There is a city in India called Chandigarh. It is divided into some 60 Sectors, the original 29 being designed by acclaimed European architect Le Corbusier. Coincidentally, there are also 29 broad reasons why Chandigarh sucks:
1) Sector 1 is meant to be the "head" of the city, but is clearly devoid of a brain. Chandigarh is the capital of Punjab state and of Haryana state, but is located in neither. Good going.
2) It serves as the capital of Haryana state, by far the least interesting of all the 28 states of India. Even backwaters like Chattisgarh and Jharkhand states manage to pull off rustic scenery and interesting local cultures. Haryana is just a big shitty field half-covered by suburbs of Delhi.
3) The entire city is hideous. The main buildings were all designed personally be Le Corbusier, who apparently figured (correctly) that the Indian authorities don't know jack about modern architecture and would approve of whatever hideous design he concocted.
4) Worse, the rest of the city was designed by local architects imitating Le Corbusier. Dear god.
5) Every house in the entire city has the same pattern of brickwork enclosing its patio, and it is a design that might have been just slightly interesting in say, 1963.
6) The people of Chandigarh are very proud of being the only Modernist city in India, and have multiplied the aesthetic atrocities threefold as the city expanded over the decades, so that now the disease has filled the whole of Chandigarh Union Territory and has spread into the neighboring states like an outbreak of smallpox.
7) It is unjustifiably expensive, because apparently people will pay a premium to reside in this dump.
8) It is fucking cold.
9) The legislative assembly building of Punjab and Haryana looks like a nuclear plant, and it was designed this way on purpose.
10) Fittingly, the rest of the city looks like the result of a nuclear meltdown.
11) Actually, the rest of downtown looks like a giant community college for ex-Soviet immigrants.
12) And uptown looks like a Belgian suburb.
13) Le Corbusier designed the traffic system to be efficient, with wide, straight boulevards, and different sizes of road in every sector so that different types of vehicle could go at their own speeds without interfering with each other. This of course assumes the rule of law on the streets. Le Corbusier had clearly never met an Indian driver, nor attempted to steer a bus around a bullock-cart.
14) CONCRETE EVERYWHERE
15) It's too big. Each sector is a kilometer long, which makes rickshaws indispensable (already an annoying fact). As auto-rickshaws are almost extortionate here, one is obliged to take cycle-rickshaws in the winter rain.
16) The symbol of the city is the Open Hand monument, an ugly bronze hand on a concrete base. The only use I have for an open hand in Chandigarh is bitch-slapping anyone who has the authority to bulldoze the entire city but hasn't.
17) The "heart" of the city is Sector 17, a gigantic shopping district of the utmost awfulness, a place where someone has apparently lifted a shopping arcade from a declining mill town in Wales, repeated the design tenfold, filled the lowest two levels with stores and filled the upper levels with pigeons, crumbling bricks, rusting rebar, and flickering, unused light fixtures.
18) They have the gall to call Sector 17 a "Pedestrian Shopping Paradise" when the only Paradise-like feature about it is that it is impossible to be run over by a rickshaw or step in cow shit. India; A Bright New Dawn. Stepping Into The 20th Century!
19) The loudspeakers of Sector 17 do not blast terrible Filmi pop. "But wait, that's a good thing isn't it?" you may be thinking. No. Chandigarh is so determined to be modern that they blast Muzak.
20) As I've mentioned, Chandigarh is also the capital of Punjab, and thanks to the glory days of Sikh terrorism, large sections of the city are under paramilitary guard, preventing the only morally defensible act of terrorism: destroying Chandigarh.
21) The "outer sectors" (even the phrase sounds decrepit) are planned grids of modernist structures that nevertheless still have all the downsides of your traditional Indian heap, particularly the Sisyphean battle against piles of dust which shall be blown back onto the stoops they were swept from for all eternity until somebody invents the dustpan and the rubbish bin.
22) The city, which is located directly in the path of cold air blown down from the nearby Himalayas, is heated exclusively by trash fires.
23) It is a city of large buildings and large open spaces, which is all well and good until the gray skies, gray buildings, and gray ground blend together and make it impossible to find anything more than 200 yards away (although not being able to see anything in Chandigarh is arguably a plus)
24... Chandigarh actually has one feature so awesome I am going to excuse a handful of its other failings. Fittingly, the one good part of Chandigarh is the one part that completely escaped the notice of planning authorities for years. It turns out that they entrusted a large swath of unused public land to one Mr. Nek Chand, a humble civil servant who, unbeknownst to the world, was and still is a crazy artistic genius. He turned his patch of unused woods into a "fantasy rock garden."
Starting from humble beginnings, by the time anyone stumbled across it, Nek Chand's rock garden already covered several acres of land completely filled with bizarre sculptures, tunnels and gorges lined with junk, and vast armies of junk-statue people and animals. Completely doing the opposite of what you would expect Indian officialdom to do, rather than bulldoze it all they actually hired Nek Chand a staff to continue his work. Now the rock garden is a massive, surreal wonderland of crazy waterfalls, junk-palaces, and even larger, creepier armies of junk-hewn statues. Stairs are made of toilet parts, archways of broken plates. Every now and then you see a wall made completely of electrical plug adaptors or have to scale a rock covered in lampshades. It is excessively cool. It is the weirdest place I have been to in years, and although it does not surpass Salvador Dali's personal museum in terms of insanity per square foot, the scale so huge that one becomes lost in a magic forest of awe-inspiring...something.
I'm going to count that as canceling failures #25-27. Thanks, Nek Chand. You my homie.
28) Apparently, the rock garden draws millions of tourists from across India a year, an attraction second only to the Taj Mahal. Most of these visitors escape with their lives, while the only thing preventing visitors to Chandigarh from committing mass suicide is the illusion that they are already in Hell.
29) All told, the city is a massive, hulking facade of modernity that was outdated decades ago, while behind the godforsakenly butt-ugly facade is the same derelict crap as the rest of contemporary India. The only thing that distinguishes it from its awful urban brethren is that its type of atrocity is uniform and premeditated. Sure, the bubonic plague killed more people than the Holocaust, but which was worse?
I rest my case.
Showing posts with label Punjab. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Punjab. Show all posts
Jan 7, 2010
Jan 5, 2010
Ghostface Buddha's Guide To Sikhism
Here we are again with another installment of Ghostface Buddha's guides. They aren't all going to be about religion, but guess what, this one is. Woop woop.
It was a hazy winter day. As the bus pulled into the town of Anandpur Sahib I was faced with a dilemma: everything I was looking for was the same shade of white as the humid, low-hanging sky. After some wandering the mist lifted and I was able to discern the main gurudwara, an enormous structure of absurd design. It looked like a baby, multi-domed Mughal structure sitting on top of a huge white platform suspended in the air by impressive columns that raised it over an ancient parking deck-like structure of assembly spaces. This gurudwara is the second-holiest shrine of the Sikh religion and marks the spot where the Khalsa, the armed wing of the Sikh religion, was founded in 1699. Around the corner is a smaller gurudwara which marks the spot where the 9th Guru's decapitated head was cremated after being retrieved from the Mughal Emperor's court. There was also a much-beleagured Sikh fort, but I am embarrassed to say that as it stood a kilometer or more away I was completely unable to locate it through the clouds. Nevertheless, being the site most directly related to militant Sikhism, I came almost exclusively for the purpose of hanging around hardcore Sikhs. In particular I wanted to see groups of the Nihangs, an ultra-hardcore orthodox group (Nihang means "Crocodile") that go around in brilliant blue robes wielding scimitars. The holy city of Amritsar draws Sikhs in all their many varieties; Anandpur Sahib is geared more narrowly to sword-brandishing zealots. Though belonging to the same faith, the two shrines give off very different atmospheres, owing to the militant/pacifist paradox lying at the heart of the Sikh religion.
