To one kind of initiated Pune suburb Koregaon Park is home to the Osho Ashram, a self-styled 'Spiritual Health Club' that is, even today, 14 years after the death of its founder Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (aka Osho) more popular without the country than within. To this day, the ashram continues to attract thousands of curious visitors every year, drawn there by stories, mostly apocryphal, of wild drugged out orgies.

To another kind of initiated, Koregaon Park is home to ABC Farms, an experiment in environment-friendly diary farming that hasn't just worked well, but today produces some of India's finest cheese. The experiment began in 1976, when Thermax founder Rohinton Aga and two cousins Adi Bathena, and Eruch Chinoy (the ABC of the name and it is actually A.B.C.) partnered with the last-mentioned's son Sohrab and started off with 14 cows and 27 acres of land to get into dairy farming. Today, ABC Farms, still run by Sohrab Chinoy is, arguably, the producer of the finest Indian cheese money can buy; it also offers agricultural and dairy consulting services. ABC uses organic farming techniques to grow alfalfa and maize on its 41-acre (it has grown some since inception) property; these are fed to its crossbred Gir/Holstein cows, purebred Swiss Saanen goats (the secret of some varieties of Swiss cheese), and crossbred goats. Much of the produce of these cattle goes into making cheese, some 60 varieties of it. It helps that Sohrab's German wife, Marlene, is a dairy bacteriologist. And it helps that the man himself boasts a masters qualification in dairy technology from Geln Hausen, Germany. This composition isn't about the Chinoys, however, or cheese, which remains an acquired taste for most Indians. It is about food, or specifically, the restaurants ABC hosts. Hosts is a good word to describe the relationship between Sohrab and the restaurants. ''They (the restaurateurs) are the actors and I am the stage maker,'' he laughs. Well, he has created seven different stages: a Swiss log hut look for Swiss Cheese Garden, which showcases almost all varieties of cheese made by ABC; an open-air one for Jazz Gardens (it stands by the Mula Mutha river), which is as eclectic about its choice of cuisine (continental and Indian) as it is about its choice of music (Jazz on Wednesdays and Saturdays; Rock on Fridays); and an orchid encrusted look for Sala Thai among others. The others include Shisha Café, an Iranian restaurant replete with rage-of-the-minute hookahs, Golconda, a Hyderabadi restaurant, Oriental Terrace (go ahead, take a guess!), Mediterranean eatery and nightclub Ola, and Wunderbar, another nightspot. There aren't as many varieties of restaurants as there are of cheese as yet, and given Sohrab's obsession with details-he went to Thailand and scoured the country till he found a restaurant whose looks he liked, and whose looks could be transplanted to Pune-things are likely to stay that way.