Chandigarh

Chandigarh is the most planned and I can say the cleanest city in India. You have fines for litering on the roads and this state follows it religiously. The capital of Punjab, Haryana and a Union Territory in itself, it has 47 sectors of which sector 13 is missing.





Roads of Chandigarh: Aren't they spec clean and beautiful? The entire avenue has trees on both sides that gives such a soothing feeling to drive in between the roads.





























Rock Garden: Man made garden by Mr Nek Chand. For those interested in knowing about this place in detail you may visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nek_Chand.





























Buildings: The houses here have symmetry about their size. Throughout the same sector you will find them all with same colors and can easily confuse a new comer with number if he fails to get the wing under a particular sector that he intends to enter. Nevertheless, the buildings look awesome with brick work visibly carved on almost 80% of the structures.















Sukhna lake: It is Chandigarh's place of weekend visit the way Juhu beach is for Mumbai. It's a nice tranquil place where you will find enough stretch of road for strolling and eating chat :)
At this place there are some great painters that draw your pencil sketch just by looking at your face. That's something very unusual, right?
The romantic lake with ducks and swans that ride in it is a wonderful place to spend your time with someone you love :)












Rose Garden: Chandigarh is a house for ample of gardens of which this is perhaps the largest and occupies a land of 30 acre. Since I had visited this place in scorched summer I barely got to see a few varieties of roses intact. Otherwise there are around 1600 varieties of roses in this garden. It reminded me of Aarey Garden in Mumbai.














Sector 17: The cute little squrrel was literally running on the the roads of sector 17 of Chandigarh which is the biggest market of the city. Below is a glimpse of the market in the evening. Every sector has it's own small market but this one is the biggest. Just kind of an open mall area.





























Pinjore Garden: It's the most beautiful of gardens that you can ever visit. It falls on the route to Shimla from Chandigarh and definitely a must see.

History of the garden -

Entrance of the garden -

The side view of pinjore garden.

Jal Mahal inside the garden -

- The outside of Pinjore garden: The structure is fortlike and was our last stop on Chandigarh ride. I hope you enjoyed visiting some parts of North India through these pics :)

The Unsolicited

A chill runs down my spine when someone I don't even know expects me to be his friend. There were times when I din't mind being friends with the unknown and some of those once unknown people are good friends today.

But I must admit that I haven't been that lucky always. Few people have left a very deep impact on my naive understanding about human beings. I have learnt through some costly mistakes that not everybody on earth is good and that many wear a mask of goodness about them which otherwise seldom exists on their real face.

Just being from a very good college or working with a very good company or belonging to my community don't make you an eligible friend. And no doubt after my mistakes of making false friends I prefer being scrupulous enough in terms of choosing people that I would want to share my thoughts or any piece of information with.

A man is known by the company he keeps, so as a kid I preferred having no company instead of bad ones. But as I grew I felt that I could have been wrong. Perhaps, it was more of my own conviction that was required. If I'm strong enough then no company can change my conviction. But that's not the case. Unfortunately, you automatically get linked with the company.

So when I get poured with requests of people wanting to make friends with me, I find it very surprising that when I don't wish to join the unknown company, when I don't know the unsolicited person, when I don't share any common interest with him or when I don't see any reasons of why we must be friends, yet such people wish to befriend me.

Over a period of time I have learnt not to trust people easily. I have learnt to have an air of defiance about me and I refuse to shed this shield, the absence of which would harm me. I feel solace in the fact that I eschew these unsolicited people. No doubt then, I would continue to abjure them. And I prefer it that way.

There Is Nothing Cool About Smoking

Smoking probably looks and sounds very soothing and 'cool' to people who enjoy lighting the tobacco stick. But research proves it otherwise. An year's consumption of tobacco and cigarette can produce so much of tar in your lungs that if you squeeze them, they can fill a glass and this glass full tar can be sufficient to produce cancer that will make you sick, extremely sick.

Perhaps, smoking persistently causes one to have a craving for it and if not consumed at a frequent rate these guys tend to be missing out on something. But somewhere this habit needs to be broken because it adds to the inconvenience to many walking on the already muddy and potholed roads in our country .

Most importantly that it causes inconvenience to everybodys bodies, be it the smoker or the passive smoker. For non smokers like me, it's very irritating to see smokers smoke on the roads with all the liberty of littering the air at their hearts delight. The conditions go further irksome for sensitive lungs of people who have bronchitis and asthma.

Even after months of implementing the law of not smoking in public places people shamelessly puff the cigarette mocking the litigation as if it has no value. Perhaps it indeed doesn't have any because nobody is restricted or fined. As a matter of irony the public servants themselves don't try to implement this as a rule on their own selves so forget about the common people.

But smoking is a serious problem and needs to be addressed strictly. Worldwide statistics show a ghastly figure that the consumption of tobacco has reached the proportions of a global epidemic. Tobacco companies are cranking out cigarettes at the rate of five and a half trillion a year – nearly 1,000 cigarettes for every man, woman, and child on the planet. (courtesy: http://www.who.int/tobacco/en/atlas8.pdf ) At this rate cancer would love to spread its wings and embrace the world.

There have been some very sensible advertisements which show that smoking can cause harm to your lungs, heart and teeth; it can make you prone to cancer and will make your family a passive smoker; it will slowly kill you. But somehow the habit of smoking to the inveterate smoker seems so difficult to quit as if someone has asked him to remain hungry forever. Perhaps, he might not even mind remaining hungry if all he's allowed to do is smoke. But the question lies with us to answer that is it so difficult not to smoke or let the lungs breathe clean air?

I caught a good poem and some gruesome but real pictures from the net. I would be glad if it would help encourage even one person to quit smoking.

A Lesson Learnt Late

It was, I remember, many years ago,
When I had failed to distinguish between a friend and a foe,
When they had invited me ,holding open the pack,
When I lost to curiosity, instead of being taken aback,
When on that fateful day , for the first time,
I held a cigarette in my hand.

It was, I felt a part of being in the teens,
And what had started with a puff or two became a routine.
The smoke's illusion blinded me for as it arose,
Arose my spirits too, and I muttered to myself, "I can" because,
With a cigarette in my hand ,
I felt like a man.

Soon it came out in the open, for it had become a habit I could not hide,
I was helpless, for I could not help but continue,
Even when I knew, it was eating me up from inside,
I was sick...my body and my soul and I realized,
With the cigarette in my hand,
I was a dying man.

Soon I was just a lifeless form, a hollow,
People shunned me everywhere, I wished,
If only had I done something which others could follow,
But it was too late, I had taken the wrong path, and I was ignored, because
With a cigarette in my hand,
I was a hated man.

All the time, tears filled my eyes,
For people had bid me their good byes,
I wept because my cells , my body was choking ,
If only on that first day,my friends had been joking,
And then one day, the cigarette dropped from my hand,
I was a dead man

Believe me, smoking really ain't cool. It makes you look ugly. Very ugly.