Chandigarh was created for silence.
Planners respected pauses,
Built modular habitats and spacious plazas.
People unfazed by time, politely conversed.
Coexistence was easy under shady trees.
The present denounces the pause,
Brands it inefficiency. Each moment counted.
Compulsive preoccupation. Silences filled.
Deleted the pause, lost the wisdom
Spaces contract, jerky existence ensues

Chandigarh's government housing
Intended, beyond accommodation
To indicate hierarchy of status without
Altering the language of architecture.
Space expanded with seniority – a fact
Conceded as inevitable for a Capital.
Yet ostentation decried – a socialist nod
In a state committed to equity for all.
With time, priorities changed, housing
Aspires now to achieve distinction
Though planners believed otherwise.
Status does not require advertising.

Daily, thousands pour into Chandigarh.
Daily wagers, guards, clerks, salespersons,
salaried professionals; workers all.

They vanish.
Schools, shops, offices, brutal concrete
absorbs them. For these, Chandigarh
is the unreachable West - a mirage.

Inflation shrinks the rupee, lengthens
the highway that wears commuters down,
bearing burdens of a city owned by wealthy.

What worth is a city, if those who sustain it
despair of ever prospering within it?

Chandigarh was not conceived as a monument to machinery.
It was shaped by human hands, at human scale, and the belief -
Architecture should preserve dignity, not overwhelm it.
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The concrete remains strong, but behavior has decayed.
Will restraint in Design still outlive the erosion of values?