Oct 19, 2023There’s something about this city of Chandigarh (Hereafter Chd). Something very Indian and non-Indian, or un-Indian, in the proper proportions.
It’s fast becoming one of my favourite Indian cities to visit for various random reasons, mostly to do with it being structured and peaceful. Direct flights from Dubai and Sharjah help. To those who don’t know, Chd is a northern Indian city. The joint capital of 2 separate Punjab and Haryana states, it is one of the earliest and few planned cities in post-independence India. Wikipedia says, ‘Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier prepared the master plan of the city; most of the government buildings and housing in the town were designed by a team headed by Le Corbusier, Jane Drew & Maxwell Fry.
Chd is viewed by an average Indian as: ‘Clean and well-planned. Hub point to popular hill stations like Shimla and Kasauli.’
Chd is viewed by non-resident Indians like me as ‘Low noise levels, no obvious smells, medium traffic and well-planned. Rows of well-manicured trees form an outline across the roads and streets.’
Chd is to Punjab what Cape Town is to Africa. Imagine Mumbai is its Lagos, a hot, crazy mess with 25 million human inhabitants. Chd is divided into 56 sectors, numbered from 1 to 56, and they are spread out in a grid-like pattern, with each sector covering an area of approximately 1 square mile. I rode from my Airbnb in 15 to the famous Pal’s Dhaba in 35. I had an evening meal at the fancy vendors of 8 and went shopping at 17. Life gets simplified when the locations are not named after freedom fighters. The right and left-wing cannot fight over numbers; there is some freedom here.
The food in Chd ranges from good to very good. It’s not unique and mind-blowing, let’s say, compared to other Punjab cities of Amritsar and Delhi, where it’s worth travelling just for the out-of-the-world food experience.
So we’ve covered food and architecture. Both are very good, in my opinion, without being world-class or other superlative words.
I want to highlight a specific observation from my previous two trips to Chd. It’s my favourite Indian city to enjoy coffee. There I said it!
India is a land of tea drinkers, and coffee is popular mainly in south India. The ‘real filter coffee’ is a mixture of coffee, chickory, lots of sugar and milk boiled into oblivion. No disrespect to the South Indian coffee preperation, but the sugar and milk are its real stars. Nor am I here to talk about the coffee culture in Chandigarh being better or even close to that of Bangalore. I mean ‘It’s my favourite Indian city to enjoy a cup of pure-black expresso at a cafe.
To drive my point home, I will make a like-for-like comparison with my coffee experiences in the Indian Lagos, I mean Mumbai, versus the experience in Chd.
On 27th November 2022, I visited the speciality coffee chain, Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters, in Mumbai’s Khar West suburb. It’s a 10-minute drive from my Mumbai residence. That’s 10 minutes of a bumpy ride through the uneven concrete roads and the constant sound of cars honking.
I ordered a double espresso. It’s made from their house blend, which they call Silver Oak. The blend is a mixture of their single estate coffees from mainly the states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. It was a good expresso, that Silver Oak. It did what an expresso should—brewed by the Barista using a La Marzocco expresso machine.
Several scientific studies prove, without a doubt, that noise impacts the taste of your coffee. As quoted by The Guardian, ‘A study published in the journal Food Quality & Preference found people were “less sensitive to specific sensory and hedonic attributes” of coffee under louder conditions. In particular, noise affected the bitterness, acidity, sweetness and aroma.’
Upon landing in Chd, the experience of walking through the airport and into the taxi felt effortless after spending nine days in a very noisy Mumbai. The 30-minute ride to Sector 15 was peaceful. It was even quieter inside the rented apartment as if the sounds were turned off. My senses were at rest. I made my way to a speciality coffee chain. Once again, it was Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters at Sector 8 in Chd. Once again, I ordered a double expresso. And yet again, it was made with the Silver Oak blend grown in south India. They did have a fancier Victoria Arduino ‘Eagle’ as their main expresso machine. This particular cafe is attached to a bookshop. The thousands of books around the cafe help absorb unwanted sounds and vibrations. The expresso felt different this time around. It didn’t just ‘taste’ different/better, as the science has shown, but it ‘felt’ different. In this peaceful and relaxed setting in Chd, I could enjoy the best expresso I’ve had in India. I was dopamine-filled, while also at peace. Ok, coffee is done, savoured and been commented upon. My wife and friend have been repeatedly reminded about a vocal coffee snob in their presence.
Chd gave us a very un-Indian coffee experience, and I loved it.
Right next door to the Blue Tokai cafe is a restaurant called Backpackers Cafe, serving international cuisine. Whatever, we walked past it. And next to it is a legit, popular eatery called Gopal Sweets. The Chole Bhature was ohh so good. The Bhature had these mildly accented spice and herb coatings on it, I had never seen anything quite like it. We ended with Ras Malai.
Chd gave us a proper North Indian experience, and we loved it.
PS:
There’s one more thing to this experience. The self-created rules I follow to get into the coffee zone. I call these the ‘7 Nos.’