The Sikhs, like so many Indian creeds, were founded by a guru who considered their contemporary Hinduism to be laden with hypocrisy, a ridiculous proliferation of myths and deities, superfluous rituals, and abominable social practices, especially the caste system. The first Sikh guru, Guru Nanak, essentially echoed the complaints of generations of Hindu reformers, but went a bit further in openly calling for his followers to throw away the constraints of mainstream Indian society and actually live by admirable religious principles. Unlike other religious figures who rebelled against Hinduism, such as Buddha and Mahavira, Guru Nanak didn't believe in renunciation of the world, and actively encouraged engagement with the community and having a healthy family life. He did the ascetic thang for a while, and like Buddha decided there must be some sort of compromise from complete asceticism, but leaned far more heavily towards worldly life. Suffused with agrarian metaphors and down-to-earth spiritual advice, his teachings quickly became popuar with the farmers of the Punjab region.
Sikhism is frequently described as a fusion of Hinduism and Islam, which it unashamedly is. The Sikhs'holy book, the Adi Granth , is a collection of the writings of a few of the ten Sikh Gurus, as well as a larger number of Sufi Muslim saints and a handful of Hindu saints, poets, and bards. Guru Nanak's teachings were basically as follows:
He was followed by nine other Gurus in succession. The second, his disciple Guru Angad was chiefly responsible for promulgating the Gurmukhi script, which is now used for the Punjabi language. It is a terrible form of writing that looks like this: ਠੀਸ ਇਸ ਆ ਔਤ੍ਰਗੇਔਸ ਅਤ੍ਰੋਕਿਟੀ. Simply disgusting. The fifth guru, Guru Arjun, compiled most of the Adi Granth, further enlarging the spread of this horrible script.
Sikhism is indelibly tied to its roots in the Punjab, where the faith was drastically transformed from its beginnings in the teachings of Guru Nanak by historical events. The most pertinent facts about the Punjab at this time were that A)It was part of the Mughal Empire, ruled by alternatingly tolerant or militant Muslims, B)It is located in India, where the overwhelming Hindu majority has a tendency to drown dissent whenever it isn't getting the tar beaten out of it by the Muslims, and C)It is located directly in the path of every invader that has come to India from Persia and Central Asia for the last 5000 years. Thus, the era of the first nine gurus largely consisted of the agrarian Sikhs getting their shit wrecked by Mughals and Afghans in turn. Things came to a head (har!) when the ninth guru was decapitated by order of the Emperor in Delhi.
The tenth guru, son of the ninth, was understandably perturbed by this development, and decided that the irregularly armed Sikhs should form a proper army for their defense. Guru Gobindh Singh thus formed the Khalsa, a brotherhood of arms sworn to uphold the faith and the freedom of all religions against tyranny when all peaceful means have failed. Needless to say, peaceful means had failed, and this marked a radical transformation of the religion into one of outright militancy against superior odds. At the formation of the Khalsa, which also saw the introduction of the ubiquitous new emblem of Sikhism, which looks as fitting for a galactic battlefleet as it does for a religion. The Sikhs were sworn to the "five K's", which were meant as much to promote a group identity in the face of adversity as they were to promote military discipline, and are as follows:
It was also by this time custom for all Sikhs to take the surname Singh (for instance the cuddly-looking Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh), which though an admirable way of getting rid of caste-based surnames, is just fucking confusing. It does however provide a handy English slogan for the people of Punjab, who opine that they are the best at pretty much everything, and cheerfully express this belief far and wide with the motto "Singh is King!" I have heard this slogan used to praise the strength of the Sikh religion, the agricultural proficiency of modern Punjabi farmers, Punjabi cooking, and even the sexual prowess of the comparatively liberated Punjabi girls, who are apparently coveted for this talent by men from other parts of India (this information is all too readily volunteered by excitable Indian men after about half a beer).
Gobindh Singh and his army then began an open rebellion against the Mughal Empire and got their asses handed to them. Many years later they became a formidable power, then ran into the British Army, and that was that. However, after some 100 years or so of near-constant war with their neighbors in India and Afghanistan had made them so keen on warfare that they happily joined the British Army that had trounced them, and to this day make up an absurdly disproportionate share of the Indian military. I can't tell you how many times I have been patted down at checkpoints by none other than Lieutenant Singh.
As you can see this is a far cry from the simple words of Guru Nanak, yet the two sides of Sikhism have existed more or less in harmony for centuries. God is both the amorphous source of life and virtue, watering peasant's fields and giving life to babies, and the source of destruction and death, sweeping away injustice and shielding the virtuous with his mighty power.
Sikhs believe in reincarnation and karma, but somewhat more nebulously than the Hindus, and they proclaim that righteous living alone is sufficient for salvation. Essentially, good people go to heaven when they die.
Sikhism is adamant in its denial of idol-worship, and of creating personalities, aspects, and incarnations of God. It is also one of the few Indian religions that has not been transformed by the later deification of its founders or the merger of parts of the mainstream Hindu pantheon into various strata of the cosmos. The Gurus themselves refused to be identified as saints or even as prophets. They were to be regarded merely as teachers. The closest thing Sikhism has to idol worship is the adoration of venerated copies of the Adi Granth, which in some places is treated almost exactly like a Hindu idol in terms of ritual, with the critical difference that nobody expects God to care about this ritual being performed. It is in no way an invocation of higher powers. Sikhism also denies the need for pilgrimage, although being completely swamped by Hindu society of course this has somewhat crept in and visits are frequently paid by observing Sikhs to a handful of special places such as Amritsar.
The Sikhs also don't have priests. Sikh congregations are more like community gatherings, and the leaders of religious meetings are chosen formally or informally from the community. Only in very large temples is there any sort of permanent religious office. They also don't have "temples", as they have no idol to worship and reject the idea that God should have a 'house'(because God is everywhere). Sikh gurudwaras combine the functionality of a temple, a town hall, a school, a hostel, and best of all a free kitchen, which derives from the Sikh belief in hospitality and open hearts to all people, even if they aren't Sikh, and they will never ask for a penny (though you should still offer it).
Of all the Sikh teachings, the most radical was the idea of being part of society while at the same time completely overthrowing the caste system. People of all faiths, classes, colors, and sex are regarded as equal.
NOT
If there is one thing that unites the scatter-shot sects that form the Hindu 'religion', it is the insistence that everybody in India act like a good Indian/Hindu("why, aren't they the same thing?" they like to assume) and know their damn place. You can do pretty much anything and call yourself Hindu and nobody will blink, because Hinduism as a whole isn't really about theology or faith, it's about sociology. And there are a LOT of Hindus in India.
