and too only the soap...?

Welllllllllll after being really smug about missing the monsoon its finally descended upon us super stealthily. Everyone seems pretty happy about it though, our hostel owners were laughing, running and slipping over chasing each other... glad I think for some water to provide relief from the oppressive heat. I don't think anyone will be smiling though when the side sewers (India takes a very open view about s**t.. i.e no need to cover it up, be proud of your produce, so alot of it is open) start overflowing, so tomorrow we are escaping to the mountains and Dharamsala, the home of the Dala Lama... where its TWENTY FIVE DEGREES! 25 degrees seems like a far away and wonderful legend in Amritsar. Okay, anyways, overdue, my diary entry from Amritsar, wrote on the 6th before I started spewing from every oraface.

After a pretty turbulent night, I have managed to haul myself to breakfast. The aptly named "Tourist Guest House" where we are staying is lovely - the reception is a white bulding with balconies, pretty grand by Indian standards, with trees twisting their way up the side of the building, engulfing the brickwork and then exploding out in orange vivacious blossoms.

My room itself is extremely cute, a building outside on its own in the front yard, almost like my own little hermit's cottage. Needless to say though, it fuels my paranoias... at night my imagination runs wild with the endless possible ways in which scorpions/snakes/thieves could force entry. So i shut the glass windows and had an extremely sleepless night, never taking my eye off a harmless clump of dust, blowing in the breeze, which to my - 6 short sighted eyes looked scarily like a tarantula.

I am halfway through reading an amazing book called City of Djinns - Ed and Amelia are walking libraries on India. The book is set in Delhi where the writer talks alot about the effects that partition and the consequent migration had on the city. It seems strangely fitting here. Amritsar, and in fact the whole of the Punjab state, is tinged with a background of religious division and tragedy. A predominantly Sikh state, new Punjab stretches from the bottom of Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, bordering Pakistan on its left and to the bottom, Haryana - these being the 2 most controversial nieghbours.

Before partition, (the splitting of Pakistan into a Muslim state and India into a predominantly Hindu state- Hindustan) Lahore in Pakistan was the Punjabi capital.

Indeed, partition seems to be the most recurrent political theme in India. As I have been reading, it is since partition that Delhi has received a mass influx of Hindu migrants (6000 a day) and this has changed the political and physical landscape irreparrably, in some eyes.

Amritsar is home to 2 of the most important events in Indian history. The Golden Temple, a place of Sikh pilgrimage, but in 1984 home to a catalyst of events that shook India and created a religious clivage between Hindus and Sikhs. Some Punjabi Sikhs are separatists and wish to create their own indepependant Sikh nation, Khalistan. In 1984, Sikh speratists took control of the GT. Indira Gandhi, them prime minister, sent in tanks and the temple was completely desecrated. A year later she was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards, an act which caused massive Hindu riots and anti Sikh violence, resulting in displacement; and the death of nearly 3000 sikhs. Seeing the GT today, it is hard to imagine such a tragedy taking place there.

The GT IS amazing. Absolutely amazing. Its cliche'd but it really is hard to find words to describe the feeling when your feet tread down the hot marble steps and you catch the first glint of gold and the first ripple on the water.

It is overwhelming.

The reality of seeing such a famous and such a beautiful sight, something that is splashed over calendars and postcards and dubbed one of the sveen wonders of the world is hard to digest. usually when there is such suspense before, there is an anticlimax. But I felt none. People were bent over, foreheads on marble, lips in reverent prayer. I was so overwhelmed by the view, even I felt inspired to bend my head and pray to this beautiful building to the power of the belief that created it.

The atmosphere of the GT itself is quite relaxed in some ways. Little boys in topknots and older men in lungi, sporting turbans and majestic beards bathe on the steps, their khalsa swords glinting in the harsh midday sun. Women sit underneath the shady groves of marble pillars that ring the outside of the water tank, or they fervently hurry down the steps, holding up the ornately patterned botoms of their salwaar so that they can fill a bottle with the precious holy water that ripples around this beautiful place. All aound the continuous chant of the Guru Granth Sahib rises and falls with gentle cadence in the balmy summer air, teaching and reassuring.

In the centre of it all, emanating a soft gold light is the holiest of Sikh creations - the things that families save half their lives for; to fly around the world and kiss the front step, the cause of political wars amd instrumental in the death of Indira Gandhi and nearly 3000 Sikhs. However that is no the fault of the inner temple, it is simply tragic circumstance, humanity and the strangth of an unquenchable faith. It is easy to understand why. Holiness envelopes you like an old friend...

(more to write... but too tired, still a bit bleurgh and I'm sutre I've bored everyone to death with my rambling already!)