Know Your City: Pune-based JVP, India’s oldest club of amateur astronomers, keeps thousands glued to the sky

On a Saturday closest to the new moon day every month, a group of people gets together a few kilometres outside Pune and holds a star party. There’s stargazing, astro games, slideshows and telescopic viewing of objects in the sky, such as the moon, planets, nebulae and galaxies. “Nobody sleeps from sunset to sunrise,” says Deepak Joshi, vice-president of Jyotirvidya Parisanstha (JVP), the Pune-based oldest club of amateur astronomers in India. JVP started on August 22, 1944, when World War II was raging, and its history is linked to preserving the Indian science of timekeeping that is thousands of years old.

Pune records highest increase in real estate prices

Pune has recorded the highest increase in real estate prices between the months of July and September, says a report by real estate consultancy firm PropTiger. At 7 per cent, this was the highest such growth noted among the seven cities viz Delhi- NCR, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Bengaluru. The price increase, the report said, was mainly due to the increase in raw material prices like steel, cement etc.