Chandigarh churnings

What has a city got to do with your state of mind?

My answer would be, pretty much everything. Shift your place of life and work and your outlook towards life changes.

Take my example. I live and work in Bombay, one of India's busiest cities. From the top the whole city looks like a sprawling and a very crowded colony of ants. Entire families spanning across generations live in a single rooms. Suburban trains run across huge distances ferrying millions of people daily. There is no time to rest here, no time to feel the pulse of nature, to time to contemplate life's mysteries, no time to introspect. It's basically a very shitty way to live especially if you come from a small town.

Now for the last week or so I have moved into Chandigarh, I understand how Bombay has been affecting me, in ways that I could never have imagined. Chandigarh is India's first planned city, and was laid out by Le Corbusier. Therefore it has managed to avoid a lot of problems that typical cities in India face: unplanned growth, chronic overcrowding, traffic snarls et al. The roads are ridiculously empty even during so called rush hours and there is plenty of greenery. I can say that almost 90% of the roads here are what can be qualified as leafy boulevards.I have seen another funny thing: even at 10.30 in the night, when the roads are all deserted the traffic lights work and drivers stop at the light. Totally un-Indian like behaviour.

Therefore, what I imagine is driving on these roads is a breeze. You get almost zero pollution, you have disciplined drivers and you get empty streets. In fact it is a shock to some one from a messy place like Bombay and almost creeped me out the first time. Now that I have gotten used to it I wonder how it would feel when I would be plonked into the horrible Bambaiya traffic snarls.

I will leave off now. If I praise Chandigarh enough it might suffer from the Evil Eye syndrome.!!! I still have a lot more, but it is a bit personal and I will probably say it later.

Oh and my office is 5 minutes walk away from my room, compared to a torturous and crowded 45 minutes bus ride (lesser of the two evils. Forget the locals). Take that, Bombay