Saturday, August 06, 2005
Amritsar--Golden Temple and the Border Ceremony
I just came back (to McLeod Ganj; this route to Rishikesh is completely roundabout but I wanted to take a little vacation without bags) from the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the greatest holy shrine of the Sikhs and the site of a year-round pilgrimage. It was completely amazing. Pilgrims come from all over the world and thousands of people are perpetually pulsing through the temple grounds (with only a bit of shoving, so as mild a crowd as you may find here). I cannot believe it is already the 6th; I have a bus ticket to Rishikesh that leaves tomorrow evening.
The centerpiece of the temple grounds is the Golden Temple itself, which is in the center of the sacred Amrit lake or "pool of nectar" (picture: http://www.amritsarplus.com/DSaheb.html). The top-half of the temple is covered in gold; the bottom half looks like marble inlaid with mother-of-pearl and stone flowers and other designs (resembling the inlay on those white sandstone boxes from India that you can buy in the states).
Surrounding the temple and separated by the lake is a square marble pathway lined with shrines and Sikh parliament offices. People circumambulate the Golden Temple in a constant stream, stopping to pray at each of the shrines to various Sikh holy men, purchasing offerings of blessed prasad (a sticky wheat and sugar substance that resembles sweet potato; any amount of pay is welcome but I think it is required) to make at the temple; then get in line to take the long walkway across the lake to the temple, where they pray and watch a priest read from the original copy of the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikhs' holy book.
There is a ceremony each morning and night, accompanied by an S-shaped horn (that sounds like a bugle) and bass drums, when the book is delivered into the temple and then out. Amritsar is incredibly hot, and at two opposing corners of the marble square are water stations manned by volunteers serving filtered water to everyone. Although there is separate pilgrim lodging, many pilgrims sleep on the marble under the building awnings. Men are also in various stages of undress as they ready to jump (in their underwear, a typical bathing suit) into the sacred lake.
As you approach the walkway to the temple, there is a picture window through which you can see four priests in a tiny room, perhaps 4x6 feet. They rotate to keep up continuous chanting of the book; the chanting is broadcast over loudspeakers. When I first looked in, the priests all looked so still I honestly thought they were mannequins and that one priest's bobbing head was mechanical. On closer inspection I saw that the oldest appeared to be nodding off and the others just looked stone tired. (The idea that they might be mannequins had to have been influenced by my earlier visit that day to the Hindu Mata Temple, which I had read in Lonely Planet was "Disneyesque" and which included a very tiny papier mache cave you could go through, a very tall swing made of rope and fake vines that hung from a jungly fake-vine-draped ceiling; and a kind of underground waterway you get to walk in while looking at--I don't know what they were--big brown papier mache mounds.)
In several of the Golden Temple buildings there are rows of picture windows where you can peer in to see additional priests sitting behind cloth-draped tables and reading a copy of the ancient text, which is about two feet long and two feet wide--I'm saying that to say that when it's spread open it's perhaps four feet in length, and combined with the tall, bearded men in their towering turbans makes for quite the grand effect.) Who knows how the priests can concentrate with us staring. I don't know how long they stay; I hope they rotate.
All Sikh temples have community kitchens (like soup kitchens), and this one feeds people all day in this incredible assembly line of good food. Supposedly 30,000 people are fed every day; even if it's less I've never seen anything so generous on such a grand scale. The evenings are simply chappati, rice and dal; volunteers circulate constantly to make sure everyone has as much as they want. Many Sikhs will sincerely and lovingly tell you about the good services the temple offers, and when one man heard I'd only had dinner there he said, "We also serve a good breakfast", saying "good breakfast" in the tone you would use when you think about feeding your daughter after she's just come back from a really, really long trip, so I went for breakfast the next day. (Note how he didn't say, you rich American, I hope you're making a good donation.)
The breakfast was dal again and chapati, but also a piece of sweet bread that tasted like funnel cake (awesome) and sweet rice pudding that had simmered well in the bits of cardomom and other spices floating in it. The chapati was warm and fresh. I mean it was all completely delicious. In college I volunteered at a soup kitchen near the college, and we typically served ham or other sandwiches, canned foods, and often some stale sweet; the people running the kitchen were themselves not well off, and what they fed the others was close to what they probably ate. Probably that was true here, too, but the staples are more nourishing.
The scene of volunteers doing dishes--I didn't want to get too close and stare although, on reflection, they would have welcomed it--it must be thirty rows of water troughs, people on either side of the troughs being handed the large aluminum trays we eat on, the aluminum bowls we drink water from, and our spoons, that they dip in water and pass behind them to people who dip them in another trough and pass back. My friend said he saw the backside of the kitchen and the cooks at their enormous pots, and that this alone was incredible.