Thus, it was almost tragically inevitable that the wonderful injunction to erase caste barriers was one of the ideas that is in practice almost completely ignored thanks to intercourse with mainstream Indian society. There is nothing in human nature that compels a man to shave, or not carry a comb under a turban other than sheer laziness or external threats. There is however, I am afraid, a near-universal human tendency to be a giant asshole to people lower on the social heirarchy. In a land where over a billion people practice a religion where this relationship receives holy sanction, it is unsurprising that most Sikhs now observe traditional caste restrictions, even if they don't really admit it. The preponderance of Hinduism in India is also responsible for the drift from the religion's Islamic precepts and the adoption of Hindu customs that are not in keeping with the spirit of the scriptures. But with all religions, such is the way of things. Any religion loses its original purity when it collides with the mighty force of the inbred habits of its receiving society.
Of all their unjustified observances of Hindu custom, undoubtedly the most silly is that Sikhs are absolutely crazy about protecting cows, despite there being absolutely nothing in their religion telling them to do so, and the explicit denial that animals are to be revered for anything. If I may understate a bit, on this point contemporary Sikhs and I are deeply at odds.
I was sitting outside the main gurudwara in Anandpur Sahib waiting for the visitors to become more interesting before I went inside. My attentions were particularly drawn to a man wandering around with a wool blanket and a 5-foot spear, which I thought looked strangely quaint and rustic. I then realized that the really interesting people were actually observing me, and a little more intently than I would have liked, considering that one of them had not one but two automatic weapons slung over his shoulder. As me and him made uneasy eyes at each other (I had been rather suspiciously loitering outside with a camera), a pickup truck swerved into a parking space, and out poured the Nahings. There were about a dozen of them, dressed from head to shoulder in blue, with blue and orange turbans, mighty grey beards, and very conspicuous curved scabbards swinging from their hips. There was a general murmuring and I quickly decided to act like a regular-ass tourist immediately and entered the gurudwara with an exaggeratedly gleeful countenance.
The gurudwara was attractive enough, but the weather made it look quite bland on the outside. I entered the inner chambers, curious how the formation of the Khalsa would be remembered. I probably shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. Hymns were being sung to Guru Gobindh's swords. I walked around the temple, and in every corner I looked, lovingly cared-for holy weapons rested on fine cloths, had incense burnt in the air around them, and were the objects of very devout attention from humming bearded men sitting cross-legged on the carpet with swords, daggers, and shotguns in their laps. I saw a glass case with the hymns of the day printed in Punjabi, Hindi, and English.
I could only read a few of the lines because to get closer would have meant stepping over a singing man gently rocking an assault rifle.
He was singing about flowers.
It was a hazy winter day. As the bus pulled into the town of Anandpur Sahib I was faced with a dilemma: everything I was looking for was the same shade of white as the humid, low-hanging sky. After some wandering the mist lifted and I was able to discern the main gurudwara, an enormous structure of absurd design. It looked like a baby, multi-domed Mughal structure sitting on top of a huge white platform suspended in the air by impressive columns that raised it over an ancient parking deck-like structure of assembly spaces. This gurudwara is the second-holiest shrine of the Sikh religion and marks the spot where the Khalsa, the armed wing of the Sikh religion, was founded in 1699. Around the corner is a smaller gurudwara which marks the spot where the 9th Guru's decapitated head was cremated after being retrieved from the Mughal Emperor's court. There was also a much-beleagured Sikh fort, but I am embarrassed to say that as it stood a kilometer or more away I was completely unable to locate it through the clouds. Nevertheless, being the site most directly related to militant Sikhism, I came almost exclusively for the purpose of hanging around hardcore Sikhs. In particular I wanted to see groups of the Nihangs, an ultra-hardcore orthodox group (Nihang means "Crocodile") that go around in brilliant blue robes wielding scimitars. The holy city of Amritsar draws Sikhs in all their many varieties; Anandpur Sahib is geared more narrowly to sword-brandishing zealots. Though belonging to the same faith, the two shrines give off very different atmospheres, owing to the militant/pacifist paradox lying at the heart of the Sikh religion.
The Sikhs, like so many Indian creeds, were founded by a guru who considered their contemporary Hinduism to be laden with hypocrisy, a ridiculous proliferation of myths and deities, superfluous rituals, and abominable social practices, especially the caste system. The first Sikh guru, Guru Nanak, essentially echoed the complaints of generations of Hindu reformers, but went a bit further in openly calling for his followers to throw away the constraints of mainstream Indian society and actually live by admirable religious principles. Unlike other religious figures who rebelled against Hinduism, such as Buddha and Mahavira, Guru Nanak didn't believe in renunciation of the world, and actively encouraged engagement with the community and having a healthy family life. He did the ascetic thang for a while, and like Buddha decided there must be some sort of compromise from complete asceticism, but leaned far more heavily towards worldly life. Suffused with agrarian metaphors and down-to-earth spiritual advice, his teachings quickly became popuar with the farmers of the Punjab region.
Sikhism is frequently described as a fusion of Hinduism and Islam, which it unashamedly is. The Sikhs'holy book, the Adi Granth , is a collection of the writings of a few of the ten Sikh Gurus, as well as a larger number of Sufi Muslim saints and a handful of Hindu saints, poets, and bards. Guru Nanak's teachings were basically as follows:
1)There is no Hindu and no Mussulman. We're all human beings, man.The Sikhism of Guru Nanak was essentially Islam phrased for a mostly Hindu audience, and stripped of explicitly mandated social practices that divided the Hindu and Muslim communities. His first disciples came from both faiths and though we mostly won Hindus as converts, Muslims also revered him as a teacher. Then he died.
2)There is only one God, but this god has no form and no one name.
3)God is Truth, and is everywhere
4)True faith lies not in the performance of rituals or in any external displays, but in righteous living with a pure heart.
5)The same truths apply to people of all religions
He was followed by nine other Gurus in succession. The second, his disciple Guru Angad was chiefly responsible for promulgating the Gurmukhi script, which is now used for the Punjabi language. It is a terrible form of writing that looks like this: ਠੀਸ ਇਸ ਆ ਔਤ੍ਰਗੇਔਸ ਅਤ੍ਰੋਕਿਟੀ. Simply disgusting. The fifth guru, Guru Arjun, compiled most of the Adi Granth, further enlarging the spread of this horrible script.
Sikhism is indelibly tied to its roots in the Punjab, where the faith was drastically transformed from its beginnings in the teachings of Guru Nanak by historical events. The most pertinent facts about the Punjab at this time were that A)It was part of the Mughal Empire, ruled by alternatingly tolerant or militant Muslims, B)It is located in India, where the overwhelming Hindu majority has a tendency to drown dissent whenever it isn't getting the tar beaten out of it by the Muslims, and C)It is located directly in the path of every invader that has come to India from Persia and Central Asia for the last 5000 years. Thus, the era of the first nine gurus largely consisted of the agrarian Sikhs getting their shit wrecked by Mughals and Afghans in turn. Things came to a head (har!) when the ninth guru was decapitated by order of the Emperor in Delhi.
The tenth guru, son of the ninth, was understandably perturbed by this development, and decided that the irregularly armed Sikhs should form a proper army for their defense. Guru Gobindh Singh thus formed the Khalsa, a brotherhood of arms sworn to uphold the faith and the freedom of all religions against tyranny when all peaceful means have failed. Needless to say, peaceful means had failed, and this marked a radical transformation of the religion into one of outright militancy against superior odds. At the formation of the Khalsa, which also saw the introduction of the ubiquitous new emblem of Sikhism, which looks as fitting for a galactic battlefleet as it does for a religion. The Sikhs were sworn to the "five K's", which were meant as much to promote a group identity in the face of adversity as they were to promote military discipline, and are as follows:
1)Kesh: to never cut the hair or shave. Hence the turbans.There were also four additional rules of conduct.
