maverickbirdThe sun streamed on our faces like warm honey and we woke up to a proper Punjabi morning. The household, Â despite its early start was buzzing with activity and we climbed up to the big open terrace with our morning cuppas. Noni ran about happily and cradling a big mug of hot, sweet tea, I watched my daughter skip behind large butterflies. It was a beautiful morning and the entire village spread around us in a patchwork of houses with open terraces and courtyards, mustard fields and irrigation canals. The spires of the village Gurudwara ( Sikh holy temple) gleamed and a big blue sky smiled overhead.
Tractors puttered down dirt tracks amidst the vast sea of fluorescent yellow and grandmothers snug in warm shawls sunned from wooden charpoys (a 4 poster wooden and coir portable bed). In spite of all the action around us, it was very peaceful except for occasional harsh cries of the peacocks. The grand blue birds were everywhere,  hopping from terrace to terrace, dropping their beautiful feathers on the way and scattering omnipresent striped squirrels with their presence. Mango trees stood fruitless in the distance next to sycamore rows and tired milk sellers cycled their way back home. Big brass milk pots tied to their cycles clanged riotously and marble white radishes (their day’s shopping) got bruised with each jolt on the road.
Winter heralded Punjab’s favourite vegetables and radishes, carrots, peas, turnips, cauliflowers and mustard greens were inevitably present at every Punjabi meal. The cold months also brought out Punjab’s love for game and although hard to find nowadays, teetar (grey partridge) bater (quail) were being relished joyously with guests. Big glass bell jars filled with liquidy, mouth puckering “kanji” (sort of winter condiment made of varis, cauliflowers, potatoes, mustard seeds and/or black carrots) were left in the sun along with trays of home made “varis” (small chickpea roundels) and children on school holidays minded them from thieving birds, as they played hop scotch with their friends. Our breakfast arrived soon and it was a typical Punjabi spread.
Sinfully rich aroma filled the air as butter fingers trickled like fat rivers all across our plates. Punjabis don’t believe in measly portions and like the rest of traditional India, associated fat tyres around one’s waist to be directly proportionate to his/her amply loaded family coffers. Unfortunately Noni and I are both usually quite skinny and this condition lead to us being nearly killed by overeating during our Punjab visit. Our host’s family took fattening up of their guests as a fierce mission and huge portions of massive meals used to be cajoled to us everyday. Deliciously thick, piping hot parathas (stuffed, fried, flat Indian bread) insinuated rich fragrance into the morning air and large dollops of heavy, fresh cream swam in their midst. Big bowls of home made yogurt accompanied the platter, along with spoonfuls of sweet-sour mango pickle and deluge of cajoling to eat more. The parathas were straight off the smoking girdle and we both ate so much, that we could have easily rolled all the way to Amritsar.
However, it was already past morning and we decided to keep the Golden Temple visit for the next day. We spent that day exploring our neighbourhood and lazed away sunny moments driving a tractor around the village, walking around the fields and checking out the sports fetish of the state. Punjab loves sports, especially contact sports and the state has produced many national and international champions. Mud wrestling, bullock cart racing, hockey, kabbadi (state game of Punjab), arm wrestling etc are most popular and “akharas” or wrestling pits are favourite hangout places for young rural Punjabi men. This love for sports had spilled over to the rural architectural style and nearly every house of the village sported Disney type concrete models of  wrestlers, hockey sticks etc on the roofs.  We loved counting the roof top attractions of the village and time simply flew over them.
Afternoon brought out finery for a Sikh wedding at the village gurudwara and strangely (contrary to our expectation of the ostentatious) it was a short, simple and almost staid ceremony. Night fell quickly and we fell asleep strangely exhausted under a star crowded silky blue sky. The next morning, we got up early, showered and left quickly for Amritsar. It was just 1 hour and 45 minutes drive away from Phagwara but something told me that Amritsar would be hard to leave and just 1 day would not be enough to experience the border town to the fullest. I could not have been closer to the truth and Amritsar turned out to one of the most atmospheric places I had ever been. Superficially, it was a jumble of crumbling, old building, narrow lanes topped by dangerous tangle of electrical wires, jangling traffic and the colourful “Indian” chaos of street hawkers, but intrinsically each and every inch of Amritsar spoke volumes of its eventful history.
