Monday Musings: Pune’s Zero Stone, fully restored, is now ready for the public

In a few days from now, a new heritage monument will be unveiled in the city: the Zero Mile Stone. Neglected for decades together, it was through the efforts of city corporator Arvind Shinde that the monument has been restored and beautified by the Pune Municipal Corporation.

My earliest memories of our city’s Zero Mile Stone goes back to almost 20 years when this valuable heritage stone marking Pune’s ‘zero’ mile, was buried three-fourths in the ground.

In June 2017, the zero stone was neglected and was being used by a pavement tea seller as a place to keep his brooms and other sundry stuff. Restoration of this city’s heritage is important as it marks the point from where distances are measured between cities and thus is the oldest mile stone of the city. (HT PHOTO)

Skirting the wall of the Greater Post Office (GPO) on Sadhu Vaswani Mission road, a watermelon seller used to sit on it, using it like a convenient stool. That was the very first time that I highlighted the plight of this small, yet historic piece of our city’s heritage, in the local edition of a national daily.

That piece created some momentary ripples and life moved on. The stone was written about from time to time in various dailies and its existence was known to just a few people, including experts on the city’s heritage.

Over the years, it continued to suffer neglect in various ways. We, at Hindustan Times, revisited the stone two years ago, in June 2017, and found that the stone was no longer buried in the footpath, but was well above the ground, and the distances to nearby places and cities such as “Bengaluru, Sholapur, Ahmednagar, Nashik, Purandhar, Alandi and Sinhgad,” chiselled into it were clearly visible. Rather conspicuously, Bombay was not mentioned on this stone.

The zero stone, however, continued to be neglected by the city, and was now being used by a pavement tea seller as a place to keep his brooms and other sundry stuff.

Once again, we wrote about this situation, drawing attention to the urgent need to treat this stone as a heritage monument and protect it, conserve it and beautify it for posterity.

A small Google search will show us how prominent cities across the world have celebrated their zero stones. One of the best maintained zero mile stones in the country is the one at Nagpur, erected by the British during the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India in 1907.

The 0 mile stone is a very important part of a city’s heritage and is so called because it marks the point from where distances are measured between cities. It is thus the oldest mile stone of the city, not necessarily located in its oldest locality.

According to historian Mandar Lawate, this stone was always installed outside the GPO by the British and was used to measure the distance between towns and cities.

Finally, in April 2018, the work of conserving the stone and beautifying the footpath and the space around it was taken up by Arvind Shinde, senior Congressman and leader of the opposition in PMC, as a part of his ward development work.

According to Sham Khamkar, this stone marks the exact geographic location of the city and it falls under the international system of units mapping.

Do pay a visit to this stone once it is opened to the public. Let us know what you feel about this newest monument in the city. Schoolchildren and college students too should visit this place and be aware of the riches that this city has to offer. We look forward to your feedback!