Recently we again visited Rock Garden of Chandigarh and it was again a delighting experience to see some creative stuff made out of junk or recycled material. Let's take a quick PHOTO JOURNEY to this wonderful place created by Mr. Nek Chand...
Here is a photograph of a huge stone carved into a circular shape and looks like a tyre with a whole in middle. The text written over this stone in English and Urdu is saying that the place where this stone is located signifies the location from where Mr. Nek Chand started creating Rock Garden. There is a small hut at this place.
There are many things made up of things like Bangels, Electric material, broken crockery etc. But some of them looked plain creations of cement and stone, like the ones shown in above Photograph. This may be something different which is not clear from the appearance of these ladies standing at a high wall in Rock Garden of Chandigarh, Punjab. The background has of course some broken pieces of tiles.
The Rock Garden of Chandigarh is a Sculpture garden in Chandigarh, Punjab State of India which is also known as Nek Chand's Rock Garden after its founder Nek Chand, a government official who started the garden secretly in his spare time in 1957. Today Rock Garden is spread over an area of forty-acres and Rock Garden is completely built of industrial & home waste and thrown-away items... The very first photograph is my favorite but never able to understand that how these clay-pots can be considered as thrown-away or Home waste. From the structure, they look like placed together in original form.
Rock Garden is situated near Sukhna Lake and it comes before Lake when we go from Rose Garden. It consists of man-made interlinked waterfalls and many other sculptures that have been made of scrap & other kinds of wastes (bottles, glasses, bangles, tiles, ceramic pots, sinks, electrical waste, etc) which are placed in walled paths. Inside the Rock Garden there is a dedicated path which takes you through a guided tour till the end point and takes back to exit gate of Rock Garden.
Quietly sitting men at Rock Garden of Chandigarh in Punjab State of India. It's really amazing to see such wonderful masterpieces and not sure who continue the good work till date. Rock Garden is one of the main tourist place of Chandigarh and probably each Tourist try to witness this marvelous piece of Art.
Towards the end of Rock Garden, there is a huge ground. This place is one of the popular picnic station for children. Lot of space to play, enjoy Camel ride and much more around the space. There is a huge complex with different types of mirrors installed. These mirrors are some special effect mirrors which make you small, tall, distorted with various angles etc. It's fun to spend some time in front these mirrors and do some laughter-therapy :)
There are some water bodies inside the Rock Garden which makes this place more interesting. Apart from two man-made waterfalls, there are some canals around the place and kids love to play around these. This places are also more popular for Photography :)
During spare time, Mr. Nek Chand began collecting materials from demolition sites around the city. He recycled these materials into his own vision of the divine kingdom of Sukrani choosing a gorge in a forest near Sukhna Lake for his work. The gorge had been designated as a land conservancy, a forest buffer established in 1902 that nothing could be built on. Chand’s work was illegal, but he was able to hide it for eighteen years before it was discovered by the authorities in 1975. By this time, it had grown into a 12-acre (49,000 m2) complex of interlinked courtyards, each filled with hundreds of pottery-covered concrete sculptures of dancers, musicians, and animals.
People of different ages and fro various walks of life come to this place with different expectations. Nowadays Rock Garden has become one of the main place for city couples, but of-course not as good as Rose Garden :) ... I remember one of the visit to Rock Garden, when we had to come back as it was full of young couples and we had started feeling guilty about the fact that we were breaking their privacy. This time, it was completely different and I was happy to see everyone enjoying in their own way, without any problems.
Children with their Mom at Rock Garden and their Dad clicking a memorable moment at Chandigarh, Punjab !
Whatever Mr. Nek Chand was doing was in serious danger of being demolished but he was able to get public opinion on his side and in 1976 the park was inaugurated as a public space. Nek Chand was given a salary under title 'Sub-Divisional Engineer, Rock Garden' and a workforce of 50 laborers so that he could concentrate full-time on his work. It even appeared on an Indian stamp in 1983. The Rock Garden is still made out of recycled materials, and with the government’s help, Nek Chand was able to set up collection centers around the city for waste, especially rags and broken ceramics.
When Mr. Nek Chand left the country on a lecture tour in 1996, the city withdrew its funding and vandals attacked the park. The Rock Garden Society took over the administration and upkeep of this unique visionary environment. The garden is visited by over five thousand people daily with a total of more than twelve million visitors since its inception which is incredible.
So apart from Sukhna Lake, Rose Garden, Sector-17, Shanti Kunj, Sector-42 Lake; Rock Garden is one of the main place to visit in Chandigarh and it's a worth a visit.
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