Founded by Guru Ramdas in 1574, Amritsar’s origin can be traced to a small village called Tung. Historically known as Ramdaspur, the city is named after the holy pool of nectar, famous for miraculous healing power, Â (Amrit= elixir, Sat=Lake) beside which it sits. Because of its strategic location on the Silk Route, Amritsar soon became popular with merchants and the walled central part of the city still bears its trading roots. Developed in the 17th and 18th century, Amritsar’s central part is an unique example of introverted city planning with self styled residential units called Katras, which helped boost defense during attacks. Although the usual Indian scenario of noise, air pollution and congestion welcomed me to Amritsar, it was hard to not fall in love with the grand old survivor. History stood still there and it was nearly tangible as we navigated the old lanes and bazaars on a cycle rickshaw. Owing to my excitement over old Amritsar’s charm, our little group ended up touring the city on a cycle rickshaw before even stepping into our destination, the Golden Temple.
Minding a small child, photographing and staring in awe at one of India’s most congested places, are next to impossible and I learned yet another important travel lesson in the city of the Golden Temple. Sights, sounds and smells bombarded us at every step and we soon got lost in a sea of clanging rickshaw bells, colourful turbans of different sizes and fluttering beautifully embroidered veils/dupattas. Being a spiritual hub of the Sikhs and a major tourism spot, religious paraphernalia peeked from everywhere and daggers, swords, colourful photos of the Sikh leader Guru Nanak, delicate embroidered slippers (Punjabi jutis), the “flower making” floral embroidery of Phulkari, fake “antiques” etc graced every inch of commercial Amritsar. Huge billboards advertising just about everything under the sign covered most of Amritsar’s real estate space and the city’s old generation stared at the chaos with ghostly eyes from their sagging wooden labyrinthine porches. Smell of “varis”, spices, jalebis (an Indian sweet snack consisting of gooey, fried golden spirals), chole-bature (chickpea and small puffy fried bread) filled the city air and mingled seamlessly with smoke, dust and pollution. Cows roamed freely like bullies and pedestrians, along with stray dogs streamed in and out of the photogenic chaos like ribbons.
The fortified old city was a visual architectural delight and its network of narrow capillary of lanes were crammed with ornamental wooden scroll work, glimpses of stunning Mughal style intricacy, European floral wreaths and cherubs and a sense of being lost in time. The Circular Road contained 18 fortified gateways out of which only Lohgarh Gate remained original and just across the railway tracks, British laid spacious, leafy suburbs gleamed. Neat army cantonment barracks stood stoically on the north western limits of the city and it dawned upon me with a shock that Lahore, the 2nd largest city of Pakistan was just 50 kilometers away. The city lay on Sher Shah Suri’s (a pre Mughal ruler of India hailing from Afghan roots) dream project, G.T. Road (Grand Trunk Road which connects Peshawar, Pakistan to Sonargaon, Bangladesh via the Indian subcontinent) and was popularly used as a jumping off base by foreign travelers wishing to cross over to Pakistan from India through the volatile Wagah Border. This close proximity lead to another one of Amritsar’s important tourist attraction and that was the India-Pakistan border closing ceremony.
Performed religiously on a daily basis, the Wagah border ceremony involved really tall soldiers in smart, massive head gears of both the countries, raise and lower their respective national flags amidst clicking military steps, mutual respectful gestures and stiff, robot like polite courtesies. Strangely in spite of being cruelly butchered out of a single nation by a foreign culture, hostility between India and Pakistan was very much tangible in Amritsar and with so much of bloodletting, the residents of the city found it hard to forget the past. Rocked by a series of appalling, inhuman massacres (Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, Partition of 1947, Operation Blue Star apart from foreign invasions), Amritsar had experienced some of the worst blood sheds in the entire subcontinent. Signs of its violent past could be experienced just about nearly everywhere in the old city and our visit to the Jallianwala Bagh was downright gut wrenching.
