At Poona Guest House, creative crowd always found room for shelter and inspiration

PUNE: This is the place veteran actress Sulochana calls her home, away from home. The walls here still reverberate with the magical notes from the concerts of maestros like Bhimsen Joshi, Vasantrao Deshpande and Kumar Gandharva. Poona Guest House (PGH) on Laxmi Road, which completes 85 years on Tuesday, is much more than a place to stay and have wholesome Maharastrian fare.
This is where many a lonely artist spent his or her last years under the care of the Sarpotdars. Even Yogacharya BKS Iyengar found shelter here about 80 years ago when he arrived in Pune to teach yoga on the invitation of senior editor Nanasaheb Parulekar. Iyengar used to teach at PYC Gymkhana, but found it tough to convince the members about its utility. It was PGH founder Nanasaheb Sarpotdar who offered him a room to stay till he found his feet in a new city.
PGH was established in 1935 on a quiet Laxmi Road by Narahar Damodar Sarpotdar aka Nanasaheb as a sustainable source of income to supplement his career in films. Nanasaheb produced, directed and acted in many Hindi and Marathi films (notable being ‘Maharacha Por). He set up his own film company called the Aryan Film Studio in Pune and made silent movies. He gave stalwarts like Lalita Pawar and Durga Khote their big breaks.
“The connection with theatre and films was cemented further when Nanasaheb’s son and my father Charudatta Sarpotdar took charge in 1952. PGH was the home for actors like Sulochana, Chandrakant, Suryakant, Jayashree Gadkar, Asha Kale and later Satish Dubhashi, Shahsikant Nikate and others,” Kishor Sarpotdar, grandson of Nanasaheb, who now is in charge, said.
Money was the last priority for Charudatta aka Charukaka. “Rooms were offered for free to many an actors and film personalities. Senior actor Madhu Apte spent the last four and half years of his life in one of our rooms and Baba did not take a single paisa from him. Lokmanya Tilak’s grandnephew G V Ketkar and vocalist Shripad Joshi who taught music to melody queen Lata Mangeshkar, found a home at PGH when they fell on bad days. Even Kashinath Ghanekar, a superstar of Marathi theatre, spent the last four years of his life here,” Sarpotdar recalled.
The food at PGH was a favourite of many a stars. “My grandmother knew what they liked. Veteran actor Prabhakar Panshikar always got his glass of cold milk at 1am after his night show. She would prepare curd rice at 2am because Ghanekar liked it after his night shows. My grandmother would send a tiffin to the Mangeshkar family every day when they were in Pune,” Sarpotdar added.
The Maharashtrian fare here was also sampled by former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi during his visit to Pune in 1988.
Rehearsals of plays like ‘Ashrunchi Zali Phule’ and ‘Katyar Kaljat Ghusli’ would happen in the rooms at PGH. Actor-director Bal Kolhatkar wrote his hit play ‘Vahato Hee Durvanchi Judi’ while living here and noted poet G D Madgulkar’s Geet Ramayan was also written here.
Popular actor director Dada Kondke and his entire unit stayed on the third floor of PGH during the making of the hit film ‘Songadya’.
“Dada was relatively unknown then and he was not able to get a theatre to release his film. My father put in a word with the owner of ‘Bhanuvilas’ theatre off Laxmi Road and convinced him to release it. The rest as they say is history,” Sarpotdar recalled.
Sarpotdar is now planning a 90th birthday celebration for veteran actor Sulochana, once the Covid-19 pandemic eases. “She was like a sister to my father and he celebrated her every landmark birthday in Pune. I want to keep that tradition,” he added.