Aarish Chhabra

Chandigarh 10-yr-old’s rape: Is media rush over a pregnant child’s trauma simply sinister?

I am sure that if you are even remotely interested in news or crime or justice or even voyeurism, you have read about her case. After all, it’s one of those where the media comes out in full force, gives several headlines, and forces you to react.

By the way: Chandigarh’s beloved cigarette-seller, Surdas must retake his spot near Sector 17

Surdas let out a hearty laugh, involving everyone around. It was a laughter you don’t expect from an old, frail, blind man selling cigarettes by the road. Completely out of character.

By The Way: Want a gift on Father’s Day? Be more like mom first

I bought a pair of spectacles on a Father’s Day Super Mega Bumper Sale from a website that were delivered on the eve of the occasion to my house in a suburb of Chandigarh. I was not home. Papa received the package.

Poetry versus cancer: Tough lessons from a Facebook fund drive in Chandigarh

People who are ‘nice’ can be more annoying than those who are habitually rude. This is particularly true about people who are into a ‘cause’ and stuff like that; who think every place in the universe is a podium for a speech; and that every human being with the capability to hear or nod is interested in their espousal, or should be.

Can poetry fight cancer? Facebook fund drive for Chandigarh student shows how

Amy decided to seek help on Facebook, and posted: “Anam is a beautiful human and a poet. A lot of us would have heard him recite his poems in many open mics. Anam is diagnosed with cancer and of course it’s sad beyond telling, for me to break this news... It is possible for us to help him! I lost my mom to cancer and I know how this battle is.”

HT Youth Forum 2017 | Let’s not lose the momentum on gender equality: Taapsee Pannu

About her Punjabi connection — as the Forum is a flagship annual programme of HT-Punjab — she gushed about how she’s a “hardcore Jatti” who can read and write Gurmukhi (script).

Watching Lahoriye in times of hatred: Two Punjabs and an India-Pak romance

The movie reveals how some nuance-killing, uniform traits of the market-driven new world can help us create a saleable, romantic idea of the old world. Sounds harsh?

By the Way | Dear dog lovers, it’s time to stop barking and start biting

She loves dogs. I had mixed feelings for dogs. Now, I too love dogs because I love her back. Isn’t that a lot of love?

Fighting drug menace in Punjab: Of fatal fumes and a smokescreen

In a park in a Chandigarh sector that houses a major hospital, a man sits on a bench through the day, almost unnoticed. All you need to do is stand next to him, no salutations required; he just needs the intent that your body language will anyway convey.

By the way | See a roundabout? OK, calm down!

Besides young men and women popping out of car sunroofs to celebrate their drunkenness and ice-cream vendors returning home in groups to avoid being robbed, there is another thing that features prominently in the life of those who drive on Chandigarh’s roads late at night. Cars on top of roundabouts!

By the way | Who’s responsible for Right to Education? Ask the administration

Circumvention of rules, sheer disregard, or not following the law because you don’t agree with it: Which one of these qualities would you like your child to possess? Don’t answer that. No law stipulates that you answer that. Note: We must do nothing unless a law tells us to. That’s what many schools in Chandigarh believe, and they’re easy to blame for it.

Hash through hashtag: Himachal’s famed marijuana on sale via Instagram, Speed Post

They send photos of charas packed in neat bags and boxes. Show more interest and it escalates to home delivery, and the preferred mode is Speed Post. No private courier.

Opinion: Vote’s up, Punjab? 5 questions answered by assembly poll results

Only a lucky duck or a fortune-telling parrot could have predicted 77 seats for the Congress in the 117-member House.

By the way | Sweet smell of roses, and the stink of apathy

What has a helicopter got to do with roses? Ask the civic authorities of Chandigarh. Maybe the 1,600 rose varieties in the 30-acre garden have a combined fragrance so strong that it can only be felt when you are hovering over the garden at a height of several metres. I won’t know as I couldn’t spend Rs 3,500 for a seven-minute ride. I’m not as fancy as the idea, you see.

By The Way | Gurdas Maan’s ‘Punjab’ a victim of its own times

Fine, he is a legend, a rare singer-lyricist whose work is celebrated as much in the hinterland as it is in the drawing rooms of Chandigarh. No wonder, his new outing, ‘Punjab’, is all the rage across the Punjabi-speaking areas in India and abroad.

A plane turns restaurant: Where else but in Ludhiana!

At first, you get startled. Curiosity follows. And then it’s sheer awe. How can an aeroplane be parked here? Hawai Adda, ‘airport’, is the name of the complex where four cousins have opened a restaurant inside a plane in Ludhiana, a city known for its opulence. Here, more than the opulence, it’s the innovation that hits you.

