Chandigarh: When a city becomes you & you become the city

Born and brought up in the City Beautiful, I have always wondered what love or happiness feels like. Does it feel like amaltas flowers of my city that bloom so vibrantly that you forget all your worries and sorrows? Or does it feel like that slow, unhurried fall of the autumn leaves when winters come knocking at our doors?

Does it also feel like driving silently, calmly and patiently through my city’s roads, when you feel like the world feels a bit too heavy to unload? I think it does.

From the time I spoke my first words, to the times that I held my family close; from times I lost and won, to the times I felt I had lost all hope — Chandigarh, my city, held me close, and it loved me when I had none. The bright shiny lights that light up the plaza during festivals, the shopping spree that sets the markets abuzz, and that spark that we carry as quiet denizens of the City Beautiful —Chandigarh sets its residents and itself life apart.

My city has loved me, it has healed me, it has shown me my spiritual side, it has enlivened me, it has given me innumerable reasons to be grateful, it has given me my family, and it has given me my everything, quite literally. To my city, you live in me and I in you. To the promise of never ever parting away.

Sanighdha, Chandigarh