The Golden Temple

Non-Fiction
Location – Nepal/ India
Written - May 2008
[More travel writing….]

I first decided to go to the Golden Temple on the advice of a lunatic. I met him in a Nepalese bar, the sort of bar with deep lounge chairs and the sweet smell of charras hanging thickly in the air. His name was Brian. I overheard part of his conversation. He proclaimed, in the broad Aussie accent that I hear so rarely these days, “I've been to all the big, polluted Indian cities, and plenty of the dead-end towns, but in my opinion, the absolute worst of the worst, the most unpleasant bloody Indian town of the lot, is a place called Gorakhpur.”

I catch his eye and say, “sorry to interrupt there mate, but I entirely, whole-heartedly agree with you.” He turns and gives me the smile of a man who isn't used to people agreeing with him. He introduces himself as Brian, and welcomes us to the conversation. “I'm crazy,” he says, “I have P.T.S.D - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I was in the Vietnam War. The doctors have me on all sorts of bloody anti-depressants.”

He looks like a politician. It’s the shirt and tie, and those jowls that come with age, and stress. He was a John Howard supporter, he remains a blue-blood conservative. When we tell him of our time in the Kimberley, he is not shy in expressing offensive views about the Aboriginal people. He does most of the talking, pausing only to sip at his glass of red wine. “I don't usually drink,” he says. “After half a glass of wine I'm not legally allowed to drive. With all the tablets I'm on. I could run a truck right through the side of a building.”

I like him. He's abrasively honest. I very foolishly ask Brian if he can watch movies about the Vietnam War, or if it's too painful for him. He doesn't answer, his face crumples into tears. He cries for five minutes without saying anything. Then, he tells us he was a medic in the war, and he nursed dying friends whilst under fire. He says to this day he can't go anywhere where there's mosquitoes, for the sound of them - and the smell of mosquito repellent - takes him right back there. I'm struck by the tremendous weight about him. He's a man so weighted by the past, and by his memories, that his face literally sags under the load. In some ways, he reminds me of a certain Aunt I have. And, like my Aunt, he's as tragic as he is utterly hilarious. The secret to comedy is telling the truth.

He tells ocker tales of his life in Pokhara that have us crying with laughter. The thing is - he doesn't intend for them to be funny. With a deadpan face he tells us of a night where he took too many painkillers. His supply ran out, and he went for a walk to the ATM so that he could buy more. His card ended up stuck in the ATM machine. In a fit of rage he began striking and shaking the living shit out of the ATM, in a fruitless attempt to retrieve his card. At that point the Nepalese police showed up. They couldn't speak a word of English, or understand his frantic explanations, so they threw him in the cooler for the night until the painkillers wore off and he went home to feed his dog. He tells his tales of everyday insanity in the same tone that someone else would use to talk about the weather.

Before he left to go home, he told us about a nearby restaurant that serves the best food in Pokhara. He raved about it - “you just have to try this food, best food in Pokhara!” he said. The next day I bump into him down the street, and asked how he's going. He told me he ate a late dinner at the restaurant he'd been raving about, and that today he has what he calls “explosive diarrhea.” With a straight face he says, “don't go there mate, the food is bloody terrible.” I nod, acknowledging the gravity of the statement. I invite him to have a beer with us later on, he says he can't, he needs to stay close to a Western-style toilet. But before he goes I say to him, “so Brian, if Gorakhpur is the worst place in India, what's your favorite place?” He seems pleasantly surprised by the question. “Amritsar,” he tells me, with a slow nod that smiles at the memory. “The Golden Temple.” I file the name away in my memory. I'll go there.

After almost five months on the road I've learned how to find the trail, even when it is obscured by grass. Amy and I make a long, overland journey west, through Nepal. We travel through the lowlands. We return to India near Rishikesh, where Amy wants to go. Rishikesh was made famous by the Beatles' visit in the 60's, they stayed at the Maharishi's ashram before growing disillusioned with him and leaving in disgust. Perhaps not grasping the implicit message in this tale, the herd of Western hippies have flocked there in droves ever since.