There are volunteers everywhere, serving water, wiping the marble floors so no one slips from the sacred nectar and holy water that spills, and when the temple closes at perhaps 11pm, volunteers stay after to clean and ready it for the following morning. Everyone serving the food is volunteer and everyone cleaning the floors are volunteer.
There is (free) pilgrim lodging, and many people come with nearly nothing and lay out with a pillow on the hard cement floor, though there are also rooms available for a small fee. There is a free medical clinic, a bank, a post office, and stations providing filtered water. There's no pressure to leave. Foreigners have a separate small dormitory and private shower, which makes for good camaraderie and a feeling of safety (there are guards guarding the foreigners dorm all day). A donation is requested when you leave, at least for the foreigners. At the entrance to the lodging is a little framed pastiche of grim looking men holding signs--thieves--to shame them and so they'll be recognized if they come again.
The darker side: As I mentioned, Amritsar is extremely hot and humid, and your clothing is just soaked through all day and night. I was able to sleep more the second night than the first, when the heat, and fear for my stuff, was overwhelming. The main city where you land after a no-shocks, hot, hard-hitting 7-hour bus ride (from McLeod Ganj) is like Delhi and apparently most others--busy and congested and polluted and thievish; the busdriver had tried nicely to engage me in conversation despite a big language barrier, then promptly purposefully dropped me with a young cycle rickshaw artist who--I understood later--was instructed by an elder to drive me to another guesthouse where they would try to convince me there was no lodging at the Golden Temple.
Also, as we were leaving the eating area at breakfast a 12-year-old (or so) boy grabbed my butt, or at least made an earnest attempt but his aim was off, then dashed around to the front. I said amazedly, "You didn't really just do that" and he acted innocent, but the place was quiet and the large group around me looked at me as if they knew exactly what he'd done, whether or not they knew what I'd said. I couldn't be 100% sure it was him so I just said, "go, shoo" and wasn't very upset; besides, I'd been warned--my Israeli friend had already told me HER butt had been grabbed in Amritsar. We should sell t-shirts, "My Butt Was Grabbed in Amritsar".
Finally, Amritsar is right on the LOC, the line of control, i.e. the border of Pakistan and India, who have been at war since the Partition that made Pakistan Pakistan in 1949. So each night at sunset there is a choreographed border ceremony in which soldiers on both sides of the gate. There are bleachers for visitors that give everyone a pretty good view of their country's side of things (it's hard for the Indian side to see the Pakistan display and vice versa; nevertheless, foreigners are waved into the "VIP" section closest to the gate). On the Pakistani side when you arrive are an Indian flag and a Pakistan flag waving opposite each other at equal height. Even though sunset is the official border closing, the gate is closed when you arrive, maybe for safety as well as because the border actually officially closes hours earlier, at I think 4:30pm, but sunset makes for a better backdrop.
I couldn't see Pakistan's side, but on our side there were a group of people dressed as army officers (probably actors) who were all clearly picked for height, on top of which they wear raised heels and a hat with an upright-fan-shaped gold ornament on one side that adds four inches; as a result they towered some four feet over the typically shortish Indians.
Some form of national anthem began playing through tinny speakers and the crowd clapped and sang in unison. Only once did it sound like the CD skipped.
Then there's, you know, a running of the Indian flag to the gate, then someone takes the flag into the bleachers; then there's this procession of officers that come out and do silly extremely high fierce kicks while keeping extremely straight faces. Then after much dancing one or two proceed to the gate, and it's--opened!--for them to take down the flags that are on the Pakistan side. Then there's this dramatic, fierce tossing of the flag ropes (sorry, what's the name for them?) that had something to do with them pretending they dare not touch the others' rope, I think, and finally the flags are lowered at diagonals--so they cross each other--very slowly so that neither goes lower than the other.
Meanwhile, the man who ran the flag, a tall, clean-shaven guy in blue jeans and a crisp open-collared button-down shirt (but it got progressively sweatier), worked the crowd, telling them what to yell, when to pat their hands over the mouths (the way people imitate Native Americans--woo woo woo woo). He smiled to get them going and frowned when they weren't being loud enough. If he were in the states he would have been working at Sea World, lying to the kids about what to say to the dolphins to make them jump (I don't know, maybe they don't do this at the dolphin tank, but you know what I mean).
There were a few Westerners behind me who worked at the International Red Cross in Delhi, and one of them kept saying, "I have never seen anything like this. I have never seen a border closing like this."
People argue over whether this is a tourist thing; it seems obviously so and helps people get to Amritsar. Afterwards they sell CDs of the show and photos; there are even TVs set up displaying the video as you leave, nothing the average streetside seller of Fanta and postcards could afford. I'm sorry to end on a down note, as well as to state the obvious, but it's a sad thing to watch this comedy when real fighting is going on.
Still, it was amazing to see even the LOC touched by Bollywood, and to see the size and breadth of the Golden Temple's wonders.