2)Kungha: to carry a comb in the hair. Because kesh would just get disgusting.
3)Kuchha: to wear a certain style of shorts. Because these were much better battle dress than what the baggy farmers' clothes that were traditional.
4)Kara: to wear a steel bangle on the right wrist, for symbolism.
5)Kirpan: to carry a sword. Typically this means carrying a small ceremonial dagger at all times and wielding a proper sword when appropriate.
1) Don't cut your hair. Seriously, guys, I'm saying this twice.
2)To abstain from tobacco, alcohol, and all narcotics. You will find that of all the tenets of the Sikh faith this is the least scrupulously observed in modern Punjab.
3)Don't eat kosher Muslim meat, because the process of killing animals by slow bleeding is cruel.
4)Don't bone any Muslims. (Though the Sikh faith has always been open to outsiders, historians speculate this commandment was issued as the best way to keep his newly outfitted army from raping their way across the Muslim villages of North India.)
It was also by this time custom for all Sikhs to take the surname Singh (for instance the cuddly-looking Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh), which though an admirable way of getting rid of caste-based surnames, is just fucking confusing. It does however provide a handy English slogan for the people of Punjab, who opine that they are the best at pretty much everything, and cheerfully express this belief far and wide with the motto "Singh is King!" I have heard this slogan used to praise the strength of the Sikh religion, the agricultural proficiency of modern Punjabi farmers, Punjabi cooking, and even the sexual prowess of the comparatively liberated Punjabi girls, who are apparently coveted for this talent by men from other parts of India (this information is all too readily volunteered by excitable Indian men after about half a beer).
Gobindh Singh and his army then began an open rebellion against the Mughal Empire and got their asses handed to them. Many years later they became a formidable power, then ran into the British Army, and that was that. However, after some 100 years or so of near-constant war with their neighbors in India and Afghanistan had made them so keen on warfare that they happily joined the British Army that had trounced them, and to this day make up an absurdly disproportionate share of the Indian military. I can't tell you how many times I have been patted down at checkpoints by none other than Lieutenant Singh.
As you can see this is a far cry from the simple words of Guru Nanak, yet the two sides of Sikhism have existed more or less in harmony for centuries. God is both the amorphous source of life and virtue, watering peasant's fields and giving life to babies, and the source of destruction and death, sweeping away injustice and shielding the virtuous with his mighty power.
Sikhs believe in reincarnation and karma, but somewhat more nebulously than the Hindus, and they proclaim that righteous living alone is sufficient for salvation. Essentially, good people go to heaven when they die.
Sikhism is adamant in its denial of idol-worship, and of creating personalities, aspects, and incarnations of God. It is also one of the few Indian religions that has not been transformed by the later deification of its founders or the merger of parts of the mainstream Hindu pantheon into various strata of the cosmos. The Gurus themselves refused to be identified as saints or even as prophets. They were to be regarded merely as teachers. The closest thing Sikhism has to idol worship is the adoration of venerated copies of the Adi Granth, which in some places is treated almost exactly like a Hindu idol in terms of ritual, with the critical difference that nobody expects God to care about this ritual being performed. It is in no way an invocation of higher powers. Sikhism also denies the need for pilgrimage, although being completely swamped by Hindu society of course this has somewhat crept in and visits are frequently paid by observing Sikhs to a handful of special places such as Amritsar.
The Sikhs also don't have priests. Sikh congregations are more like community gatherings, and the leaders of religious meetings are chosen formally or informally from the community. Only in very large temples is there any sort of permanent religious office. They also don't have "temples", as they have no idol to worship and reject the idea that God should have a 'house'(because God is everywhere). Sikh gurudwaras combine the functionality of a temple, a town hall, a school, a hostel, and best of all a free kitchen, which derives from the Sikh belief in hospitality and open hearts to all people, even if they aren't Sikh, and they will never ask for a penny (though you should still offer it).
Of all the Sikh teachings, the most radical was the idea of being part of society while at the same time completely overthrowing the caste system. People of all faiths, classes, colors, and sex are regarded as equal.
NOT
If there is one thing that unites the scatter-shot sects that form the Hindu 'religion', it is the insistence that everybody in India act like a good Indian/Hindu("why, aren't they the same thing?" they like to assume) and know their damn place. You can do pretty much anything and call yourself Hindu and nobody will blink, because Hinduism as a whole isn't really about theology or faith, it's about sociology. And there are a LOT of Hindus in India.
Thus, it was almost tragically inevitable that the wonderful injunction to erase caste barriers was one of the ideas that is in practice almost completely ignored thanks to intercourse with mainstream Indian society. There is nothing in human nature that compels a man to shave, or not carry a comb under a turban other than sheer laziness or external threats. There is however, I am afraid, a near-universal human tendency to be a giant asshole to people lower on the social heirarchy. In a land where over a billion people practice a religion where this relationship receives holy sanction, it is unsurprising that most Sikhs now observe traditional caste restrictions, even if they don't really admit it. The preponderance of Hinduism in India is also responsible for the drift from the religion's Islamic precepts and the adoption of Hindu customs that are not in keeping with the spirit of the scriptures. But with all religions, such is the way of things. Any religion loses its original purity when it collides with the mighty force of the inbred habits of its receiving society.
Of all their unjustified observances of Hindu custom, undoubtedly the most silly is that Sikhs are absolutely crazy about protecting cows, despite there being absolutely nothing in their religion telling them to do so, and the explicit denial that animals are to be revered for anything. If I may understate a bit, on this point contemporary Sikhs and I are deeply at odds.
I was sitting outside the main gurudwara in Anandpur Sahib waiting for the visitors to become more interesting before I went inside. My attentions were particularly drawn to a man wandering around with a wool blanket and a 5-foot spear, which I thought looked strangely quaint and rustic. I then realized that the really interesting people were actually observing me, and a little more intently than I would have liked, considering that one of them had not one but two automatic weapons slung over his shoulder. As me and him made uneasy eyes at each other (I had been rather suspiciously loitering outside with a camera), a pickup truck swerved into a parking space, and out poured the Nahings. There were about a dozen of them, dressed from head to shoulder in blue, with blue and orange turbans, mighty grey beards, and very conspicuous curved scabbards swinging from their hips. There was a general murmuring and I quickly decided to act like a regular-ass tourist immediately and entered the gurudwara with an exaggeratedly gleeful countenance.
The gurudwara was attractive enough, but the weather made it look quite bland on the outside. I entered the inner chambers, curious how the formation of the Khalsa would be remembered. I probably shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. Hymns were being sung to Guru Gobindh's swords. I walked around the temple, and in every corner I looked, lovingly cared-for holy weapons rested on fine cloths, had incense burnt in the air around them, and were the objects of very devout attention from humming bearded men sitting cross-legged on the carpet with swords, daggers, and shotguns in their laps. I saw a glass case with the hymns of the day printed in Punjabi, Hindi, and English.
I could only read a few of the lines because to get closer would have meant stepping over a singing man gently rocking an assault rifle.
He was singing about flowers.
