Chandigarh and the Fantasy Rock Garden

After partition in 1947, India decided to create a perfect city as the capital of the newly bordered Punjab. After architectural deliberation Mr. Le Corbusier’s city plan was chosen, resulting in what seems to us like ‘America town’- with hotel prices to almost match! Chandigarh is all square blocks, straight streets and a surprising large dose of green. We bedded in zone 22, ate in zone 25 and toured in zones 17 and 22. If this sounds impersonal- it is! Despite this, we did like Chandigarh. During our time there the sky was smiling at us, and I don’t mean this metaphorically. A rare coupling of the moon in it’s first phase, looking like a smiling mouth, and the stars Jupiter and Venus shining directly above it acted like eyes, together gave the effect of a smiling face. Perhaps it was Nek Chand’s Fantasy Rock Garden that led the sky to smile as a visit there definitely put a smile to our faces!

Nek Chand was stationed in Chandigarh in 1950 as a road inspector He occupied a piece of jungle land where he hermitly worked on creating his fantasy rock figures. As raw materials he used everything around, from broken crockery, toilet bowls, bangles, electric sockets and general trash. He toiled away for 15 years with his unusual pastime until his creations were accidentally discovered when the government we clearing up the wasteland. Surprised and excited by his unusual recycling skills the government gave Nek the whole area to turn into a park, some staff and a wage to devote his time solely to expanding the marvelous collection. He is now over 80 years old and still going strong.

The garden/maze is delightful. We imagined we had entered a parallel universe where all the strange figures came alive at night like in Toy Story or Night at the Museum, except that Tim Burton would definitely be directing the action. I’ll let Malachy’s artistic renderings speak for themselves.