Amritsar

A beautiful experience at the golden temple in Amritsar, way up north where it's actually kinda chilly now. The town itself is run-down and poor it seemed to me. Most of the cabs are bicycle-powered and dirt cheap. For 10 rupees (about 25 cents) a stick-thin guy pedalled me for about 20 minutes, leaning with all his weight with every cycle, getting off and pushing to get a running start after each stop. When we went uphill I got out and pushed the cart with him.

We rode through the town, past small worn-out store fronts selling shoes or fried foods or the use of a Xerox machine or a telephone, and maybe because of the damp cold I somehow started to imagine I was perhaps in some Russian village.

Then, the golden temple.

The temple itself is quite small, surrounded by an artificial lake that is itself enclosed within a huge sort of open-air palace. I'd use the word "courtyard", but understand that this courtyard is easily the size of a football field. It's quite a sight, but the real beauty is the Sikh community surrounding it... so welcoming, so egalitarian, I had no idea what Sikhism was really about before.

When I handed in my shoes (no shoes allowed anywhere inside the courtyard) a man explained to me that everything, including the shoe check, was free. He invited me to eat inside, and also stay the night, all free of charge.

You have to understand, this is basically the Vatican of Sikhdom, and it is completely free and open to all, and explicitly to any faith, without any particular requirement for worship or service. Can you imagine this?

After washing my feet and donning a headcloth, I walked in and was bathed in reflected sunlight from the massive pool and the golden temple in the middle.

A very nice young Sikh man, Mr. Amrit Singh Lalia, who was also visiting for the first time but had been to many other Gurdwaras (Sikh temples), took me under his wing and showed me the ropes. We ate in the communal kitchen, where we sat on the floor and a stream of men ladled various soupy liquids onto our trays and handed us freshly made rotis, and then afterwards we washed dishes in the open-air communal washing area alongside old bearded men with turbans and women wrapped in layers of colorful fabrics, near where other men and women sat side by side slicing onions and chilis and peeling garlic for the meals.

He took me inside the golden temple itself, where there was a small orchestra of Indian instrumentalists playing beautiful devotional music that echoed through the palacial courtyard. The temple itself has four doors, one on each side, which he explained represented the equality of all religions known to the founders of Sikhism (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Sikhism). The Sikhs stress that all humans are equal, and that is why all are explicitly welcome to their innermost sanctum regardless of religion, and why even their "leader" sits on the floor like everyone else. He told me that even the Prime Minister of India sits on the floor when he visits.

I love how pomp-free it is, how open and welcome and just... it is plain humble living, simple but without denying the outside world, but instead welcoming it and participating fully in it. Men and women sit side by side (a feat not achieved even in the super cosmopolitan Mumbai, where train cars and bus seats are segragated by sex), and the men are truly manly, with full robust beards and turbans, yet humble and understated, and the women who love them look truly happy to me. It really resonated with me, it was all so moving, I considered myself a Sikh that day.

After we left the compound, Amrit and I stopped for a Thumbs-Up, an Indian soda similar to Coke, which he insisted on paying for. Sodas here still come in glass bottles which must be returned, so you have to finish your soda on the spot. We chugged our drinks and then boarded a bus to the train station, also provided by the Sikh community free of charge. At the station he patted me on the back and said goodbye, and gave me his number and told me to call if I had any trouble at any time during my visit, and then he hopped back on the bus to go back into town where he was meeting his friend for dinner.

What a beautiful day it has been.