My Favourite Season - Winter: An essay by Vivek Kasture

Pune is an amazing city to live, work and enjoy our life. We all love to travel and explore hidden and unseen places. In Pune itself, we have lots of places to visit, like old Pune, some narrow roads, architectures, historical places and forts. But what do you think about the best season to visit such places? In my opinion, the breezy winter of Pune is definitely the best.

Generally in Pune winter starts in November and it lasts till February. This is the most pleasant season to travel, dine out, visit hill stations or go shopping or wander aimlessly with our friends. This season gives us an opportunity to look inside ourselves (introspection).

In many ways, this season affects the way we feel, sometimes we like to stay at home and enjoy a coffee sitting by window. Suddenly we change our mind to go outside to feel the windy atmosphere or sometimes we like to lie in bed and read romantic stories or listen to our favourite songs/music and so on.

Also, this season is beneficial to agriculture. Almost all schools and colleges arrange their cultural activities for students and most importantly, we celebrate many big festivals within this magical period. Overall, this season gives us so many reasons to enjoy and have some fun.

Besides, this season has short days and long nights and less sunlight. This can affect our health. We may catch a cold and get sick. Therefore, while going outside or traveling, we should wear warm woollen cloths. Definitely, by taking care of these things we can enjoy this amazing breezy winter of the city!

Demonetisation By Jayant Joshi

How demonetisation has impacted me and the people around me. Share your experience.

    Few years back, we all were buzy in our daily life. We all know that we have to face ups and downs in  our life, wether it is about our health, education or finices/money. In 2016 we had faced unexpected stiuation that is the 'Demonetisation'. Our Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi himself came on television, on 8th Nov 2016 and announced/declared that from the midnight the notes of 1000 and 500 Rs notes are no longer in use. It was the moment we all got panic because of this situation. We all had the habit, to keep hard cash at home. That time there was the only option to deposite/return all your 1000 and 500 Rs's notes in bank.

    We all were in hard situation and had no idea what to do. Most of the time we used to do cash transactions even for our daily needs. From the moment we all were not able to use our cash and that time we were not familier with online payment apps/options like Paytm. It was about the money but other than this we faced many problems because of shortage of money and no one was accepting the notes. Then we all rushed to deposite our notes in banks. Also

    

The UPI Revolution - Ajit Pardeshi

 I don't remember how it all started but it was around 2016. But when it started, it was written off, like every innovation before it. That is generally the way adoption of innovation works. That's why you have these four classes when it comes to adopting innovation - innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and finally the laggards.

UPI or the Unified Payment Interface started off quietly. I remember getting an email or SMS from HDFC Bank, our family bank that I have to install UPI. I ignored it but one day out of curiosity, I thought let me generate my UPI ID. At that time, PAYTM was an app that people said offered lots of cashback so they downloaded it. I had tried it too but adding money in a wallet didn't make sense to me - at least the money earned interest when it was sitting in my account so why should PAYTM earn interest on my money.

And then one fine day in 2016, Narendra Modi, PM of India appeared on national television at 8 PM and said starting tonight, 1000 and 500 rupee notes were invalid. India was shocked. Yes, because every Indian (apart from the kids) owned at least 1 of these notes. These notes made up 74% of the currency in circulation. So yes if you had 100 rupees, 74 of them were not legal tender 4 hours from then.

Demonetisation was a painful saga so without getting into the details (it deserves another blog if at all), DeMoN as we called it left us in a situation where PAYTM and UPI became Gods overnight. Suddenly every Indian had downloaded PAYTM and enabled his UPI. But remember, this move was a band aid because you didn't have cash (74% is illegal tender) for now, but the PM said things will be back to normal in a few days. Well, they were not, for almost 2 months. In hindsight I think DeMoN was done to get people to adopt UPI. You think?

Anyway, this thing about holding your phone against a QR code and debiting money from your account was so uber cool that people were flashing their phones all over the place. Every department store to your kirana to the pan wala had a QR code. I loved to forget my wallet at home. Not so that my friends pay the bill. But so that I can do this super cool point phone, scan and pay everywhere. And again, there is no minimum (although there is a maximum) and no fight for change! Auto Fare is 59 rupees. Sir change nahi hai says the auto driver. No worries bro, I will scan. That's why this line became so uber: PAYTM Karo.