BARAMATI: The clock froze at 8.44am. Ajit Pawar, a stickler for time, ran out of it while keeping a final date with his hometown. News of the plane crash spread in fragments, then hardened into truth. Grown men wept at chowks. Shutters fell. Sugarcane fields stood still under blue skies as a taluka that calls itself a city slid into mourning.Baramati’s heart had split once – when Ajit Pawar broke from uncle Sharad Pawar in July 2023. It closed ranks Wednesday. Votes had diverged after the NCP split – Sharad Pawar in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Ajit Pawar in the assembly elections months later – but affection never wavered. Grief united it.Roads filled with convoys, sirens, police pilots. Streets emptied. Yellow tape ringed the crash site near Baramati airport’s tabletop runway. The smell of fuel hung heavy. First, the aircraft’s tail. Then cables. An engine. A tyre. Papers scattered – Pawar was known to work on the move.Helicopters thudded in with VIPs. Residents, party workers, outsiders pressed in. “We saw the crash, smoke, everything,” said eyewitness Anita Atole. “When we heard Dada was aboard, we kept hoping. It broke us when it was confirmed.” Back in town, doors locked. Katewadi, his village, emptied as residents poured into Baramati to wait for him. Many skipped food and water.Ajit Pawar, anointed Baramati’s heir in 2024, built his bond brick by brick. “Dada,” people called him. “In Baramati, Dada is like god,” said farmer Atul Khatmode. “He would roll down a window, stop a car, say yes if work could be done, no if it couldn’t. He wouldn’t keep you hanging.”For Baramatikars, time did not just stop; it turned into memory, loyalty, and a promise to guard Dada’s legacy beyond politics, votes, and generations ahead. “If Sharad Pawar laid the foundation, Dada raised the building,” said a resident, pointing to roads, schools, hospitals. “He never cared about caste or religion,” said Shehbaz Bagwan, 23. “Who will solve Baramati’s problems now?” At 7.40pm, his body arrived at Vidya Pratishthan in a white ambulance, garlanded, glass sides clear. Sons Jay and Parth walked with him. Crowds surged, climbed trees, refused to move. Police struggled. “He hated wrong things – drunkenness, tobacco, dirt,” said schoolteacher Ganesh Jagtap. “He was a perfectionist. A leaf wouldn’t move without his knowledge.” Students were sent home. Work stopped. “He told us not to come to Mumbai,” recalled businessman Ashok Patil. “Meet me in Baramati.” Final rites will be held at 11am Thursday. Baramati is used to timekeeping. On Wednesday, it learned how loudly silence can tick.
