See you in Punjabi Bagh

This west Delhi locality is green, quiet and also multi-cultural.

Mohit Chauhan, not Daler Mehndi. Health soups, not Tandoori Chicken. Neighborhood stores, not flashy malls. Is Punjabi Bagh really Punjabi by nature?}

Instead of being boisterous, this residential district in west Delhi is quite quiet. The avenues hum with the gentle whoosh of slow-moving DTC buses. Whilst red-cheeked Octavias and Corollas rush forth leaving behind slight ripples in the air that flow through beauty parlours and grocery stalls and palatial houses lining both sides of the road.

Nothing else disturbs the stillness of the sleepy bylanes but the bungalows. German writer Goethe once described architecture as frozen music. Punjabi Bagh residences with their bright colours and ‘baroque’ architecture are then surely irregular-shaped bubbles of Bhangra beats.

This well-off locality is well connected. The metro station lies next door at Rajouri Garden. The Ring Road cuts it into west and east. The westside is westernized with Pizza Hut and McDonald’s. The eastside is sort of eastern with its subzi-wallahs and Agrawal Sweets.

In the west, the Punjabi Bagh Club has a verdant ground where cricketers bowl away their winter afternoons. The east is content with its Dhingra Park (named after a Lahore-born army captain killed in the 1971 war) that stays abuzz with grandkids, grannies and gossip. Both sides share the same features: big multi-storied bungalows with tall gates. Crime is rare and women walk freely, something you can’t say for most of Delhi.

Known as ‘Refugee Colony’, the neighbourhood was re-christened to its present name by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1954. Bless the original inhabitants — those hardworking refugees from Pakistani Punjab, who settled here after the partition. They and their descendants not only created wealth in the city but also added more richness to its cultural landscape. New Delhi is shaped as much by the small-townish breeziness of Punjabi Bagh as it is by the grandeur of Lutyen’s Chankyapuri.

Try visiting Gurdwara Tikana Sahib. Its three domes dominate the skyline. However, Punjabi Bagh must not be identified with one community. The 30-year-old St. Mark Church at Radhe Krishna Marg, has around 400 Parish members. On Sundays, 1,500 odd Catholics attend separate services in Hindi, English and Malayalam. Curiously, a notice outside informs, “The church does not provide domestic maids.”

The westside’s Central Market offers many choices: showrooms, gyms, coaching centers and high-end restaurants. For money loans, one option could be... well, Punjab National Bank.