Pun in the Sun

Chandigarh, Punjab Pradesh, India

 

So to briefly cover the last few days, no real swashbuckling adventures.  I spent the last two nights in Shimla, former summer capital of British India from about 1864 - 1947 - though it became the de facto capital where the Brits spent most of their time after they realized that Calcutta was way too hot.

 

Shimla today consists of a strip of a bunch of run-down Tudor & Victorian buildings undergoing ineffectual, if any, restoration, set above the typical Hill State labyrinthine bazaar town. It's got everything a lively English town needs - a mall, consistent fog, and even a Gaiety Theatre, as well as constant territorial brawls between roaming bands of dogs and monkeys.  What it lacks is Englishman of any sort, which is sor of poetic justice given that natives were banned from the English section till 1917.

 

The other lesson I learned here is that Samosas over here are not the ineffectual little bite sized dumplings that you get stateside.  Rather, they are massive tetrahedrons of fried goodness 4-5x the size of their wimpy american cousins, which explains why people were taken aback when I ordered two prior to dinner.  Although I note that tthis time I avoided a repeat of the Quanjude incident back in Cathay and took them both down anyway.

 

A quick word in general about the sanitation here, it's been commented on at length by others, most notably a half rabid and stoned VS Naipaul back in the 60's, but it's an issue, and that's all I will say other than that its odd that a country which is so obsessed with ritual cleanliness and purity apparently tthinks nothing, for the most part, of simply discarding its garbage wherever it drops.

 

In the same vein, the bus ride to Chandigarh marks my third consecutive ride where people were violently retching out the window. Riding a bus in India in the Hill states is a lot like riding a roller coaster in the US, save for the fact that its cheaper and far less safe.  After a while you just have to put your head down and realize that you can't will the cement truck THAT JUST CAME AROUND HE FOG OF THE MOUNTAIN BEND AND IS ABOUT TO KILL YOU out of the way and relax.

 

Chandigarh, where I currently am, is one of the stranger (and richer) cities in India (and is a brilliant contrast to Shimla in a way).  Afer the partition, the old Punjab capital, Lahore, was in Pakistan, so J. Nehru decided to build up a new one from scratch.  So, looking forward, he let  Le Corbusier (french for "the corbusier") design his city of the future.  The result is a geometric grid of exact rectangles and broad boulevards, and intersecting roundabouts, filled in with large, concrete block buildings that double as Tandoori ovens during the 13 month long Punjabi summer.  Each sector is simply given an Orwellian number (right now I am in Sector 17B, I think), which I guess sounds futuristic, but the long, broad layout creates plenty of business for cycle rickshaws, the primary mode of transport which I bet Corby didn't have in mind. I guess it's not that ugly, but it also isn't nice, tthough the layout does seem to minimize filth concentration which is good.

 

The major sight is the Neck Chand Rock Garden, which is a bizarre, Gaudi-esque park/sculpture garden/playground type thing designed (illegally) out of rocks and old bathroom fixtures by a bored road engineer back in he 70's.  At first its a bit underwhelming and it has you wondering why the hell you dragged yourself out to the Punjab in the middle of August to see it [thats another phrase I thought I'd never type].  But after a while it seems deceptively large kind of like you're walking around in an MC Escher print or something.  Pleasantly surprising overall.  Unpleasant was the fact that they closed the state museum right before I got there, which allegedly has some great Gandharan art which is harder than hell to find in most places.