Back in Chandigarh after 2 years..... Saw the things I earlier took for granted about the City Beautiful in a totally new light!
- The place is like one big overextended family!
The small world experiment would lead to just One Degree of Separation in Chandigarh! Everyone knows almost everyone else. You were either at school together or at coaching or in College or are related! :O - It sure is a very small city.... You can get from one end to the other before you can clock 40 mins!
- You are bound to get challaned in the month of March or whenever the Chandigarh police runs short on money! (And in my case in the Month of August and that too twice!!!)
- Any one new enters a place and everyone else "checks you out"... the eyes go from your face to your shoes in 3 secs flat!
The favourite past-time of guys is following girls! .....If you are a girl and out alone post 8pm, you are bound to be escorted back to your place by atleast 1 car with blaring loud music! Big cars with loud music and even bigger bumper stickers adorn most of the roads!
But the City Beautiful is beginning to take on a new flavour... letting go of its reputation of predominantly being a city of the retired or the spoilt neauvue rich kids.
The superficiality and irresponsibility have given way to a fresh vibrancy.With 50 years to its history, this young city is attaining a semblance of maturity, beginning to show signs of developing a culture and character of its own.
With all its idiosyncrasies... feels good to be back :)
15 comments:
Nice description of 'The' Chandigarh. Reminds me of the night when I and my friend 'supposedly' lost our way just to have a 'small talk' with two pretty girls on a post-dinner stroll on one of the sector roads. In response, they smiled and called for a man who was walking 10 feets behind them, and turned out to be their father!! Caught off guard, we had barely thought of what to say to him, but Uncleji turned out to be overtly kind, and told us exactly where to go and ensured that we turn a corner from that road, despite it being 180 degrees opposite to the place we were staying at!
Quite an experienced father! Wasn't he? :)
lol... Most Chandigarhians are experienced handlers of the "I lost my way" types :D
You'd probably be dispatched to a non existent area with a complex set of directions!!!
and what about those fights and brawls usually accompanied with loud praises of the others' kin ?
Oh they were a must have in every teenagers and "still stuck in teenage"ers's party!
Though now it seems to have limited to a certain section only. Somethings are changing for good.
11 cars with blaring music...in ur case? Maan tats a lot of music! Tat i10 is gonna grow up to be a true romantic...
>> Big cars with loud music and even bigger bumper stickers adorn most of the roads!
Considering that you drive a fluorescent pink stretch limo fitted with 1200W(RMS)Bose speakers, it's hardly fair that you talk about others ;-)
Oh, btw, totally forgot to mention your bumper stickers, which give very sage advice to Chunnu, Munnu and Guddu ki maa :D [cannot mention the text here since it can potentially scare away young, innocent kids]
What Chandigarh needs is a few Ranjhor ke Rathhor ;)
you know, it's interesting to see cities evolve...
Blr went the opposite way...
From a quiet sleepy town, to a bustling metropolis ( with no Metro in sight yet )
From no big cars and classical music and the smell of masala dosas wafting in the breeze..
to logjams of cars of every concievable type and the smell of open drains all over the place..
ROTFL
@Chetta.. why are u calling urself Panzerfaust!!! ur nick should be more like "The Superfantablous Harish Houdini" or something :P
I have no affiliations whatsoever with the cricket team. Let go!!! ;)
@Horsey.... I've since become more mature, drive a funky yellow Lamborghini Gallardo instead of the pink stretch limo... wasnt suiting my style :D
But yeah very interesting to see cities evolve and adapt, or sometimes the struggle to do so.
oh well :) its really interesting to see places follow Darvinian principles ... and this is almost always accompanied by a brief period of chaos, ... though it may have been a little too long to be brief in the case of Bangalore :D
Okie one of my friend had little different experience with the Chandigarh Police.. Once he was caught without D/L and asked for the fine..He made an innocent face ..Sir that girl will disappear (well he was also following a girl).. Oho..Kuddi da mamla hai..Oye jaane do yaar… :D
So when do you know you are in Chandigarh… When U see lot of manual rikshaw…or you see that most of the auto drivers are Sadrars..or when you see similar roads after every 100 mtrs… or when you get almost half bucket of LASSI when you ask for one glass…
Well You Never Know :P :P
It sure is very clean out there . For a delhi guy who feels incomplete without bumping into three cows in the middle of a road , the broad roads over here are unreal . But I like Panchkula better . And are the cops here so bad ? Have been riding a bike without a permanent number plate over the last two months , but nobody stopped me so far .Looks like I need to fix that fast now.
Interesting. Reminds me of pondicherry,another small town where eveyrone is related...even the french tourists :)
Read someplace that Indian cities and towns are an assault on one's sense of continuity. Every place so different from the other!
@ Suresh...Yeh bhi hota hai! :)
@ Abhi... Panchkula is very geometric and well 'labelled'...you can never get lost there ... and you sure have been lucky with the police so far! :)
@Nautankey... thats interesting! Pondicherry has been on my list of 'to go' places for a long time now!
Hi Kiranjyot, Came to your blog from Abhi's. It was so nice read to read about Chandigarh. I've lived there for like 5-6 years and I miss it a lot!!! Ref to one of your comments, I don't think that the directions are complex. Like the post vry mch.
@ Jagjit... thanks!
What I meant was that Chandigarhians handle the "I lost my way " pretenders by ensuring that they get lost! :)
A very difficult thing to manage in an otherwise completely geometric city.
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