Narinder Singh in Chandigarh

Chandigarh and Amritsar

Contributions by S:
We spent the last two days in Chandigarh, the capital of both Punjab and Haryana. After Indian independence, Punjab lost half its land to Pakistan and its capital city Lahore. Prime Minister Nehru, along with other Punjab and Haryana leaders, decided that the new capital city for these two states would be a symbol for independent India. They hired a group of world famous architects Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Matthew Nowicki, and Albert Mayer to design India's first planned city. Le Corbusier, the main architect, had a very clear vision for this garden city:

The city plan is laid down in a grid pattern. The whole city has been divided into rectangular patterns, forming identical looking sectors, each sector measures 800 m x 1200 m. The sectors were to act as self-sufficient neighbourhoods, each with its own market, places of worship, schools and colleges - all within 10 minutes walking distance from within the sector. The original two phases of the plan delineated sectors from 1 to 47, with the exception of 13 (Number 13 is considered unlucky). The Assembly, the secretariat and the high court, all located in Sector - 1 are the three monumental buildings designed by Le Corbusier in which he showcased his architectural genius to the maximum. The city was to be surrounded by a 16 kilometer wide greenbelt that was to ensure that no development could take place in the immediate vicinity of the town, thus checking suburbs and urban sprawl; hence is famous for its greenness too. (Wikipedia)

On the morning of our second day of exploring, we met a friendly 73 year old Sikh man named Narinder Singh. Retired for the last 15 years after working in various government offices in Chandigarh, he has made it his hobby to show tourists around the city. He prides himself on being able to take you to restaurants where the food is delicious and cheap as well as places not open to the general public. He gave us a private tour of Nek Chand's Fantasy Rock Garden which is a 25 acre garden full of sculptures made from waste and trash collected in the months after Indian independence when millions of Indians moved from Chandiagarh to Pakistan. He also took us to meet the city's Minister of Health and took us to the gov't Publicity Office where he cut out several photos of himself in the newspapers that the employees had saved for him. He welcomed us into the Sikh Cultural Center where his friends arranged for us to stay at a guest room in Amritsar's Golden Temple, Sikhism's holiest temple. He was a really friendly man who practiced Hindi with us and encouraged us to speak it to strangers on the street. He carried around a canvas bag full of pamphlets and newspapers, which he collected more and more of throughout the day. His gold mine was at the publicity office where he looked through all of the packed shelves and took one copy of each of the pamphlets they had. He also had a bag of small gifts to give to foreigners that he stopped to talk to on the street. After he presented them with either a pamphlet, flower or a garland (S and I got all 3), he asked for a photo to be taken to remember the experience. He was very kind and continuously called me his granddaughter the whole day. Day after day, we are just constantly amazed by the generosity of the hundreds of incredibly friendly people we have met along the way.
We are now in Amritsar, the holiest city for the Sikh religion. There is the spectacular Golden Temple here.
In 2 days, we will head to Delhi and meet Andy and Leslie for an exciting adventure around N. India with them for a week. Can't wait!!!