While the city sleeps
Beware of Indians who make promises of solitude.
Here in the city of Chandigarh the people are friendly and streets are clean, and water is awful but it's the best in the country. If Beaver Cleaver ever had an Indian relative he would surly have lived in Chandigarh. The fact that the place is segregated like a prison compound and sports sectors instead of blocks and numbers instead of street names seems un-worrying to those who reside here.
Orwellian civic organization aside, this city has more than a few interesting characteristics, making it unique not only to the wide world but India in particular.
For instance, every morning and every evening and sometimes during the day men and boys on bicycles ride up the residential streets calling out in Hindi in a manner that I can only recognize as the Indian rendition of "bring out your dead". I'm told however that they are simply selling newspapers, or asking for pop bottles. One of them makes a noise that is a dead ringer for the holler of a peacock. I woke up convinced I was in Beacon Hill park.
Another interesting feature of this quiet city is the profusion of westerners. By these I mean white folks. They seem pretty quiet, as does most of the downtown population. They reside along with the wealthier Indians in the very posh sectors like sector 9, and sector 8. Though I understand anyone who is anyone simply must live in sector 26.
So far my favorite sector has to be 58. Where the youth organize a massive nocturnal stage performance that features everything from classic Hindu melodramas, break dancing, live music and a pair of cabaret style hosts who rival Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin with their physical comedy and lampooning. The floodlights wash over an empty lot between the four surrounding banks of five story cement housing blocks. The sandy grass space is filled with people young and old. Kids on motor bikes, too cool to be in the thick of it sit with their gangs and watch from the safety of the shaded roadside. Children and their grandparents crowd near the front, the rest of the people mill about until it's time to find a seat. The master of ceremonies announces the acts over an ancient set of bullhorn loud speakers that he apparently stole off the set of MASH. No one in Sector 58 lives in their own house, all the buildings are cement apartment blocks, running water is brief luxury and the roads are not yet paved but at midnight there is no better place to be.
It's something like getting the kids from a drive-in movie to go to a 1930s era German club all performed by a USO squad in Vietnam. Except everyone is sober and happy and they brought their parents.
It's odd yet appropriate that in India's quietest (dare I say, most western) city there would be amongst the educated poor a nightly celebration of culture and performance at once so frenetic and casual as to make vaudeville ashamed to have faded into history.
And to all a good night.
Chris
Here in the city of Chandigarh the people are friendly and streets are clean, and water is awful but it's the best in the country. If Beaver Cleaver ever had an Indian relative he would surly have lived in Chandigarh. The fact that the place is segregated like a prison compound and sports sectors instead of blocks and numbers instead of street names seems un-worrying to those who reside here.
Orwellian civic organization aside, this city has more than a few interesting characteristics, making it unique not only to the wide world but India in particular.
For instance, every morning and every evening and sometimes during the day men and boys on bicycles ride up the residential streets calling out in Hindi in a manner that I can only recognize as the Indian rendition of "bring out your dead". I'm told however that they are simply selling newspapers, or asking for pop bottles. One of them makes a noise that is a dead ringer for the holler of a peacock. I woke up convinced I was in Beacon Hill park.
Another interesting feature of this quiet city is the profusion of westerners. By these I mean white folks. They seem pretty quiet, as does most of the downtown population. They reside along with the wealthier Indians in the very posh sectors like sector 9, and sector 8. Though I understand anyone who is anyone simply must live in sector 26.
So far my favorite sector has to be 58. Where the youth organize a massive nocturnal stage performance that features everything from classic Hindu melodramas, break dancing, live music and a pair of cabaret style hosts who rival Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin with their physical comedy and lampooning. The floodlights wash over an empty lot between the four surrounding banks of five story cement housing blocks. The sandy grass space is filled with people young and old. Kids on motor bikes, too cool to be in the thick of it sit with their gangs and watch from the safety of the shaded roadside. Children and their grandparents crowd near the front, the rest of the people mill about until it's time to find a seat. The master of ceremonies announces the acts over an ancient set of bullhorn loud speakers that he apparently stole off the set of MASH. No one in Sector 58 lives in their own house, all the buildings are cement apartment blocks, running water is brief luxury and the roads are not yet paved but at midnight there is no better place to be.
It's something like getting the kids from a drive-in movie to go to a 1930s era German club all performed by a USO squad in Vietnam. Except everyone is sober and happy and they brought their parents.
It's odd yet appropriate that in India's quietest (dare I say, most western) city there would be amongst the educated poor a nightly celebration of culture and performance at once so frenetic and casual as to make vaudeville ashamed to have faded into history.
And to all a good night.
Chris
posted by Chris and Nilu at 12:22 AM
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