SOUL SEARCHING IN AMRITSAR
Traveling anywhere is a pilgrimage on it’s own. But Amritsar for me wasn’t only that. It was almost a re-discovery of Punjab.
I’ve spent a good 5-6 years in Amritsar as a kid. Childhood in that city was about eating aam papads on my way back from school, falling off cycle rickshaws, running away from home to climb shehtoot and jamun trees and listening to bad 80’s disco and dancing to it.
Like then, I still love trains. I love them. I love watching the world go by…especially the fields of Punjab…an old man cycling along winding paths, electric cables giving an impression of movement as you chug past them and electric grids standing out on the landscape almost like giant people. I don’t think the childlike curiosity of looking out of a window can ever leave me.
You can see places you’ll never hear anyone talk about out of a train window.
Freak weather patterns? Climate change? Whatever the reason was for the April showers we experienced in the holy city…only made our stay holier. Stopping just in time so we could make it to the Indo-Pak border at 5 in the evening, the rain was a blessing in disguise. The border was a happy place…rain-dance…bollywood…jingoism…it was a potboiler! The people were crazy for no reason at all. Perfect. The passion for their country was visible on every Indian. The chanting, the dancing, gyrating and marching coupled with the weather converted this no man’s land into a universal dance floor.
This unreality spilled over to the Golden Temple at night. Lighted up and glowing all over – it only makes one bow down in reverence. For once I was in no mood to click. Walking barefoot till the feet froze with the cold, listening to the evening kirtans and the gentle percussion sounds of the tabla, you can only look on at this pure gold structure – with peace and love.
The nip in the air was bitter…but as we waited within a sea of humanity eager to step inside the main sanctorum, the chill felt surreal. It was quiet. People only breathed the name of God. Only the cry of a baby would break the spell once in a while.
What makes us brave everything odd to get to where we want to be? For everyone present around us then, it was an omnipresent supreme power.
Photography is prohibited inside. But you don’t need it either. For there are things that cannot be captured on any recording device but the grey matter. So we stayed as long as we could in the presence of music and mysticism admist a pool of nectar. Surrounded by the sarovar on all four sides…it could well have been a space…far away in your mind.
It was soul tripping.
Night changed to day – a sunny hot day as we stepped back inside the Golden Temple to see it packed with humanity. And as I sat in one of it's corridors watching a milieu of people go by, is when I felt my own identity…the identity of my people and a religion that I was born into and adopted.
We can shed the symbols of our identity, adopt new ones or retain old ones. Very liberally speaking when I see a Sikh woman wearing a kripan, a salwaar kameez, wearing her hair long and keeping it covered - walking past me with a sense of pride…I feel enamored and thankful that she and I co-exist.
I couldn’t capture her on film…but she’s there in my memory postcard.
Because sometimes the best pictures remain in your heart.
[Photo Credit: Harmanpreet Kaur]