Youngest candidate in Punjab polls holds the oldest card — caste

Sukhbir Badal India’s most corrupt man, Modi is promoting him: Rahul Gandhi

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, while addressing a rally in Punjab’s Jalalabad constituency on Saturday, described Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president and Punjab’s deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal as a symbol of corruption.

Sleazy video of rebel SAD MP: Ghubaya’s undoing, or ‘insult to Rai Sikhs’? Jalalabad, Fazilka get murkier

A viral video, purportedly showing him in an intimate situation with a woman, has muddled the equations amid talk of more such videos surfacing just days ahead of the February 4 election.

As ‘intimate’ video goes viral, rebel SAD MP Ghubaya cries ‘political murder’ by Sukhbir, plays caste card

A video allegedly showing Ferozepur’s Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) MP Sher Singh Ghubaya – whose son is contesting the assembly polls from Fazilka on a Congress ticket – in an intimate position with a woman went viral on Friday. The MP declared the video “fake and fabricated” and said it was “a ploy by SAD chief (and deputy CM) Sukhbir Singh Badal”. “It is an attempt to politically murder me,” said Ghubaya, who has been actively seeking votes for his son and the Congress in Fazilka.

Punjab elections 2017: Meet Mumtaj Bholi, sole transgender in the fray

Mumtaj Bholi stands out. Not only because she is the only transgender among 1,145 candidates in the Punjab assembly polls, but also because it’s hard to find a candidate whom voters greet by touching her feet, even when she is far from the top rung of her party and, at 48, not that old either.

For Harjot Singh Bains, Punjab assembly test is not as easy as 88% in Class 10

It started with eight people, and one of them was Harjot Singh Bains. Today, he is the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate from Sahnewal in Ludhiana district, has 150 villages to cover, 2.5 lakh voters to convince, and a seat to win to the Punjab assembly.

By the way | Lohri is not about belly dancers

Chawla Aunty was not someone who would part with money easily. Instead, she gave us cotton straw, discarded furniture, dung cakes, and even some old clothes. And we did not mind. We were happy to burn it all.

By the way | Losing Lahore in Chandigarh

She is hardly ever on Facebook. It’s been three years. She may have got married. She was planning to when we met three years ago. A lot has changed since. I can no longer take her to Aroma, the hotel in Chandigarh, to order some mutton and warqi paranthe from Lahore Chowk, and reciprocate her gesture of taking me to that restaurant in Lahore where we shared a plate of Amritsari kulche-chhole. The eatery has been renamed Lucknow Chowk.

Chandigarh’s Lahore Chowk is now ‘Lucknow Chowk’: ‘Because we don’t like you, Pakistan!’

Call it the mood of the times, or maybe the aroma. A popular restaurant named ‘Lahore Chowk’ in Hotel Aroma’s Eating House in Sector 22 has been renamed ‘Lucknow Chowk’ in reaction to the recent chill in India’s relations with Pakistan. While the owner, Manmohan Singh Kohli, calls it his “inward expression” towards a neighbour “that has given us only hostility and terror in return of hospitality”, staff at the outlet cited objections and vocal protests by customers as probable trigger.

What’s the connection between fake notes in Mohali and a Spider-Man villain?

In 2012, Abhinav Verma was probably still in college on the outskirts of Chandigarh. He and I did not yet have that one mutual friend we now have on Facebook. Narendra Modi was still the chief minister of Gujarat. Banknotes had not become expensive jokes. And demonetisation was a word buried in dictionaries or books of economics. That was the year The Amazing Spider-Man released.

Of the Great White Change, and old notes thrown in a river

In the centuries to come, what will be your answer when you’ll be asked this: Where were you when the announcement that changed the face of India was made? I was sitting in front of the computer in a town called Mohali (30.7046° North, 76.7179° East). Yes, I immediately did my duty of lauding the enormity of the moment on social media. It felt great.

By the way: Of books, jobs, and two men protesting on a tower

Rakesh Prashar and Deepak Kumar must be wondering: At what point did a protest atop a 100-foot tower, near the chief minister’s residence in the capital, become too small for the government to react to? How high is high enough?

By the way | Chandigarh has elections too. But what about democracy?

Let’s remind ourselves. Chandigarh is not a part of Punjab. Yes, there are elections due in Punjab early next year. No, you cannot vote in them if you are registered as a voter in the UT. No matter how much you discuss the Punjab elections in your drawing rooms, favourite cafes, and roadside tea shacks. But, do you know there are elections due in Chandigarh as well? They’re not as exciting, I agree.

Fairs, fairies, and the Beautiful People of Chandigarh

She is everywhere. He is there too. The lights are bright. The clothes are too. The talk is frothy. The music is too. The circle goes round and around. And they do too. It’s all very beautiful. The city is too. It’s Chandigarh, you know. With a soft ‘d’. Listen in.