Jan 4, 2010
2010
I may have to eat my words from the last post, because having traveled some thousand miles northwards, I must admit that India is actually pretty cold in the winter. "Bone-chilling cold in North India" proclaims the evening news, marveling at the fact that the mercury has dropped -gasp- below freezing. I am however almost glad it was cold and unpleasant, as events and conditions somehow guided my path into a New Year's experience that for the first time in my grown life I am sure I will never forget.
A thousand miles is rarely a pleasant distance to travel, and it is even less so when one spends half of it on a sleeper bus bouncing with such vigor that I was repeatedly tossed into the air and flipped like a pancake within my berth. The train ride after was almost as bad, though this was due to a self-inflicted torture of reading an over-excited, almost ejaculatory history of the Persian Wars that unironically ended chapters with sentences like "The future of Western civilization...and of democracy, hung in the balance." After I finally reached the end of the book, I clambered down from my crow's nest of a berth and looked out the window to see the fertile plains of Punjab and the sprouting green fields glistening in the evening mist. Every few kilometers we passed a little Sikh farming village with its gurudwara, the Sikh equivalent of a temple, with its little white tower surmounting the meeting hall and culminating in a modest onion dome.
Despite my occasional urge to punch myself for reading that awful book all the way through to the battle of Plataea, I made it intact to my destination: the Punjab, land of the Sikhs. I arrived in Amritsar, the Sikhs' holy city, late at night and swaddled in my cold-weather clothes: a 2-dollar pauper's blanket and a bright yellow 25-cent turban wrapped around my ears. Starving, I stumbled into a roadside eatery where gritty construction workers were just getting off a very late shift working on the highway flyover. It was one of these shady cafes that I usually avoid for reasons of hygiene, although the Indian bugs can get you anywhere. Eating in India is essentially a passive form of bulimia; you merely acquiesce to the fact that you may or may not vomit up your lunch on any given day.
The patrons stared as they saw this tourist wobble into the cafe in an apparent state of complete destitution. Rather, I should say that some of the patrons stared at me. The rest kind of just looked with bleary eyes and slumped onto the table, because this was the sort of eatery where the vast majority of the dinner plates were being used to consolidate each customer's assortment of empty whiskey bottles. The waiter hobbled over to me, swaying as his head made great arcs through the chill night air. "We have...." he began, raising a finger every time he listed an item, "daaaal fry....ch,ch,channa masala....iiiidllleeee....RICE." Pausing for a moment, he looked at his fingers with great curiosity and began again "ok ,we have dal fry...dal fry.....rice..." The food, I must say, was less than superb.
The next day, still swaddled in my increasingly grimy wool blanket I hired a rickshaw to take me on a tour of the lesser sights of Amritsar. We stopped first at the "Ranjit Singh Panorama", a bizarre museum consisting entirely of panoramas and dioramas of the career of Ranjit Singh, mightiest of the Sikh kings. The sounds of battle blasted on the loudspeakers, the "information panels" provided little insight except that Sikhs and Afghans really do not get along, and the figures were scaled poorly in a desperately botched attempt to create linear perspective.
From there we went to the Durgiana temple. All I knew was that it was a Hindu shrine of some sort. As I approached through the narrow lane lined with the usual assortment of trinkets and offerings, the bustling scene led me to believe I was about to be impressed. I entered the temple compound, walked through the main gate and saw...a thoroughly second-rate attempt at carbon-copying the Sikhs's Golden Temple downtown. The temple sat in a rectangular pool at the end of a narrow causeway. Just like the Golden Temple, it was a squat box covered in gleaming metal, though this one was brass and had rather ungainly depictions of Hindu gods. The sorry attempt at mimicry was almost pathetic. The Hindus, though incredibly tolerant at allowing various sects into their fold, are comically insecure when it comes to apostasy, and the presence nearby of a truly majestic shrine belonging to a sect that adamantly rejects Hinduism is enough to send the priestly establishment into conniptions. The result in Amritsar was this brass-plated schlock. I chuckled at the thought of some Hindu priest back in the day trying to build this temple and realizing to his consternation that the Sikh temple was still a hundred times better.
I went thereafter to a place called the Mata temple, another Hindu shrine that was just outright weird. Its main shrine was dedicated to a bespectacled female saint, and there were several marble statues of this little old lady with her glasses sitting there with her jowls hanging exhaustedly downwards like she just spilled her porridge. A priest directed me up a narrow staircase, and that's where things got really weird. For some reason, the locals felt compelled to simulate a cave temple above ground, and constructed a diabolically labyrinthine path through the temple's many shrines. The path took me up and down a dozen staircases, through winding, switchbacked halls of mirrors, and on my hands an knees through preposterously artificial-looking "rock" tunnels.
I rounded one corner in a hall of fogged mirrors to find myself staring at a six-foot giant head with its tongue hanging out and a third eye on its forehead. Just beyond this was a gallery of lingams, the phallic symbol of Shiva. Though there being many of these in the same place was odd enough, on closer inspection I saw that the "heads" of the lingams were in fact all sculptures of the head of Vishnu, and the vaginal bases on which the lingams rested were in fact vaginal forms encoiled by Vishnu's pet cobra. Further on still, I found myself in a gallery of idols of Vishnu in his many forms. Some of them looked a little familiar, and deciphering the Hindi I realized that they were all reproductions of the idols at the country's most famous Vishnu temples, depicting him in all his regional and incarnate variations. At the end of this gallery was a ludicrous entranceway which required one to duck under a low-hanging 'rock' while climbing over another. The pilgrims ahead of me were rolling up their trousers, so I did the same. I stepped through the blackness and, with a splash, immediately realized why. Here I was, two stories above ground, in an artificial "underground river", wading through running water alongside a painting of a giant snake. Hinduism. What the fuck.
Returning to the main shrine and its mush-mouthed saint, I was assaulted by psychedelic images of outer space on hanging television screens as a group of local women shrieked a chant while banging on tambourines, and temple staff served food in a dining hall filled with strings of flashing lights. Not really caring about this saint enough to inquire any further, I turned to leave, and saw that the exit was guarded by a pair of demonic elephants. I live in India and nothing makes any sense any more.
As delightful as touring the Hindu quarters was, I came to Amritsar for the Sikhs, and wandered into the old city surrounding the Golden Temple. Old Amritsar was of course both enticing and completely revolting. Walking down one street would take you through a thriving bazaar, while the next would be a gorge-like alley with open sewers, where fresh human waste could be observed falling the final foot between the upper stories' drainpipes and the gutter, landing with a merry splash and coursing down the street. I eventually discovered the main road leading to the Golden Temple, a wide boulevard completely stalled with swarms of human traffic. Hip young shoppers tried to get to the bazaars as entire families of regally-turbaned Sikhs crammed onto rickshaws crawling through the chaotic scene. Hundreds of sugar-crazed Hindu tourists in matching giveaway Golden Temple nylon headscarves clogged the road as they slurped on ice cream in the midst of the winter cold. I pushed across the mayhem and slipped through the narrow lane that to this day is the only entrance to the Jagiallah Bagh, an urban garden where thousands of unarmed protesters were massacred by the British Army in 1921. The garden is quite nice, and very evocative, as the bullet holes from the slaughter are still preserved on the walls, and at one end is a hauntingly dark and silent well where hundreds of people died trying to escape the British gunfire.
