Dr P Ravi Shankar

Pokhara

My very good friend, Sheik Akbar Hussain is a dynamic young man. He is hard to beat when it comes to organising tours and outings. It was the beginning of March and the fog that had cloaked North India for the better part of four months was beginning to lift. Mustard fields lay smiling under a placid sun.

It was still chilly as we set off from Chandigarh under the cover of darkness at 5:30 in the morning. We had hired a Maruti van to take us to Amritsar and the Wagah border. There were eight of us and it was quite a feat squeezing into the van.

Punjab was dusty and flat as a chapatti. Fog (or was it smog?) cloaked the trees lining the road. Villages huddled together separated by vast expanses of sun baked fields. Massive

harvester combines were lumbering along the highway enroute to distant fields.

We reached Amritsar at half-past 12. On the way, we had stopped at a roadside dhaba for a repast of ‘rotis’, ‘dal fry’ and ‘paneer butter masala’. Amritsar had a distinctly ‘frontier’ look with not-so-clean roads and buildings piled about at random. Our first stop was Jalianwala Bagh, a grim reminder of one of the bloodiest chapters in India’s freedom movement. The early years of the twentieth century were a period of great strife in India.

Nationalism was on the rise and the first World War had ended the native’s awe of the white man’s authority. The British government struck back by passing the draconian Rowlatt act in 1919. The act authorised the government to imprison any person without trial or conviction in a court of law.

Two popular Congress leaders, Dr Saifuddin Kitchlu and Dr Satya Pal were arrested. On April 13, 1919 a large unarmed crowd gathered at Jalianwala Bagh to protest the arrests. It was Baisakhi, a popular spring festival in Punjab. Jalianwala Bagh is a large open space enclosed on three sides by buildings.

There is a narrow entrance on one side. I stood on the ground and thought back to the events of that April afternoon in 1919. Salman Rushdie had made Adam Sinai, the chief protagonist of his novel ‘Midnight’s Children’ a witness to the gruesome carnage at Jalianwala Bagh.

General Dyer was the military commander of Amritsar. He wanted to make an example of the meeting and terrorise the people into submission.

The general surrounded the Bagh with troops, closed the exit and then ordered his troops to open fire. The soldiers continued firing till they finally ran out of ammunition.

Men, women and children ran helter-skelter and some jumped into an old, disused well to escape the relentless hail of bullets. More than 2,000 people lay dead and the ground was soaked with their blood. The wholesale, cold-blooded slaughter shocked the country.

Today there is a well maintained memorial at the site. A small museum, the original well, parts of the bullet scarred walls are preserved and a small memorial to the martyrs mark the site. Many a time the Goddess of Freedom demands human sacrifices!

Our next stop was the Golden Temple. The Golden Temple, also known as Sri Harmandir Sahib or Sri Darbar Sahib, is named after Hari (God). The site was originally a small lake in the midst of a quiet forest. Valmiki is supposed to have written his celebrated epic, the Ramayana around this site. Another legend says that this was where the whole of Lord Rama’s mighty army was destroyed by his sons, Lava and Kusha.

A jug of nectar descended from heaven to restore the soldiers back to life. Guru Amar Das is said to have found on the banks of the pool the desired herb for the treatment of the skin ailment of Guru Angad (the second Sikh guru). The name of the city, Amritsar is supposed to have been derived from the pool of nectar (Amrit Sarovar).

A mud house was constructed at the site by Guru Amar Das. The Amrit Sarovar was started to be paved in brick by the next Guru, Guru Ram Das. The actual construction of the Golden temple was started by Guru Arjun Dev. The foundation was laid by a Muslim saint Hazrat Mian Mir ji of Lahore on December 1588. Unlike the closed Hindu temples with a single entrance the new temple was open from all four sides. Sri Harmandir Sahib is built on a 67 ft square platform in the centre of Amrit Sarovar. A causeway leads to the temple, a three-storied structure.

Guru Granth Sahib (a collection of works of all the Sikh Gurus) was installed in Harmandir Sahib and Baba Budha ji was appointed as the first Granthi (reader of Guru Granth Sahib). I was very much impressed with the cleanliness and the sense of calm and peace that pervaded the whole complex.

There was a small moat at the entrance to the temple and all visitors had to wade through after removing their footwear. A great concept! Pilgrims can eat a simple meal of roti and lentils for free in the langar (community kitchen) and can sleep in the guesthouse. The complex was cool and serene in early March but things might be a bit different at the height of summer when the mercury sometimes touches 50 degrees Celsius.

The present day temple with its luminous gold-plated exterior is chiefly the work of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the first Sikh emperor. He made a grant of Rs 5,00,000 in 1808 AD and invited skilled craftsmen from Chariot (now in Pakistan) to decorate the temple. Yar Mohammad Khan Mistri was the technical expert for the gold plating. The image of the shimmering Golden temple silhouetted against a clean, blue sky leaves an indelible impression on the soul. The Amrit Sarovar with the bathing pilgrims and the reflection of the temple is an exquisite sight!

The sun was on the wane as we set off to the Wagah border. We passed through some of the most fertile land in Punjab.

Rural prosperity was evident everywhere. The border post was an elaborate complex of buildings, roads and barriers. The recently erected electrified border fence stretched far away to the horizon. ‘Beating the Retreat’ ceremony was the highlight of the evening.

There was a huge crowd on the Indian side and a slightly smaller one on the Pakistani side. We were feeling hungry and stopped to replenish our ‘fuel tanks’ with some piping hot ‘chole bhaturas’. Soldiers from both countries were marching in perfect drill and were going through the steps of bringing down their respective National flags. There was an air of suppressed menace and hostility in the choreographed steps. The gates of India and Pakistan were slammed shut!

The sinking sun on the western horizon was painting the sky gradually weakening shades of pink. The crowds were beginning to disperse and calm was gradually returning. It marked the end of yet another day in the turbulent history of two nuclear armed neighbours.

The dusk was deepening and the lights of Amritsar were blinking on one by one as we

retraced the long road back to Chandigarh.