E-Paper
A delightful ‘reverse’ ride to tricity’s heydays
We pinned the blame of defacing Chandigarh on unchecked rise in population, greedy modules of real estate and increasing private cars
Neither was there any curfew clamped in tricity nor any VVIP movement was on the cards yet the entire grid of roads leading from Mohali to Chandigarh wore an eerily deserted look as our two wheeler purred along them at a gentle speed with my cousin at the driving seat. Our short journey unpredictably transported us back in time when Chandigarh in its virgin youth was winsome enough to attract the eyeballs of all ages. Upon entering the bounds of the City Beautiful, the realisation of not having had to wait among serpentine queues of vehicles at traffic lights stimulated me to lift the visor of my helmet to urge my cousin to slow down his scooter and drive it down the middle of an almost empty road on purpose. Momentary arrival of a dusty storm had charmed my eyes into deriving moony delight in free fall of the leaves and flowers appearing a surreal welcome shower that was by no means lesser in grandeur or radiance in case pitted against globally famed New Jersey or Vancouver fall. Thereon, I took immense delight in beholding the spectacle under soft shimmering headlights of countable vehicles shuttling to and from on low beams without needlessly blowing horns.
The eternally lurking fear of encountering grisly accidents or to drive past mangled remains of the collided vehicles had temporarily escaped our minds. Appreciatively, there was no unwanted road raging incidents where irked owners cussed foul words on each other and their noisy altercation taking an ugly turn with both the combatant parties raining blows on each other until traffic cops muscled their ways in through encircling crowd to negotiate a peace deal. Intermittently, I was pinching myself to validate, whether or not, had it been some kind of a fanciful hallucination tickling my remote cognitive channels at subjective level. Reality broke my musings when my cousin parked his scooter in a peaceful parking lot of ISBT, Sector 43, and beckoned me to get off. The huge wall clock on the bus stand had just struck 3 am.
Heavy influx of migrants, unchecked rise in population, exponential uptick in number of private vehicles owing to disposable incomes, greedy modules of real estate that sowed stones over seeds to unfortunately cultivate money than trees, mushrooming up of shopping plazas and high rise malls to fan capitalism were some of the prime multiple factors that surfaced during our conversation to pin blame on for how defaced the tricity appeared nowadays. We jointly pined for the bygone days when the City Beautiful was indeed ‘beautiful’ along with its attractive satellite cities Mohali and Panchkula, a few decades back. It hits a raw painful nerve in me every time I commute along the roads observing the silent aesthetical metamorphosis of the tricity to the tunes of a metropolitan city causing radical loss of touch with olden times that had once epitomised the ideal mix of chic urban and serene country life committed to moving forward on wheels of well-planned and well-rounded development.
Soon our bus went threading its way in and out around successive signature roundabouts leaving Chandigarh, along fringes of Panchkula, towards the capital city Delhi. “Is it ever possible to reverse the clock so that our Mohali-Chandigarh-Panchkula triplet jodi perpetually looked as beautiful-cum-peaceful as it looked just moments ago in wee hours of the morning?” I whispered my forlorn hope into my accomplice’s ears. Pat came his repartee, “Let’s make it a habit to travel in unearthly hours at night to feel priceless pack of good old vibes the tricity, in its pure pristine form, exuded decades back when we’d first stepped into the region.” His witty idea worthy of adoption merrily met with my wide acknowledging smile, for we’re obviously not spoilt for choices.
unsharma3116@gmail.com