At the end of the boulevard was a large white building with a clock tower. I took it to be City Hall but it was in fact the outer rim of the Golden Temple complex. Below me was a most spectacular scene, the Golden Temple's eastern shoe depository. At the east entrance alone, this sunken structure was abuzz with hundreds of people leaving and retrieving their shoes, and it smelled like hundreds of people were leaving and retrieving their shoes. The visitors were a cross-section of Sikh society: young men in turbans and Nike pullovers, old businesspeople with flowing beards, throngs of curious Hindus who aren't really sure why Sikhs don't shave, grey-cloaked farmers with ragged turbans, and fat little rich kids spilling ice cream onto their bare feet.
I passed through the entrance and beheld the majesty of the Golden Temple. Though the golden shrine itself is not very large, it sits in a serene, reflective lake ringed by gleaming white shrines and great halls that house the heart of Sikh communal life. On the inner side of the compound walls are the 64 holy shrines. The Sikh gurus despised pilgrimages as a ritual superfluous to God and proclaimed that walking around this lake once was equivalent to visiting all 64 of the holiest Hindu shrines in India. Ohhhhhh man does this kind of shit piss the Hindus off. The edge of the lake is patrolled by the temple guards, blue-turbaned warriors with yellow robes bearing the emblem of the Khalsa, the Sikh brotherhood of arms. They wield holy spears with shining tips. Sitting transcendentally in the middle of the lake is the golden shrine itself, the Harmandir Sahib. It is utterly impossible not to be transfixed by it, a glorious centerpiece rivaled only by the Taj Mahal in its ability to kidnap your attentions. And whereas the Taj Mahal stands triumphantly above the commercialized milieu that presses against its precinct, the Golden Temple, miniscule by comparison, sits unperturbed in its traquility amid the impossibly still waters of the lake as reverent worshipers sit in silence by the water's edge, contemplating the temple and all that it stands for.
After gawping at the shrine at length, I tore myself away to examine the surrounding complex. Out through the main gate I found myself at the langar. All gurudwaras have a langar, which is a communal kitchen which serves the masses free of charge. The one here of course is the langar of langars, and as my tummy was just starting to grumble I could hardly pass up the chance to eat there. As I approached there was a startling din of clanging metal as the temple staff under a large awning washes thousands of trays and bowls to return them to circulation. The Golden Temple langar is a massive, 24-hour operation of impressive efficiency. I walked past the dining hall on the first level, completely empty while staff rapidly mopped the floor, pushing great waves of soap, water, and spilled dal before them. I was sent upstairs to the other hall, and took my seat at the end of an orderly row of complete strangers sitting cross-legged on the floor. There were about a thousand people eating together in this manner, and dozens of staff rushed up and down the aisles dispensing bread, rice, and dal within moments of your needing it. Aside from being breathtakingly efficient, the food was also absoulutely delicious, and the servers gladly piled on the second, third, and fourth helpings until everyone had their fill and rose completely sated without having paid a dime.
Outside the temple compound, a large chunk of the inner city is turned over to gurudwaras. Across from the langar is an open, three-level meeting hall, and all around the entrance gardens are tall gurudwaras serving as free hostels for all visitors. Private rooms are available too, for about a dollar a night. I returned through the main gate, washing my feet in the trough of running water laid before the gate for that purpose. Over the 9-odd hours I spent at the temple, this foot-washing ritual became a little tiresome, as the last thing one really wants to do on the 31st of December is repeatedly dip one's bare feet in cold water. Little did I know what fate and my own impulses had in store that night.
I went to the end of the lake where the causeway to the shrine begins. Across from the causeway are a handful of other important gurudwaras, including the central "parliament hall" of the entire Sikh community. Buildings in this area were being renovated for the umpteenth time. The parliament hall was almost completely leveled in 1984 when the Indian Army blasted its way in to deal with radical Sikh terrorists that had occupied the premises. Its minaret-like towers are still missing, the victims of Indian tank shells. [In my notes, I apparently attributed the damage to Israeli tank shells, proving that Freudian slips can be as political as they can be sexual]. Incensed by this desecration, the prime minister's Sikh bodyguards murdered her in her house later that year. Incensed in turn by this, the Hindus of Delhi went on a murderous rampage killing thousands of Sikhs and burning their homes. In 1994 the catastrophe at the temple repeated itself, though this time the Indian government wisely limited its assault to bullets.
Finally, I joined the massive queue of people on the causeway seeking entrance to the shrine. As I got closer and closer in the slow-moving line, the people surrounding me grew more and more fervent. Halfway across the bridge, the hymns and chants from within the temple could be heard and those waiting outside shouted in call-and-response. People meditated where they stood and others began singing joyously by themselves. Finally I was included in a batch admitted to the marble island on which the temple sat. On the lower levels, the marble was decorated by inlaid stones and gems like the Taj Mahal, while gazing upwards I got a close look at its glimmering sheath of beautifully carved gold leaf.
I entered the shrine. Of all the many places in India I have been, including the very holiest places of the Hindu and Jain religions, and the most sacred space of Indian Islam, this was the most like being transported to another world. Beneath a massive chandelier the entire interior glimmered with intricate floral carvings of pure gold. In the center of the shrine sat a ring of revered old Sikh men (Sikhs have no priests) who read in eerie tones from massive ancient copies of the Sikh holy book. As their voices echoed from the shining walls, those echoes were soon followed by the echoes of voices of transfixed worshipers within, relayed again by the masses teeming outside. Sacred cloths draped other books and delicate whisks brushed faint traces of incense in the air. Up the stairs I entered a carpeted gallery above the ceremony where a hall of tiny mirrors reflected the gold all around me, and finally I ascended to the roof, where a handful of people rested in deep meditation. Dusk had fallen on the end of the year and a red moon rose across the lake. From atop the shrine I could see more and more people pouring through the entrances, coming to join together at the lakeside for the coming of the new year.
Eventually I forced myself to leave the shrine and I joined them. As I stood by on the marble steps lining the lake watching the full moon rise and change from red to yellow for what seemed like eternity, my eyes finally came to rest on the few intrepid bathers who braved the sub-freezing winter cold to cleanse themselves in the lake, the sacred Pool of Nectar, and I knew what I had to do.
As midnight approached and chants filled the air, thousands of people shouting "Good morning!" in old Punjabi in the middle of the night to greet the new year's dawn, I joined a group of shivering young Sikhs preparing for what we in the U.S. might call a "polar bear swim". I stripped to my underwear and noted to my surprise that my boxers were none other than my favorite pair, adorned with silhouettes of polar bears. Surely this was the formless Sikh god at work.
I stepped boldly into the water and carefully descended the stairs in the waters, grasping a metal chain and leaning myself backwards in the local custom, and with a large breath I took the plunge.
Now, as someone who has timidly sampled the Arctic Ocean with his feet in summertime, and has immersed himself nude into New England rivers in the depths of winter, I was able to emerge from the water and to the amazement of my co-bathers declare casually "I've seen colder."
That being said, it was motherfucking cold.
Around the lake, the excitement of the crowd was reaching a climax as I stood shivering in the edge of the waters. A slightly larger number of Sikhs who had been waiting for this fortuitous moment rushed in and joined me with an inglorious splash. I dunked myself again and shook my head beneath the frigid ripples of the water. The warped sounds of the world above penetrated down to me and I heard a surreal booming of warbled shouts and rumbling applause. The waters churned with flailing legs of timely retreating Sikhs.