I am not a very big history fan and shamefully, not even very well versed with my own country’s past. Historical tit bits usually slip over my memory like water on a duck’s back and I always carried a fuzzy notion of India’s entire chart of freedom struggle. Jallianwala Bagh would have been given amiss by selfish me, if I had not been accompanied by my host, who was hell bent on visiting it and till today, I am grateful to him for the painful reality check. Just about 100 meters away from the iconic Golden Temple, a narrow lane between tall buildings lead to the infamous Jallianwala Bagh (Garden), which nestled in its bosom, the site of one of India’s most bloodiest colonial memories and most cruel atrocity committed by the British rulers.
It was on a Sikh holiday of Baisakhi on April 13th, 1919, that Mahatma Gandhi had called for a huge public meeting at the park. This meeting was to protest against the Rowlatt Act, which enabled the British to imprison without trial, any Indian suspected of rebelling. It had been a bright, spring morning when a festive crowd had pooled into the Jallianwala Bagh ground, which was hemmed by brick buildings from nearly all sides with only a handful of narrow access alleys. When patriotic spirit had rumbled through the demonstrators and before any speaker could even address the crowd, a platoon of infantry lead by the British General R.E.H Dyer, without any warning, had opened fire at the unarmed crowd from their position at the main exit. Panic had broken through the demonstrators and by the time the firing was over, hundreds of unarmed citizens had lain dead in a matter of just 10-15 minutes. The crowd had included men, women, children and elderly and most of them had been shot in the back while clambering over the walls to escape. Many had perished for diving for cover into a well that stood in the middle of the garden and bullets and stampede had claimed more than 2000 lives.
Although this act proved to be the final nail in the coffin of the British Raj and eventually lead to India’s independence, but even now, Jallianwala Bagh drips with bloody tears. Today a pleasant little leafy park sits at the site, but the 1st hand accounts, contemporary pictures and newspaper reports of the horrific April 13, 1919 event displayed at the Jallianwala Bagh’s martyr’s gallery, rewind the painful incident, way too realistically. The death well still remains, completely preserved with ingrained bullet holes, along with many other heart wrenching reminders and the surrounding brick houses, also witnesses of the gory bit of history, stand mute in pain.
Jallianwala Bagh had left me shaken to the core and never before had I felt more like an ingrate. India is known for complacency and it came as a shock to me, how, our generation, the “fast moving, globally aware young guns” of our country has selfishly taken our independence for granted. Anything received free is never really much cherished and it is sad, how in a matter of few decades, we have completely forgotten about the pain, suffering and blood shed of our forefathers. Incidentally, till today, despite multiple gestures of friendship and “let bygones be bygones” acts, the much talked about and anticipated “official” apology from Great Britain for the heinous Jallianwala Bagh act remains yet to be tendered.
TRAVEL TIP – Food lovers can check out the deliciously wonderful series of posts on Amritsar’s culinary gems on Cooking with Gaurav at http://cookingwithgaurav.blogspot.in/2012/04/in-search-of-good-food-visit-to.html
RESPONSIBLE TRAVELING-BECAUSE I CARE
Some photos have been taken from the internet.
The next morning
We left early
For the holy city of Amritsar
Charmingly atmospheric
The border town
Was dripping with
Colours
Bargains
And history
I loved the old city’s
Photogenic chaos
Lively markets
And fierce pride
Despite its grandeur
Pain loomed
Through its historical lanes
And every brick was blood soaked
It was not easy for conscience
To rest in careless peace
With reminders of cruel recent history
Bearing down at every step
Some self reflection was needed
And I longed for peace
By Amritsar’s “Lake of Elixir”