The Golden Temple

The Golden Temple of the Sikhs.

The driver taking me to the temple warned me that it was going to be busy as it was the “Half Moon” (I thought he said) festival and there would be great crowds. When you join the throng heading by foot the last few hundred metres through the narrowing streets of Amritsar individuals approach you with orange and other coloured handkerchiefs. These, of course, are for the men to put on their heads, for a price of Rs 10, because you cannot enter the golden temple without your head covered and your feet bare.

The narrow street gives way to a huge marble plaza with a line of businesses and a gate. After receiving a numbered metal disk in exchange for your footwear, you wade through a cool foot bath into an entry way to the pool and temple itself. Imaging an ornate marble open air rectangle with a beautiful marble floor surrounding a clean lake. In the centre of the water is the Golden Temple, a place where the God of the Sikhs resides. There is an atmosphere of cleaning, bathing and preparation before joining the queue to enter the temple across a bride walkway.

I wandered around being a respectful tourist, taking photos with some of the other pilgrims and exchanging a few words with those who speak English. I was not sure what the eating arrangements were so I stayed away but believers are able to make a food offering as part of the ceremony.

Most Indians are arrogant and self-focused. The cannot understand who they cannot go somewhere or do something just because it inconveniences others, sometimes many. The Sikhs are very different. They are dignified, respectful and have a tolerance and acceptance of others which forms a part of their very egalitarian religion.

I decided to join the group lined up (I hesitate to use the term queue as it was more a gentle, well organized and safe throng of males and females in separate lines. The line moved forward in a shuffling wave every new and then. There were four people all in close tough with me on all sides yet I felt extremely safe as there was no pushing or trying to establish position or to forge ahead of others as in the usual Indian crowd. Once I got towards our goal after about an hour I realized who the crowd moved forward in waves. There were two men with a velvet covered stick blocking the progress of the pilgrims. Once a group had moved through, and there were thousands there, and a space became vacant they lifted the stick (like a limbo dance) and allowed a group through. When it came down again there was no disappointment or argument. Everybody accepted the decision of the stick. The whole experience was incredibly well organized and regulated. There were men in tailored coats with little curved daggers at their side overseeing everything in a gentle but firm way. I was chatting to a man from Canada as we approached the temple and a man nearby just raised his eyebrows and said a word in Punjabi and we both understood that we should be silent and respectful, prayerful even.

Inside the temple there was an official, call him a priest, standing over and fanning with a white swish stick a lump of something covered with carpet. A small ensemble was playing and people were placing offerings of money through the railings. Once I had done the same I was politely ushered out and crossed the bridge back to the rectangle of marble with a huge sense of peace and acceptance. I am not becoming a Sikh but I am becoming more accepting of the rightness of a devotion to a God such as they believe in.

In a small bookshop near the entrance as I was leaving I had a discussion with a man selling me books about what Sikhs believe. He told me that as we approach death and the meeting with God we have to be zero. This took me back to my dad and, as Michelle described it, an emptying of self in preparation for the end of this life.

There are lots of details which I have omitted but which combined and interwove to form the tapestry of the experience; the photos with other pilgrims, the peanut butter clump of dough in my hands after leaving the temple, the speakers all around, with devotees sitting glued to their words, the men bathing themselves and their sons in the pool, the women in their secluded bathing spot, the variety of people from many places in the world, born in the Punjab but making their way in many parts of the world.

What have I learned from the Golden Temple:

The need for humanity to seek the beyond, a sign of the beyond itself.

The capacity of people to be confidently different from those around them.

The rightness of going to places and experiencing things. (Contagious from your children.)

I came to the Golden Temple in Amritsar and discovered a beautiful place and people with a fervent belief in a wonderfully loving God. Not a bad find if I do say so myself.