Punjab is Siiiiiiiiiiiiikh
Let me first apologize to anyone who may take offense to the title of this post. As a backstory, I generally use the word “sick” as a superlative of good, and with rather exaggerated, even annoying, frequency. Any positive news shared with me is responded to with “sick” though typically drawn out to be more like “siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick”, with the length expressing the depth of my happiness; I also use it when describing places I’ve visited that I really like (e.g., “Visited the Taj Mahal. Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick”). I spent the past weekend in the Indian state Punjab, which is both awesome and the only state that has a majority Sikh population, that is followers of Sikhism, a religion predicated on equality and service to others. Hence the title. Good lord that was convoluted.
Anywho, this was my first visit to the state and I spent it staying at a small village outside the city of Gurdarspur and visiting the border city of Amritsar and its mesmerizing Harmandir Sahib, more commonly referred to as the Golden Temple. Both lie tantalizingly close to the Pakistan border and it truly pained me to be so close to a country I’ve not yet visited and not make it over the border. I also unfortunately missed the famous Wagah Border Ceremony, an over-the-top feather-ruffling game of one-ups-manship held twice daily where Indian and Pakistani border guards, within eyesight of each other, perform an audacious, near leg-breaking goose-step for each side’s changing-of-the-guards. This is but one of the reasons I absolutely will be going back to Punjab.
Like most of my trips here, the visit was brief, constrained to a long weekend in which I took an overnight train Friday night and returned late Monday evening. These are oftentimes great opportunities to just dip your toes in the water on a new place to see if you like it, but, as with Punjab, when you discover a place you really like the trip feels over far too soon and you’ve only just whet your appetite. The risk in this is that you’re never guaranteed to return to a place and, for me anyways, going someplace new usually trumps out a return visit to a past haunt.
I certainly hope that this is not the case with Punjab as it really had an impact on me. First and foremost, I traveled with a friend to her family’s home village and stayed with several members of her extended family. These types of experiences always seem to stand out as more special as you get a window into “everyday life”, for lack of a better term. It’s not just sightseeing and ticking off places you’ve seen, but an opportunity to engage with people and share perspectives while simply enjoying the company and the serendipities that bring people together.
The village we stayed in is small by any standard, and absolutely minuscule for India with what I would guess to be only a few hundred residents, most of them farmers. (Punjab is commonly called India’s “grain bowl” as agriculture is the dominant business.) Like much of the state that I saw, everywhere around the village was green, with fields stretching on as far as the eye could see. The air was so clean and, I don’t know, “earthy” that I remarked I couldn’t believe I was in the same country as Delhi, or even on the same planet for that matter. This time of year is especially brutal in Delhi as the cold air traps the pollution at street level creating a “fog” that grounds flights and slows the omnipresent traffic on the roads; sinus infections are common and I write this while suffering through one. To be in such green expanses and with such clean air was a godsend.
What was also super cool is that the village is loaded with kids. I don’t think they get to see lanky white dudes like me very often as I was mobbed any time I left the house grounds, though by the last day even the gates couldn’t keep them at bay and we ended up playing frisbee and baseball on the house grounds with some of my friend’s young cousins. It was incredibly fun but an all-too-painful reminder of how old I’m getting; those kids wore me out.
As I mentioned earlier, it is cold in Delhi now that winter is upon us. This, of course, meaning that it’s in the 40s F, which for those in the Midwest and Northeast United States reading this right now would sound like a heatwave. Punjab is further north and, as such, has harsher winter weather, though, and the overnight temperatures were below freezing leaving a layer of frost on everything each morning. What was especially nice about this is that each night was spent huddled around a campfire, listening to Punjabi music and chatting, while also gorging ourselves on home-cooked feasts of curries, roast, dal, and everything in between.
Inevitably I was asked about the case of the Indian diplomat being arrested in New York for lying about wages paid to domestic help. I’ve spoken to several of my friends here about this since it happened. By and large, people think both sides are in the wrong and that people are overreacting. (It amazes me to see articles about the protests in Delhi over this, with folks burning effigies of President Obama; I live in south Delhi and have literally not seen anything of the sort, nor even so much as heard anyone speaking about it on the streets). However, Indians that do feel strongly about it almost always pinpoint the strip search as the cause of their consternation while Americans and other Westerners point to the fact that she was paying her domestic help essentially slave wages. Most of us seemed to fall into the “overreacting” camp, but it was still an intriguing conversation and another example of the value of traveling, and living, abroad: you get the opportunity to see the world through other people’s eyes, if only briefly.
Our days were largely spent eating or just walking around the village. I took one of the nicer cameras from my office and wound up shooting hundreds of pictures and a bunch of video. It was such a peaceful Eden, and perfect counterpoint to Delhi and its madness and filth. Also, a lot of my short trips tend to be spent constantly on the move trying to pack as much into the short time I’ve got as is possible; it was really nice to go to a place where there was no agenda and really nothing to do but to enjoy where you are. The scenery certainly allowed for it.
We did take a break from the über-relaxing village life to delve into the rather chaotic streets of Amritsar in order to pay a visit to the Harmandir Sahib. It was about an hour’s drive each way but I honestly would’ve spent any amount of time in the car needed after seeing the Golden Temple with my own eyes. I used this word before, but I can’t think of a better description than mesmerizing. I’ve been fortunate enough to visit many famous structures throughout the world and I’m not exaggerating when I say the Golden Temple ranks amongst the top. In India, at least what I’ve seen so far, it ranks only a close second to the Taj Mahal and nothing else is even close.
The temple itself is located in the middle of a lake of holy water that Sikh devotees bathe in to purify themselves. This lake is enclosed within a massive, marble-laden structure that’s almost as intricately sculpted as the temple itself. There are various gilded domes in the surrounding structure as well. Approaching it from the street gives you a sense of its scale, and its majesty is only exemplified by the modern concrete eye-sore edifices that surround it.
It’s free to enter the temple complex though you must cover your head and remove your shoes. There is a trough of warm water at the entrance that you walk through to clean your feet. What’s really amazing is that the Gurdwara, Sikh place of worship, is still active; it’s a living holy place that welcomes some 100,000 devotees daily.
I need to learn more about the Sikh faith, but what little I know now resonates. The three main principles of Sikhism are: to remember God, to work honestly, and to share with others. I know a few Sikhs and they’re all incredibly gregarious, generous people. I remember being here and reading about the psychopath in Wisconsin that went on a shooting rampage at a Sikh temple and thinking it really goes to show how grotesquely ignorant mankind can be. Sikhs wear turbans and often have dark complected skin so, therefore, they are evil to some jerk white supremacist, despite practicing a faith that mandates tolerance, acceptance and good will to others. What a world we live in. Anyway, didn’t mean to end on that little downer diatribe.
If you ever find yourself planning a trip to India, make sure you account for a few days in Amritsar, at least, if not extended time in Punjab itself. It’s a short train ride from Delhi and an even shorter flight. I’ve traveled around India a fair bit over the past two years and can say without hesitation that a visit here would be incomplete if you do not visit two places: the Taj Mahal and Harmandir Sahib. Seriously.
As I said, I took a lot of video, slapped a bunch of it together, and set that shiz to some siiiiiiiick Punjabi beats. Oddly enough, most of the footage was shot while in motion, so whatevs. Enjoy.
Originally published at kevinshane.me on January 4, 2014.
