BARAMATI: The clock froze at 8.44am. Ajit Pawar, a stickler for time, ran out of it whereas conserving a closing date along with his hometown. Information of the airplane crash unfold in fragments, then hardened into reality. Grown males wept at chowks. Shutters fell. Sugarcane fields stood nonetheless beneath blue skies as a taluka that calls itself a metropolis slid into mourning.Baramati’s coronary heart had break up as soon as – when Ajit Pawar broke from uncle Sharad Pawar in July 2023. It closed ranks Wednesday. Votes had diverged after the NCP break up – Sharad Pawar within the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Ajit Pawar within the meeting elections months later – however affection by no means wavered. Grief united it.Roads full of convoys, sirens, police pilots. Streets emptied. Yellow tape ringed the crash website close to Baramati airport’s tabletop runway. The odor of gas hung heavy. First, the plane’s tail. Then cables. An engine. A tyre. Papers scattered – Pawar was identified to work on the transfer.Helicopters thudded in with VIPs. Residents, celebration staff, outsiders pressed in. “We noticed the crash, smoke, all the pieces,” mentioned eyewitness Anita Atole. “Once we heard Dada was aboard, we saved hoping. It broke us when it was confirmed.” Again on the town, doorways locked. Katewadi, his village, emptied as residents poured into Baramati to attend for him. Many skipped meals and water.Ajit Pawar, anointed Baramati’s inheritor in 2024, constructed his bond brick by brick. “Dada,” individuals known as him. “In Baramati, Dada is like god,” mentioned farmer Atul Khatmode. “He would roll down a window, cease a automobile, say sure if work could possibly be performed, no if it could not. He would not maintain you hanging.”For Baramatikars, time didn’t simply cease; it become reminiscence, loyalty, and a promise to protect Dada’s legacy past politics, votes, and generations forward. “If Sharad Pawar laid the inspiration, Dada raised the constructing,” mentioned a resident, pointing to roads, colleges, hospitals. “He by no means cared about caste or faith,” mentioned Shehbaz Bagwan, 23. “Who will resolve Baramati’s issues now?” At 7.40pm, his physique arrived at Vidya Pratishthan in a white ambulance, garlanded, glass sides clear. Sons Jay and Parth walked with him. Crowds surged, climbed timber, refused to maneuver. Police struggled. “He hated improper issues – drunkenness, tobacco, dust,” mentioned schoolteacher Ganesh Jagtap. “He was a perfectionist. A leaf would not transfer with out his information.” College students had been despatched dwelling. Work stopped. “He instructed us to not come to Mumbai,” recalled businessman Ashok Patil. “Meet me in Baramati.” Last rites will likely be held at 11am Thursday. Baramati is used to timekeeping. On Wednesday, it realized how loudly silence can tick.
