,000 and opened a year later in 1994, the memorial drew crowds of locals and tourists alike, with thousands daily coming to witness the boy sounding the clock gongs every hour.
However, the municipal corporation, which had agreed to maintain the clock tower, did not live up to its promise and the clock fell silent 11 years ago.
However, hope was at hand.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislator and municipal corporator Madhuri S. Misal was shocked to learn that the clock tower, though standing in full public view, had been completely forgotten for so many years and decided to do something about it.
She pursued the matter with the PMC for nearly three years before the issue was cleared by the authorities.
The old watch tower was renovated, the area around it has been beautified with a lot of greenery, a new huge white-faced clock has been installed and a new boy in a sparkling white shirt-blue shorts school uniform, designed by Mahesh Raskar, came alive last May 26.
The clock tower – billed by Desai as the country’s only one of its kind – was inaugurated by 100 schoolchildren, including some orphans, who released hundreds of balloons to mark the occasion.
“Pune’s important and emotional landmark has been given a new lease of life and we shall now maintain it properly,” a proud Madhuri assured.
The renovated 30-foot-tall clock tower also has two loudspeakers which will carry the sound far and wide to a larger audience of listeners.
Living nearly a kilometre away, even Joshi and his family – wife Vasundhara, daughters Gauri, 19, and Jeevanvidya, 14, and son Anand, 13, can hear the gongs clearly every day and remember little Vicky.
Joshi said that not a single day passes without remembering or discussing their lost son, and the same is the case with the other families who suffered the loss.
“This unique clock tower is a symbol of that huge tragedy which changed our lives for ever and unites us in our grief… Though the tragedy has been healed in our minds by time, it still lurks deep in our psyche,” Vasundhara said.
(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at [email protected])