Letter from India: Le Corbusier’s modern city, reinvented

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/30/chandigarh-india-le-corbusier

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The lake dazzles in the evening light. The mountain range in the background towers elegantly, a rainbow gracing its heights. Girls and boys, hand-in-hand, stroll languidly on the promenade. The stillness is broken by a splashing sound from a scull, gliding on the calm water.

Over 70 years ago, the Swiss architect Le Corbusier, looking at what was then a swamp, set about the task of realising Nehru’s vision of a modern India. The result was Chandigarh, a city of spacious bungalows, gardens, wide boulevards, geometrical buildings and a lake. It was a stamp of order in a chaotic India. People used to performing a variety of chores around swarming street bazaars now had their lives compartmentalised – they lived in quiet neighbourhoods, worked in ventilated offices, shopped on a wide plaza, went for jogs by the lake and brooded over life in its myriad parks.

I have been coming to the city since I was a child to visit my grandparents. Then its wide-open roads, flanked by Gulmoher and Acacia, hosted only a handful of Ambassadors and Fiats. These days when I come to see my parents, who have also settled here, the streets seem to burst with fancy cars of all makes.

As wealth has become more prominent on the streets, so has its nemesis. Migrants from poorer regions have poured in to work as domestic help and daily wagers. Earlier they came mostly from Garhwal, a region in the Himalayas. But as the Garhwalis’ economic conditions improved and demand for strenuous labour increased, people from the poorer regions of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar started replacing them.

At first, informal settlements appeared in the shadows of the city. Now they seem to be dotted through it. At almost any construction site, a cluster of tarpaulin shacks can be discerned. As women and men toil on the scaffolds, their children amble around. Most never go to school, either because their parents do not have the residence papers required to join free public school, or if they do, they are forced to take care of their younger siblings.

Migrants, however, are more upbeat about their situation than middle-class observers like me. Some even speak of having saved enough to go back and settle comfortably into the sedate rhythms of the countryside.

Among other things migrants have built swanky shopping malls, frequented by Chandigarh’s affluent residents. The open-air plaza, once a key attraction, now bears a sombre look.

Even as the city has moved on, its geometrical features gradually taking on the meandering patterns of Indian cities, the lake retains its charm for people like me who come here to feel the nostalgic past of the city beautiful.

The Guardian Weekly regularly publishes a Letter from one of its readers around the world. We welcome submissions – they should focus on giving a clear sense of a place and its people. Please send them to weekly.letters@theguardian.com