At Pune’s Centre.

There's a mall at the end of my school lane now.

In the heart of the city, full of leafy lanes and little nooks and corners, is an area known to all and sundry as Model Colony. I don't know if they meant it literally when they rallied around and started calling it that, but the name is certainly apt.

Extending (roughly, you understand) from Jagtap Dairy a little off Fergusson College Road up until Deep Bangla Chowk and the far reaches of Chittaranjan Vatika at the ends, Model Colony is primarily residential in nature. It has a post office, a couple of banks, a car showroom and a big BSNL office. Opposite the BSNL office is my school – Vidya Bhavan.

As with most people, I have extremely fond memories of school.

As with most people, I hated the time I spent there – or at least, it wasn't as much fun then as I make it out to be now. Getting up in the mornings, getting ready, polishing your shoes, packing your bag, catching the school bus, attending period after period, with the short recess and the long recess, and homework not completed, and remarks in my calendar, and units and terminals and jeez. All of that.

Of course, all I remember now, or choose to, are the free periods, and the games on the ground, and cricket played with a hanky that was tied into a ball, and a writing pad. Games of table tennis and impromptu squash. Canteen food and Dimple Cola (any Punekar remember this?). Annual days and chanya manya bor. Guava smattered with red chilli powder and salt.

Now what to do. I gloss over and paint for my memory only the pretty pictures.

And among the happier memories are the times I would cycle out of school and back home. We'd get out of the gate and go up to the Toyota Showroom – of course, it wasn't there back then – and then go along the lane up until we hit Ganesh Khind Road, and then cycle up our way back home. Sometimes we'd stop at Sunita Pineapple Juice for a glass or two, or sometimes we'd stop off at Om Supermarket for a bottle of Thums Up. Further up, there was a sugarcane juice guy who had about started giving us bulk discounts.

Traffic was next to non-existent in those days, especially so at around four in the afternoon, which was when school would get over. Broad leafy lanes with no one but ourselves, we'd cycle away the miles, talking of this that and the other, laughing at what had happened in school and hoping the India won the match the next day. Pune was a joy to cycle around in those days – it truly was. You'd have the occasional car, the odd scooter vrooming past you, but you had the right of the road for the most part.

And especially so in Model Colony. The little lanes and bylanes in that place were used to learn how to ride a bike, to cycle away the hours, to stand and chat for hours on end. Guys would gather at the far end of Chittaranjan Vatika for chai and sutta, and to appreciate the many joys of bird watching. Katta culture, in other words.

A wonderful place to be; it really was.

And today, at the far end of my school lane, there is a big new mall.

I get it, I get it. I really do. It is inevitable, and necessary and I get the economics behind it.

But that was my lane. It was at the heart of my city, my neighbourhood. It was quiet, and leafy, and isolated – and now it is not.

Pune has lost an aspect that was at the centre of it's very ethos, and for once, I don't appreciate the pun.

I don't like the mall at the end of my school's lane.