a city called...

where silence is golden and you rarely hear a stereo blaring at top volume from a house;

where there are houses of size bigger than what they should be as per the members they hold;

where each house has to have a garden, in many cases even bigger than the residential unit itself;

where the houses still don't go higher than a ground and maybe a first floor, lending the colonies posh and non-greedy look;

where the houses of Baradari have gardens about 10 times ther size of the bungalow they surround and which would give Lutyen's Bungalow Zone a run for it's money;

where water is still wasted by many;

where if a Sikh boy from Delhi steps out wearing a patka and not a turban, he gets looks as if he were an alien which should be destroyed at that very moment, even by those Sikhs who don't keep hair themselves;

where the colourful turbans give competition to the myriad coloured dupattas;

where the dreaded Punjab policemen wear turbans atop clean shaven faces and get more sneeres by locals than the Delhi boy;

where people rarely honk on streets and do it only when desperately needed unlike Delhi where it's a paranoia and trend rolled into one;

where, on a main road which is barely two lanes wide in total, car drivers would ratherslow doen, and drive around pedestrians and not rudely honk at them;

where the moment someone needy is sensed, he is likely to be swarmed with help;

where the college going crowd can be seen with smiles pasted across their faces, for such is life so easy in there;

where the Bullet is still regarded as a great posession and not for everyone, just like the Hayabusa;

where a lady wearing shades and driving a 2005 Camry is stared at, by a Jeep driving Jatt, in a manner as if her car's wheels just crushed his ego;

where girls and boys don't appear to be wannabes, save for the oversized and ill-fitted goggles they try to carry off;

where the roads have potholes, yet seem to have no effect on the smiles of the local crowds as they drive past them;

where a biker wearing a helmet is ararest of rare case;

where almost all the shopkeepers welcome you with such cheerful attitude, as if you were their only customer, who has come to bail them out of bad business, no matter how big the shop;

where the Gurudwara Dukh Nivaran Sahib stands, with the water of it's sarovar seems to have an energetic life of it's own and where if you take a shortcut to the main complex, you'd hardly be sneered at by those waiting in long queues;

where the Patiala salwar and the girls adorning them seem to complement each other;

where the Patiala salwar is still that - a true Patiala salwar, and not some caricature of a garment made by a tailor from Delhi or Mumbai;

where the choppers from the Patiala Aviation Club are some of those handful of silence-breakers during killingly quiet afternoons;

where some original architecture from decades back still holds itself high, with the homes having a large verandah in the centre and everything else spread around itself, with it's boohes and baariyaans getting more stares than a modernly done kothi next door;

where a migrant labour stuck at a steep phaatak, a railway crossing, wasn't honked at even once, or hurled abuses at, by the occupants of a silver Maruti Suzuki Swift, who waited patiently for a rickshaw puller to push his cart to the other side;

where the lush greens are superbly beautiful and the blend of the old and the new buildings providing it a contrasting magnificence;

where not even a single poster could be found on the walls of two flyovers which had the warning
written there "stick no posters or bills here", as if it were the order of the Raja;

where you don't get any HBO, Star Movies and scores of channels which you take for granted in Delhi, even as the cable operator of Charan Bagh charges 250 a month but can't even provide 25 channels, yet no one bothers coz it's Patiala;

where the local news bulletin is a sorry tale of robot broadcasting and pompous words, and recorded too far ahead in the day, to report the loss of 150 lives in a stampede at the end of the bulletin for less than a minute, while a local woman's recycled junk was senselessly given the second slot and for a good 5 minutes!;

where I found respite in Nutella Ferrero chocolate jam, and chocolates Shirin Asal's Nani, Draste Holland's Milk Pastilles and the best - Van Houten's Whole Fruit And Nuts, ending up eating more chocolate in the 7 days, than I would have in the last seven years :p ;

where I didn't see or hear anyone badly under the influence of Patiala pegs and singing 'main talli ho gaya' leave alone 'gayi'...;

where 'o teri bhen di' was a common sight, if you know what i mean and if you have heard that joke ;) ;

where the Bahadurgarh Fort is a beautiful sight while entering or leaving the city;

where they have a slum cluster, though a neat one, named Dhakka Colony :p ;

where the Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology is the pride of the city, the state and the nation too;

where at times it is so hard to kill time that you can't do anything but anything.. haha...;

where the Patiala Necklace once used to rest on the maharaja's chest and became the envy of the

whole damn world, so much so, that it inspired a remake by De Beers, a hopeless effort to restore a lost glory;

where the Patiala Necklace, Patiala salwar and the Patiala peg have given the city a distinct edge above the rest of the Punjab, yet the city's subtle nature evokes nothing but admiration amidst all it's pros and cons;

there I was, for 7 days; a city, an experience... called simply - Patiala.