22 June,2009 09:43 AM IST | | Debarati Palit
Mosquitoes invade happening city joints like Pyramid Complex, Hard Rock Cafu00c3u00a9, Stone Water Grill and Club Solaris
They are the most happening night-out joints in the city. These places have great ambience, wonderful music and food and... a good number of mosquitoes too.
The Pyramid Complex, with its four pubs, Hard Rock Cafu00c3u00a9, Stone Water Grill, Club Solaris or Riverview at North Main Road, Koregaon Park Extension, are infested with mosquitoes. And all this because most of these places are situated beside the Mula-Mutha River, which has deteriorated into a meandering sewage canal these days.
'Horrifying'
Gaurav Gupta (24), a sales executive, is not a regular partygoer. He recently went to one of these hangouts. "I had once been to a DJ Nite and the mosquito bites were a big put off. My friends and I were moving from one place to other, trying to get away. But after an hour or so, it was really unbearable, so we just left the place."
Ankita Patil (21), an MBA student says of her first visit to another restaurant on the riverside, "The first time I visited the place, mosquitoes were a problem. Though, it was not very bad, it was disturbing. But I liked their food and ambience and I do want to go back to the place."
'Nothing we can do'
MiD DAY visited these joints and a waiter told MiD DAY, "Mosquitoes toh hai, ab hum kya kar sakte hain." Added Tushar Bhatt, manager, Hard Rock Cafu00c3u00a9, "Mosquitoes are very much a headache for us, but we are just keeping our fingers crossed for the monsoons. Because once the rains start, it is going to be very painful. We have to cover the entire place. We cannot do anything else about it."
Said Shailendra Kekade, manager and executive chef, Stonewater Grill, "We do not claim to be 100 per cent free of mosquitoes, but every evening we carry out measures to kill the eggs." But despite the mosquito menace, these joints are crowded with teenagers and working professionals on weekends and businesses have made no losses. "People enjoy themselves because of the crowd and also the music. Once they are drunk nothing else matters," added Bhatt.
Unhealthy
Despite the popularity of these hangouts, there's no doubt that this is an unhealthy environment. R R Pardeshi, senior health officer of Pune Municipal Corporation said, "As the water at Mula and Mutha rivers is stagnant, mosquitoes are bound to breed. The PMC undertakes anti-mosquito drives from time to time on all river banks across the city." And the nightclubs are doing their bit. They make sure they don't add to the waste as per municipal rules. Each place follows a waste management system and dispose waste in an underground tank.
Kekade said, "We dispose the waste in a sewage-disposal tanku00a0 as per the PMC's directives and so no waste gets into the Mula-Mutha river."