I emptied my lungs and thrust my head above the surface, the waters pouring over my face as I emerged into the rippling reflection of the year's first starlight.
Top that.
A thousand miles is rarely a pleasant distance to travel, and it is even less so when one spends half of it on a sleeper bus bouncing with such vigor that I was repeatedly tossed into the air and flipped like a pancake within my berth. The train ride after was almost as bad, though this was due to a self-inflicted torture of reading an over-excited, almost ejaculatory history of the Persian Wars that unironically ended chapters with sentences like "The future of Western civilization...and of democracy, hung in the balance." After I finally reached the end of the book, I clambered down from my crow's nest of a berth and looked out the window to see the fertile plains of Punjab and the sprouting green fields glistening in the evening mist. Every few kilometers we passed a little Sikh farming village with its gurudwara, the Sikh equivalent of a temple, with its little white tower surmounting the meeting hall and culminating in a modest onion dome.
Despite my occasional urge to punch myself for reading that awful book all the way through to the battle of Plataea, I made it intact to my destination: the Punjab, land of the Sikhs. I arrived in Amritsar, the Sikhs' holy city, late at night and swaddled in my cold-weather clothes: a 2-dollar pauper's blanket and a bright yellow 25-cent turban wrapped around my ears. Starving, I stumbled into a roadside eatery where gritty construction workers were just getting off a very late shift working on the highway flyover. It was one of these shady cafes that I usually avoid for reasons of hygiene, although the Indian bugs can get you anywhere. Eating in India is essentially a passive form of bulimia; you merely acquiesce to the fact that you may or may not vomit up your lunch on any given day.
The patrons stared as they saw this tourist wobble into the cafe in an apparent state of complete destitution. Rather, I should say that some of the patrons stared at me. The rest kind of just looked with bleary eyes and slumped onto the table, because this was the sort of eatery where the vast majority of the dinner plates were being used to consolidate each customer's assortment of empty whiskey bottles. The waiter hobbled over to me, swaying as his head made great arcs through the chill night air. "We have...." he began, raising a finger every time he listed an item, "daaaal fry....ch,ch,channa masala....iiiidllleeee....RICE." Pausing for a moment, he looked at his fingers with great curiosity and began again "ok ,we have dal fry...dal fry.....rice..." The food, I must say, was less than superb.
The next day, still swaddled in my increasingly grimy wool blanket I hired a rickshaw to take me on a tour of the lesser sights of Amritsar. We stopped first at the "Ranjit Singh Panorama", a bizarre museum consisting entirely of panoramas and dioramas of the career of Ranjit Singh, mightiest of the Sikh kings. The sounds of battle blasted on the loudspeakers, the "information panels" provided little insight except that Sikhs and Afghans really do not get along, and the figures were scaled poorly in a desperately botched attempt to create linear perspective.
From there we went to the Durgiana temple. All I knew was that it was a Hindu shrine of some sort. As I approached through the narrow lane lined with the usual assortment of trinkets and offerings, the bustling scene led me to believe I was about to be impressed. I entered the temple compound, walked through the main gate and saw...a thoroughly second-rate attempt at carbon-copying the Sikhs's Golden Temple downtown. The temple sat in a rectangular pool at the end of a narrow causeway. Just like the Golden Temple, it was a squat box covered in gleaming metal, though this one was brass and had rather ungainly depictions of Hindu gods. The sorry attempt at mimicry was almost pathetic. The Hindus, though incredibly tolerant at allowing various sects into their fold, are comically insecure when it comes to apostasy, and the presence nearby of a truly majestic shrine belonging to a sect that adamantly rejects Hinduism is enough to send the priestly establishment into conniptions. The result in Amritsar was this brass-plated schlock. I chuckled at the thought of some Hindu priest back in the day trying to build this temple and realizing to his consternation that the Sikh temple was still a hundred times better.
I went thereafter to a place called the Mata temple, another Hindu shrine that was just outright weird. Its main shrine was dedicated to a bespectacled female saint, and there were several marble statues of this little old lady with her glasses sitting there with her jowls hanging exhaustedly downwards like she just spilled her porridge. A priest directed me up a narrow staircase, and that's where things got really weird. For some reason, the locals felt compelled to simulate a cave temple above ground, and constructed a diabolically labyrinthine path through the temple's many shrines. The path took me up and down a dozen staircases, through winding, switchbacked halls of mirrors, and on my hands an knees through preposterously artificial-looking "rock" tunnels.
I rounded one corner in a hall of fogged mirrors to find myself staring at a six-foot giant head with its tongue hanging out and a third eye on its forehead. Just beyond this was a gallery of lingams, the phallic symbol of Shiva. Though there being many of these in the same place was odd enough, on closer inspection I saw that the "heads" of the lingams were in fact all sculptures of the head of Vishnu, and the vaginal bases on which the lingams rested were in fact vaginal forms encoiled by Vishnu's pet cobra. Further on still, I found myself in a gallery of idols of Vishnu in his many forms. Some of them looked a little familiar, and deciphering the Hindi I realized that they were all reproductions of the idols at the country's most famous Vishnu temples, depicting him in all his regional and incarnate variations. At the end of this gallery was a ludicrous entranceway which required one to duck under a low-hanging 'rock' while climbing over another. The pilgrims ahead of me were rolling up their trousers, so I did the same. I stepped through the blackness and, with a splash, immediately realized why. Here I was, two stories above ground, in an artificial "underground river", wading through running water alongside a painting of a giant snake. Hinduism. What the fuck.
Returning to the main shrine and its mush-mouthed saint, I was assaulted by psychedelic images of outer space on hanging television screens as a group of local women shrieked a chant while banging on tambourines, and temple staff served food in a dining hall filled with strings of flashing lights. Not really caring about this saint enough to inquire any further, I turned to leave, and saw that the exit was guarded by a pair of demonic elephants. I live in India and nothing makes any sense any more.
As delightful as touring the Hindu quarters was, I came to Amritsar for the Sikhs, and wandered into the old city surrounding the Golden Temple. Old Amritsar was of course both enticing and completely revolting. Walking down one street would take you through a thriving bazaar, while the next would be a gorge-like alley with open sewers, where fresh human waste could be observed falling the final foot between the upper stories' drainpipes and the gutter, landing with a merry splash and coursing down the street. I eventually discovered the main road leading to the Golden Temple, a wide boulevard completely stalled with swarms of human traffic. Hip young shoppers tried to get to the bazaars as entire families of regally-turbaned Sikhs crammed onto rickshaws crawling through the chaotic scene. Hundreds of sugar-crazed Hindu tourists in matching giveaway Golden Temple nylon headscarves clogged the road as they slurped on ice cream in the midst of the winter cold. I pushed across the mayhem and slipped through the narrow lane that to this day is the only entrance to the Jagiallah Bagh, an urban garden where thousands of unarmed protesters were massacred by the British Army in 1921. The garden is quite nice, and very evocative, as the bullet holes from the slaughter are still preserved on the walls, and at one end is a hauntingly dark and silent well where hundreds of people died trying to escape the British gunfire.
