CTU

Most cities have an identifier.

This is most likely to be some historical monument, like the Qutub Minar in Delhi or Gateway on Marine Drive (I deliberately avoided Agra, it's more like India's identifier); It could even be a river-front like the Ganges in Kanpur. Though tattered and shacked, its still has been a defining feature of this messy city. There are other examples as well, some cities have a strip of road as in Mussoorie, Dehradun, Simla, Dalhousie. Each of these small-hill-towns has a Mall Road as its centre of gravity.

Now Chandigarh is a very new town. It has no forts or strips of street. It has a desolate lake-front Sukhna. Since the city was built well after our British masters had left there are no colonial land-marks either. When this city was concieved in a Nehruvian dream, it had no community interested in it. There was a running joke that, on being challaned for jumping a red-light anywhere in Punjab you were forced to buy a plot in Chandigarh.

Fittingly, its intial inhabitants were bureaucrats who got large lots of land through Govt. allotment at throwaway rates. Even now its common to see geriatric couples watering their 2 kanal kothi lawns or taking their two pomeranians for a walk on summer evenings.

I am a part the next wave of identifiable community in this sleepy Hotel-California'esq town. I am a student here.

My college is about ten kilometers from Pinku Farms and only way to reach there is CTU. Some of my most memorable times have been in the CTU. Ok let me relieve the tension its Chandiagrh Transport Undertaking. This is a fleet of local transport buses, driven by rustic, hard-core, punjabi spewing, burly, bearded, 9 meter turbanned Sirds. They think nothing of the roads they drive on, nor anything of the passengers who board. They Just Drive It.

Most of us travel on these beasts of road and have rollicking fun; I learned the language travelling on these buses, I learned about people, colleges, movies everything about the city on the CTU.

On my first day to college I reached huffing and puffing to the bus-stop at the northern corner of Sector 47 and asked a CTU conductor,

'11 number kinne vaje jayegi (what time will the bus no.11 leave)?'
'Adhiyan ate Pooriyan teh' (Duh??)

I had no clue what he meant. It took me two days of missing a bus to figure out that he meant that it was like the BBC news 'Every hour on the hour' and 'Every hour on the half-hour'.

The most favorite line of the drivers to pedestrians who thought they could also step out on the road was;

'Beema karaya da hai?'(Hope you are insured).
But nothing could stop them.

To motivate Inertia-laden passengers to keep shuffling forward he says, 'Agge paani khada hai?' (is it water logged that you are not moving forward?)

Anyway, as the city began to morph from a city for the geriatrics to a city for the students, it became more interesting. For us the best part of the day was spent in the bus. Hence my love for this icon called CTU.

Intro

My name is not Pinku, neither is anyone else in my family called that, we just lived in Pinku Farms. And its not a farm either its just called that. We had rented this tiny, two bedroom flat in sector 47 from Jaswant Singh. Jaswant uncle was a little bit off but great fun and a typical Sardar. I asked him about naming of the flat,

"Oh. Its my Son. Such a lovely boy. His mother loves to call him Pinku."
"..and Farms?"
"Oye we have our agriculture in Hoshiarpur. Your Rani Aunty really loves to live on a farm, so she calls it a farm"

This little nugget had formed an image in my mind of Pinku, which got shattered when I met him in college. This guy was a mountain. Of coal. I was a puny little fellow next to him. He had just come in to college while I was in my final year B.Com.

"Pinku?"
"Haanji Paaji. Myself Pinku"

This is a story of my life in Pinku Farms.

My Dad, like all true-blue Punjabi's, was in the armed forces. He was in the Indian Air Force. He was not a pilot-shilot or anything, he was part of the engineering crew which maintains aircrafts in Chandigarh's 3BRD (Base Repair Depot). My mother is just like the image of Nirupa Roy in films. She loves her children, I have two sisters, she loves her kitchen, her neighbours, her kitty, her Paharganj (that's where our Nana lives in Delhi).

And I was a student in GCB, Govt. College for Boys, Sector 11. It was earlier called GCM for Men but it was felt that 'boys will be boys' even if you call them Men. I travel to college in CTU, that's the bus service in Chandigarh, spend the day in the boys hostel and evenings, bird-watching opposite GCG, yes that's right the last G stands for Girls.