Chandigarh wins hands down!

Rahul Bedi

I fled the gas chamber, Delhi, and its cloying congestion for Chandigarh for three weeks each month in late 2015, for three reasons: to breathe, cycle and drive unfettered by hours of traffic snarls.  

 It’s a move that in retrospect has been more than vindicated, as with great unease I track the Capital’s air quality index, which rarely falls below 15 times the permissible limits and blue skies are a rarity in Delhi during winter. In ambiguous times of relativity, Chandigarh’s air is way better than Delhi’s, at least for now. Also, without doubt, Chandigarh, designed in the early 1950s, is possibly India’s only Smart City boasting 110 km of wide, smoothly tarred cycling tracks that are currently being doubled across the city. In comparison, South Delhi’s long abandoned 7-km Bus Rapid Transit corridor featured the Capital’s only cycle path and one where bicycles were a rarity.

Driving, too, in Chandigarh is a breeze compared with Delhi, where the average commute, even around one’s neighbourhood, is laborious, fraught with hazards, as is parking. Understandable road rage during summer has been known to descend to weapons, whilst parking  all too frequently gravitates to an exchange of abuse or fisticuffs or both between vehicle owners.

All this, of course, does not take into account the normally nightmarish commute to and from Gurugram, India’s newly named modern metropolis, that has frequently been known to take over six hours, especially during monsoon rain and the ubiquitous wedding season.

Parking in Chandigarh too is relatively easy, even though the city’s well-healed seths are yet to reconcile to paying for this luxury. There is also a maddening tendency amongst Chandigarh’s car owners to park thoughtlessly in crowded market places, resulting in heated exchanges of abuse, much like in Delhi.

Other bonuses the city offers in comparison to the ‘gas chamber’ and ones that most residents tend to take for granted include genteel living that encompasses lunching in the sun during winter, walking or jogging down the lake promenade or simply dropping into people’s homes without notice for tea or Happy Hour.   

But, as always, there is a rub in the ointment. Chandigarh surprisingly lacks restaurants offering decent dal, sabzi and meat fare, despite most Punjabis’ obsession with food and constant babble about it. A handful of dhabas do put up a valiant rear guard fight against this shortcoming, but they are few and far between and borderline grubby. Delhi, on the other hand, scores notably on this count, with numerous suitable eateries high on the elemental egg-leg-peg scale.   

But Chandigarh’s obvious diverting feature, other than being home to the most attractive ladies per sq km, is its display of luxury cars and exotic dogs, both of which are belongings for display. Their exhibition on the streets most definitely follows a classic Punjabi trait: If you’ve got it, flaunt it.