The centerpiece of the temple grounds is the Golden Temple itself, which is in the center of the sacred Amrit lake or "pool of nectar" (picture: http://www.amritsarplus.com/DSaheb.html). The top-half of the temple is covered in gold; the bottom half looks like marble inlaid with mother-of-pearl and stone flowers and other designs (resembling the inlay on those white sandstone boxes from India that you can buy in the states).
Surrounding the temple and separated by the lake is a square marble pathway lined with shrines and Sikh parliament offices. People circumambulate the Golden Temple in a constant stream, stopping to pray at each of the shrines to various Sikh holy men, purchasing offerings of blessed prasad (a sticky wheat and sugar substance that resembles sweet potato; any amount of pay is welcome but I think it is required) to make at the temple; then get in line to take the long walkway across the lake to the temple, where they pray and watch a priest read from the original copy of the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikhs' holy book.
There is a ceremony each morning and night, accompanied by an S-shaped horn (that sounds like a bugle) and bass drums, when the book is delivered into the temple and then out. Amritsar is incredibly hot, and at two opposing corners of the marble square are water stations manned by volunteers serving filtered water to everyone. Although there is separate pilgrim lodging, many pilgrims sleep on the marble under the building awnings. Men are also in various stages of undress as they ready to jump (in their underwear, a typical bathing suit) into the sacred lake.
As you approach the walkway to the temple, there is a picture window through which you can see four priests in a tiny room, perhaps 4x6 feet. They rotate to keep up continuous chanting of the book; the chanting is broadcast over loudspeakers. When I first looked in, the priests all looked so still I honestly thought they were mannequins and that one priest's bobbing head was mechanical. On closer inspection I saw that the oldest appeared to be nodding off and the others just looked stone tired. (The idea that they might be mannequins had to have been influenced by my earlier visit that day to the Hindu Mata Temple, which I had read in Lonely Planet was "Disneyesque" and which included a very tiny papier mache cave you could go through, a very tall swing made of rope and fake vines that hung from a jungly fake-vine-draped ceiling; and a kind of underground waterway you get to walk in while looking at--I don't know what they were--big brown papier mache mounds.)
In several of the Golden Temple buildings there are rows of picture windows where you can peer in to see additional priests sitting behind cloth-draped tables and reading a copy of the ancient text, which is about two feet long and two feet wide--I'm saying that to say that when it's spread open it's perhaps four feet in length, and combined with the tall, bearded men in their towering turbans makes for quite the grand effect.) Who knows how the priests can concentrate with us staring. I don't know how long they stay; I hope they rotate.
All Sikh temples have community kitchens (like soup kitchens), and this one feeds people all day in this incredible assembly line of good food. Supposedly 30,000 people are fed every day; even if it's less I've never seen anything so generous on such a grand scale. The evenings are simply chappati, rice and dal; volunteers circulate constantly to make sure everyone has as much as they want. Many Sikhs will sincerely and lovingly tell you about the good services the temple offers, and when one man heard I'd only had dinner there he said, "We also serve a good breakfast", saying "good breakfast" in the tone you would use when you think about feeding your daughter after she's just come back from a really, really long trip, so I went for breakfast the next day. (Note how he didn't say, you rich American, I hope you're making a good donation.)
The breakfast was dal again and chapati, but also a piece of sweet bread that tasted like funnel cake (awesome) and sweet rice pudding that had simmered well in the bits of cardomom and other spices floating in it. The chapati was warm and fresh. I mean it was all completely delicious. In college I volunteered at a soup kitchen near the college, and we typically served ham or other sandwiches, canned foods, and often some stale sweet; the people running the kitchen were themselves not well off, and what they fed the others was close to what they probably ate. Probably that was true here, too, but the staples are more nourishing.
The scene of volunteers doing dishes--I didn't want to get too close and stare although, on reflection, they would have welcomed it--it must be thirty rows of water troughs, people on either side of the troughs being handed the large aluminum trays we eat on, the aluminum bowls we drink water from, and our spoons, that they dip in water and pass behind them to people who dip them in another trough and pass back. My friend said he saw the backside of the kitchen and the cooks at their enormous pots, and that this alone was incredible.
There are volunteers everywhere, serving water, wiping the marble floors so no one slips from the sacred nectar and holy water that spills, and when the temple closes at perhaps 11pm, volunteers stay after to clean and ready it for the following morning. Everyone serving the food is volunteer and everyone cleaning the floors are volunteer.
There is (free) pilgrim lodging, and many people come with nearly nothing and lay out with a pillow on the hard cement floor, though there are also rooms available for a small fee. There is a free medical clinic, a bank, a post office, and stations providing filtered water. There's no pressure to leave. Foreigners have a separate small dormitory and private shower, which makes for good camaraderie and a feeling of safety (there are guards guarding the foreigners dorm all day). A donation is requested when you leave, at least for the foreigners. At the entrance to the lodging is a little framed pastiche of grim looking men holding signs--thieves--to shame them and so they'll be recognized if they come again.
