Amritsar
I titled this travelogue “Open Wide” because I wanted to focus on the necessity of keeping an open mind while travelling in foreign cultures. I’ve decided that it should probably be renamed to reflect the reality I am living. I can’t yet decide what its new title should be, but I have decided to share with you that I am simply one large hypocrite and a bad person. Maybe that’s too dramatic, but I hope I’ve caught your attention, as this will be an honest reflection of another reality of travel.
The first thing I learned to do here was push my ‘off’ button, put on my blinders and ignore. That runs contrary to everything I set out to do. I ignore beggars, rickshaw wallahs, smells, sounds and unpleasant sights.
Today I arrived in Amritsar after four days in Chandigarh and Shimla. After arriving at the bus stand of my luxury (hah!) bus, and solving a minor emergency (sample exchange: ‘rickshaw madam? madam rickshaw?’, ‘toilet?’, ‘rickshaw’, ‘toilet!’, ‘hotel?’, ‘toilet!’, ‘rooms full no toilet’, ‘just toilet’, ‘toilet?’, ‘toilet!’, ‘achya. okay. upstairs.’), I headed to the Golden Temple. Checking my bag and shoes, I covered my head, washed my feet and walked into the complex. Everything was so white, save for the gold of the temple that it seemed like the Taj Mahal, so clean and peaceful. I sat down and watched people bathe in the Amrit Sarowar and then made my way to the walkway of the golden temple itself. A Sikh man in a beautiful indigo turban came up to me and said, “Hello, sister,”
Caught off guard, I mumbled hello, but I don’t think I seemed too friendly, as he quickly left. My first thought was, “What do you want to sell me?” As he walked away, I realized he had just wanted to chat, and I blanched in shame, matching the marble in its whiteness, though not in its scorching heat that burnt the soles of my feet. Serves me right, coldhearted bitch.
Before entering the temple I bought prashad, a sweet offering given inside, and asked three young people if I could follow them as I didn’t want to do something wrong. They were extremely gracious and helped me to where offerings were given in the crush inside. For a moment I nearly died from an aesthetic orgasm – the inside of the temple, all gold, with chandeliers and a rich purple tapestry hanging from a wall, and with flowers offered in the middle on white marble, was simply, wonderfully and overwhelmingly too much. And then it was over, we were outside sprinkling water on our foreheads while the fish in the pond blinked at us. The three people I met turned out to be students at Guru Nanak University and they told me I must come to see the university and they would give me a tour. We parted and I promised I’d try to come.
Pilgrims to Amritsar can stay for free in the golden temple in the Sri Guru Ram Dass and Sri Guru Nanak niwas, hostels in the complex that demonstrate the Sikh tradition of hospitality towards pilgrims. Many people said that this was an experience they really enjoyed and I planned on doing the same.
I spent the afternoon wandering the streets of Amritsar and then in Jallianwala Bagh, the site of the massacre in 1919 by a psycho British general named Dyer of a large number of peacefully protesting Indians. Used by Gandhi in his campaign for independence to motivate Indians, the massacre was made famous in Attenborough’s Gandhi, as well as, more personally for me, in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.
Jallianwalla Bagh is a beautiful park lined with bougainvilleas and as I entered, two girls ran up to me to say hello. My favourite encounters here are with kids, who aren’t guarded the way most are in the West. I gave them each a chocolate eclair candy and then they ran screaming to their families to show off. Soon I was surrounded by children and adults who had to see this candy-bearing stranger. I explained I had none left to the throng of kids expecting sweets and the children saw my camera and demanded a picture instead. Then the parents came to chat. After they left, and once they were out of sight, I pulled out one of about ten candies from my bag, unwrapped it and ate it. I am evil, heartless, greedy.
But it gets worse! I took a hotel and had a pizza for lunch. I am abandoning the free Golden Temple accommodation and food that promises to be a rich cultural experience for an overpriced room and bad Western food. To top it all off, I’ve decided I’m too tired to visit the students at the university. For the past few weeks I’ve been grumpy and tired and completely unmotivated when it comes to seeing India. My open mind shut faster than my stomach turns when I think about more dhal and rice. (Amending earlier comments: the only foods I will never tire of here are mangos, banana lassis, naan bread, and fresh pressed grape juice) I spend hours here hating Indians, making mass generalizations in my mind and infantilizing them as well. I am Edward Said’s worst nightmare.
India’s westernization happens on her own terms and instead of celebrating that, I curse it. Even Bombay, the most cosmopolitan city in India, inserts trendy bars between cheap grungy dhabas and tea stalls, and the aesthete in me reels backwards in dismay. There is nowhere here that isn’t India. Now I long for trendy bars (which I never go to in ‘real life’), designer clothing (which I can never let myself buy, guilt that I could be spending money on better things, like books, always stops me) and chi chi restaurants with incredible service (alright, those I frequent on occasion). I’ve asked my parents to buy copies of Wallpaper* magazine for the months I am away.
And the worst thing is, I know this is perfectly normal. I know that I am tired and can’t be ‘on’ all the time. I don’t hate India, but she tires me – like a sari being washed on the banks of the Ganges I feel sometimes lifted up and then brought down, crumpled and beaten on a rock. It’s worse because this is normal. I didn’t expect India to bring me inner peace and I didn’t come searching for anything so I thought that would yield different and interesting results. Instead I find I and my experiences are absolutely normal. I am not evil or heartless, even if I sometimes feel that way. I learned years ago how concerned I am with “shoulds”, with not doing things wrong. And I still fight that.
Worrying aloud to a friend about how unaffected I have been by the poverty and mutilated beggars, since of course compassionate people are supposed to be paralysed by their sympathy, my Buddhist friend told me the first thing I needed to work on was compassion for myself. But how do you go about doing that? Probably takes opening your mind and your heart. And it seems that opening anything, a pickle jar or a heart, is a lot harder than closing it.
