Chinchwad

01Morya Gosavi

Morya Gosavi was a devotee of Shri Ganesh who, as the tradition tells it, walked every month from Chinchwad to the Mayureshwar temple at Morgaon, the first of the Ashtavinayaka. When age stopped him, Ganesh came to him in a murti found in the river at Morgaon, which he brought home to Chinchwad. He took sanjivan samadhi here on the bank of the Pavana, and his samadhi temple is the heart of the town. His descendants, the Devs of Chinchwad, were honoured as living forms of Mangalmurti; the Peshwas endowed them, and the palanquin procession from Chinchwad to Morgaon at Bhadrapad and Magh still keeps his practice alive. In Chinchwad they say the cry Ganpati Bappa Morya carries his name with the god’s.

02The Chapekar wada

In the 1890s Hari Chapekar, a kirtankar, lived in Chinchwad with his sons Damodar, Balkrishna and Vasudev. In 1897 plague came to Pune and the special plague commissioner W. C. Rand sent soldiers into homes, temples and kitchens. On the night of 22 June 1897, as Rand drove back from the Diamond Jubilee celebrations at Government House, Damodar and Balkrishna shot him and Lieutenant Ayerst. Damodar was hanged at Yerawada on 18 April 1898, Vasudev on 8 May 1899 and Balkrishna on 12 May 1899. Their family house in Chinchwad, the Chapekar wada, has been made a memorial with a museum.

The life of this place