A native’s return to Chandigarh and its heart, Sector 17

After a long stint in Sri Lanka, Australia and the New Delhi, I recently returned home to the City Beautiful with a friendly warning from someone: “Chandigarh has changed a lot”. But then which city has not changed, so what would be so alarming about Chandigarh? Surely, there were visible changes everywhere — traffic volume being the first and the obvious one.

I visited Sector 17 after a long, long time, the heart of City Beautiful, to pay homage to an old icon — much against the unsolicited advice that who goes to 17 these days! Standing in front of Neelam Theatre, I was overwhelmed by the memories of early 70’s, when I was a student at PEC (Punjab Engineering College).

As if in a trance, I could still hear the horn of a CTU bus at the bus stop behind Neelam, and felt as if it was yesterday — the traffic buzzing through the sector’s centre road, a dust track going towards the Jagat Theatre, someone saying tickets are not available at Neelam, let us try at Jagat.

I was jostled out of my reverie with a tug on my arm by a vendor, Surely, Chandigarh has changed or has it really?

Prof G S Bajwa, Mohali