At the end of the boulevard was a large white building with a clock tower. I took it to be City Hall but it was in fact the outer rim of the Golden Temple complex. Below me was a most spectacular scene, the Golden Temple's eastern shoe depository. At the east entrance alone, this sunken structure was abuzz with hundreds of people leaving and retrieving their shoes, and it smelled like hundreds of people were leaving and retrieving their shoes. The visitors were a cross-section of Sikh society: young men in turbans and Nike pullovers, old businesspeople with flowing beards, throngs of curious Hindus who aren't really sure why Sikhs don't shave, grey-cloaked farmers with ragged turbans, and fat little rich kids spilling ice cream onto their bare feet.
I passed through the entrance and beheld the majesty of the Golden Temple. Though the golden shrine itself is not very large, it sits in a serene, reflective lake ringed by gleaming white shrines and great halls that house the heart of Sikh communal life. On the inner side of the compound walls are the 64 holy shrines. The Sikh gurus despised pilgrimages as a ritual superfluous to God and proclaimed that walking around this lake once was equivalent to visiting all 64 of the holiest Hindu shrines in India. Ohhhhhh man does this kind of shit piss the Hindus off. The edge of the lake is patrolled by the temple guards, blue-turbaned warriors with yellow robes bearing the emblem of the Khalsa, the Sikh brotherhood of arms. They wield holy spears with shining tips. Sitting transcendentally in the middle of the lake is the golden shrine itself, the Harmandir Sahib. It is utterly impossible not to be transfixed by it, a glorious centerpiece rivaled only by the Taj Mahal in its ability to kidnap your attentions. And whereas the Taj Mahal stands triumphantly above the commercialized milieu that presses against its precinct, the Golden Temple, miniscule by comparison, sits unperturbed in its traquility amid the impossibly still waters of the lake as reverent worshipers sit in silence by the water's edge, contemplating the temple and all that it stands for.
After gawping at the shrine at length, I tore myself away to examine the surrounding complex. Out through the main gate I found myself at the langar. All gurudwaras have a langar, which is a communal kitchen which serves the masses free of charge. The one here of course is the langar of langars, and as my tummy was just starting to grumble I could hardly pass up the chance to eat there. As I approached there was a startling din of clanging metal as the temple staff under a large awning washes thousands of trays and bowls to return them to circulation. The Golden Temple langar is a massive, 24-hour operation of impressive efficiency. I walked past the dining hall on the first level, completely empty while staff rapidly mopped the floor, pushing great waves of soap, water, and spilled dal before them. I was sent upstairs to the other hall, and took my seat at the end of an orderly row of complete strangers sitting cross-legged on the floor. There were about a thousand people eating together in this manner, and dozens of staff rushed up and down the aisles dispensing bread, rice, and dal within moments of your needing it. Aside from being breathtakingly efficient, the food was also absoulutely delicious, and the servers gladly piled on the second, third, and fourth helpings until everyone had their fill and rose completely sated without having paid a dime.
Outside the temple compound, a large chunk of the inner city is turned over to gurudwaras. Across from the langar is an open, three-level meeting hall, and all around the entrance gardens are tall gurudwaras serving as free hostels for all visitors. Private rooms are available too, for about a dollar a night. I returned through the main gate, washing my feet in the trough of running water laid before the gate for that purpose. Over the 9-odd hours I spent at the temple, this foot-washing ritual became a little tiresome, as the last thing one really wants to do on the 31st of December is repeatedly dip one's bare feet in cold water. Little did I know what fate and my own impulses had in store that night.
I went to the end of the lake where the causeway to the shrine begins. Across from the causeway are a handful of other important gurudwaras, including the central "parliament hall" of the entire Sikh community. Buildings in this area were being renovated for the umpteenth time. The parliament hall was almost completely leveled in 1984 when the Indian Army blasted its way in to deal with radical Sikh terrorists that had occupied the premises. Its minaret-like towers are still missing, the victims of Indian tank shells. [In my notes, I apparently attributed the damage to Israeli tank shells, proving that Freudian slips can be as political as they can be sexual]. Incensed by this desecration, the prime minister's Sikh bodyguards murdered her in her house later that year. Incensed in turn by this, the Hindus of Delhi went on a murderous rampage killing thousands of Sikhs and burning their homes. In 1994 the catastrophe at the temple repeated itself, though this time the Indian government wisely limited its assault to bullets.
Finally, I joined the massive queue of people on the causeway seeking entrance to the shrine. As I got closer and closer in the slow-moving line, the people surrounding me grew more and more fervent. Halfway across the bridge, the hymns and chants from within the temple could be heard and those waiting outside shouted in call-and-response. People meditated where they stood and others began singing joyously by themselves. Finally I was included in a batch admitted to the marble island on which the temple sat. On the lower levels, the marble was decorated by inlaid stones and gems like the Taj Mahal, while gazing upwards I got a close look at its glimmering sheath of beautifully carved gold leaf.
I entered the shrine. Of all the many places in India I have been, including the very holiest places of the Hindu and Jain religions, and the most sacred space of Indian Islam, this was the most like being transported to another world. Beneath a massive chandelier the entire interior glimmered with intricate floral carvings of pure gold. In the center of the shrine sat a ring of revered old Sikh men (Sikhs have no priests) who read in eerie tones from massive ancient copies of the Sikh holy book. As their voices echoed from the shining walls, those echoes were soon followed by the echoes of voices of transfixed worshipers within, relayed again by the masses teeming outside. Sacred cloths draped other books and delicate whisks brushed faint traces of incense in the air. Up the stairs I entered a carpeted gallery above the ceremony where a hall of tiny mirrors reflected the gold all around me, and finally I ascended to the roof, where a handful of people rested in deep meditation. Dusk had fallen on the end of the year and a red moon rose across the lake. From atop the shrine I could see more and more people pouring through the entrances, coming to join together at the lakeside for the coming of the new year.
Eventually I forced myself to leave the shrine and I joined them. As I stood by on the marble steps lining the lake watching the full moon rise and change from red to yellow for what seemed like eternity, my eyes finally came to rest on the few intrepid bathers who braved the sub-freezing winter cold to cleanse themselves in the lake, the sacred Pool of Nectar, and I knew what I had to do.
As midnight approached and chants filled the air, thousands of people shouting "Good morning!" in old Punjabi in the middle of the night to greet the new year's dawn, I joined a group of shivering young Sikhs preparing for what we in the U.S. might call a "polar bear swim". I stripped to my underwear and noted to my surprise that my boxers were none other than my favorite pair, adorned with silhouettes of polar bears. Surely this was the formless Sikh god at work.
I stepped boldly into the water and carefully descended the stairs in the waters, grasping a metal chain and leaning myself backwards in the local custom, and with a large breath I took the plunge.
Now, as someone who has timidly sampled the Arctic Ocean with his feet in summertime, and has immersed himself nude into New England rivers in the depths of winter, I was able to emerge from the water and to the amazement of my co-bathers declare casually "I've seen colder."
That being said, it was motherfucking cold.
Around the lake, the excitement of the crowd was reaching a climax as I stood shivering in the edge of the waters. A slightly larger number of Sikhs who had been waiting for this fortuitous moment rushed in and joined me with an inglorious splash. I dunked myself again and shook my head beneath the frigid ripples of the water. The warped sounds of the world above penetrated down to me and I heard a surreal booming of warbled shouts and rumbling applause. The waters churned with flailing legs of timely retreating Sikhs.
I emptied my lungs and thrust my head above the surface, the waters pouring over my face as I emerged into the rippling reflection of the year's first starlight.
Top that.
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