The darker side: As I mentioned, Amritsar is extremely hot and humid, and your clothing is just soaked through all day and night. I was able to sleep more the second night than the first, when the heat, and fear for my stuff, was overwhelming. The main city where you land after a no-shocks, hot, hard-hitting 7-hour bus ride (from McLeod Ganj) is like Delhi and apparently most others--busy and congested and polluted and thievish; the busdriver had tried nicely to engage me in conversation despite a big language barrier, then promptly purposefully dropped me with a young cycle rickshaw artist who--I understood later--was instructed by an elder to drive me to another guesthouse where they would try to convince me there was no lodging at the Golden Temple.
Also, as we were leaving the eating area at breakfast a 12-year-old (or so) boy grabbed my butt, or at least made an earnest attempt but his aim was off, then dashed around to the front. I said amazedly, "You didn't really just do that" and he acted innocent, but the place was quiet and the large group around me looked at me as if they knew exactly what he'd done, whether or not they knew what I'd said. I couldn't be 100% sure it was him so I just said, "go, shoo" and wasn't very upset; besides, I'd been warned--my Israeli friend had already told me HER butt had been grabbed in Amritsar. We should sell t-shirts, "My Butt Was Grabbed in Amritsar".
Finally, Amritsar is right on the LOC, the line of control, i.e. the border of Pakistan and India, who have been at war since the Partition that made Pakistan Pakistan in 1949. So each night at sunset there is a choreographed border ceremony in which soldiers on both sides of the gate. There are bleachers for visitors that give everyone a pretty good view of their country's side of things (it's hard for the Indian side to see the Pakistan display and vice versa; nevertheless, foreigners are waved into the "VIP" section closest to the gate). On the Pakistani side when you arrive are an Indian flag and a Pakistan flag waving opposite each other at equal height. Even though sunset is the official border closing, the gate is closed when you arrive, maybe for safety as well as because the border actually officially closes hours earlier, at I think 4:30pm, but sunset makes for a better backdrop.
I couldn't see Pakistan's side, but on our side there were a group of people dressed as army officers (probably actors) who were all clearly picked for height, on top of which they wear raised heels and a hat with an upright-fan-shaped gold ornament on one side that adds four inches; as a result they towered some four feet over the typically shortish Indians.
Some form of national anthem began playing through tinny speakers and the crowd clapped and sang in unison. Only once did it sound like the CD skipped.
Then there's, you know, a running of the Indian flag to the gate, then someone takes the flag into the bleachers; then there's this procession of officers that come out and do silly extremely high fierce kicks while keeping extremely straight faces. Then after much dancing one or two proceed to the gate, and it's--opened!--for them to take down the flags that are on the Pakistan side. Then there's this dramatic, fierce tossing of the flag ropes (sorry, what's the name for them?) that had something to do with them pretending they dare not touch the others' rope, I think, and finally the flags are lowered at diagonals--so they cross each other--very slowly so that neither goes lower than the other.
Meanwhile, the man who ran the flag, a tall, clean-shaven guy in blue jeans and a crisp open-collared button-down shirt (but it got progressively sweatier), worked the crowd, telling them what to yell, when to pat their hands over the mouths (the way people imitate Native Americans--woo woo woo woo). He smiled to get them going and frowned when they weren't being loud enough. If he were in the states he would have been working at Sea World, lying to the kids about what to say to the dolphins to make them jump (I don't know, maybe they don't do this at the dolphin tank, but you know what I mean).
There were a few Westerners behind me who worked at the International Red Cross in Delhi, and one of them kept saying, "I have never seen anything like this. I have never seen a border closing like this."
People argue over whether this is a tourist thing; it seems obviously so and helps people get to Amritsar. Afterwards they sell CDs of the show and photos; there are even TVs set up displaying the video as you leave, nothing the average streetside seller of Fanta and postcards could afford. I'm sorry to end on a down note, as well as to state the obvious, but it's a sad thing to watch this comedy when real fighting is going on.
Still, it was amazing to see even the LOC touched by Bollywood, and to see the size and breadth of the Golden Temple's wonders.
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why would i want to be sikh? rishikesh is near mussourie, where sujata insisted i go, and also is site of yoga ashrams with strict rules like all silence all the time. besides everyone wants to go to rishikesh. i didn't realize sikh women carry knives also (sikh men carry knives because historically sikhs are warriors)! That was intense to see.
The website sikhs.org is impressive. Rishikesh seems like a great stop prior to starting your "work." Doubt you'll have to worry about butt grabbers there. I can't wait to see those T-shirts! Have a great trip!
Love,
Da'
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Love,
Da'
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