We take a long walk along the Ganges, which runs through Rishikesh. Cows mingle with the Indians. The cows have this distinct air of serenity amidst the chaos. They seem to have a clear destination in mind, which they are entirely unhurried about reaching. Or perhaps they are peaceful because they have no destination in mind at all. They plod with a dignity which is absent in the jostling pedestrians and the mad, honking traffic. Even the largest, most intimidating bull will simply amble along its way. You can reach out to place a loving hand on their forehead as they pass. Amy finds a stall selling sliced cucumbers and begins feeding them to the cows. They gratefully accept the gift, pulling it into their mouths with long tongues.

The other herd in Rishikesh dress in Rastafarian beanies, anklets, sandals, budding facial hair, dreadlocks, billowing pants, psychedelic shirts and fixedly serene smiles. They're making the scene and living the hippie dream. We pass signs that advertise ‘crystal healings,’ ‘astrological gems,’ ‘healing with Reiki,’ and myriad styles of yoga. A million ways to be healed. Amy is a believer. I rib her, saying, “perhaps I should start up my own stall here, advertising: ‘Healing Through Shamanic Cow-Dragging.’ People will pay me a hundred rupees to be tied up and have a cow drag them through the streets of Rishikesh. I'll tell them it's to realign their ass-chakra. Could be a good little earner.”

As the days pass I grow increasingly frustrated. I speak of those who are on a frantic search for inner peace. I speak of the readiness with which people would seek out others, would seek out gurus, on their quest for an understanding of self. I speak of the gurus demanding big dollars to teach people how to be less materialistic. I speak of the earnest, poker-faced seriousness with which our brothers and sisters would seek to be more joyous in life. I speak of those who would grasp onto the idea of non-attachment. As I give vent to my frustration with Amy over a coffee and a cigarette, overlooking the Ganges, I know I'm being too harsh, and I know that I'm generalizing. I know it's easier for me to do this when I look on from afar and ardently insist upon avoiding the whole scene. But my antennae for bullshit just twitch too violently when I contemplate becoming immersed in it. Sometimes in my imagination I see the Westerners in Rishikesh as playing an adult version of ‘dress-ups.’ You know, dress-up as a monk, dress-up as a yogi, dress-up as a sadhu. It all seems to me, as Holden Caulfield would say, phony.

I see a sea of self-improvement. I see people in real pain, wearing a Technicolor grimace. And I can't be a part of it. Some of the most miserable people I know are those who are obsessed with the idea of improving themselves. Their bookshelves are filled with books on ‘self-help.’ I feel that if you spend all your time trying to 'improve' yourself, ruminating on your flaws and analyzing your pain, obscuring your mind - that precious lens to the world - with endless thoughts of what is 'wrong' with you, and thus which needs to be 'improved,' then it'd be little wonder that you'd end up miserable. Nuts to that, let it slide. Go fishing. Tend the garden. Go for a walk in the mountains.

I leave Rishikesh. Amy wants to stay and stay on an ashram. I catch a train alone, to Amritsar. On the train I take my seat next to a man and a teenaged boy. I talk to the man, his name is Ranjeet. The younger bloke is his nephew, who wears one of the head-wraps worn by Sikhs. They're visiting family in Ludhiana. The conversation plods along at the meandering pace of small-talk, and when this pace fades we sit without speaking. Then the man turns to me asks insistently, “have you had more than the one girlfriend in your life?” I tell him yes, I'm in my second relationship. He says, “so you have had your heart broken then also?” I reply that yes, I suppose you could say that. He shifts in his seat to face me more fully. He asks, “so do you have any advice for someone whose marriage is in the ending, any strategies to be reducing the stress?”

I can tell he's talking about himself. I'm momentarily startled by a man ten years my senior, and who I've just met, asking for my advice on ending his marriage. I know that divorce is exceedingly rare in India. Maybe it's different for Sikhs. Arranged Marriages (as opposed to ‘Love Marriages’) are the norm in India, and the taboos about breaking this arrangement are strong. For whatever criticisms one may make about the idea of arranged marriage, the arranged marriages do seem to work, and they protect the Indians from any experience of heartbreak in their lives. Perhaps this is why Indians retain such an endearingly romantic view of love, and a genuine open-heartedness, as opposed to what sometimes becomes a hardened attitude of cynicism in the West. The flip side of this is that, as I can see in Ranjeet, when a relationship does go bad, the Indians are babies in the wilderness. “I'm sorry to say this Ranjeet,” I say, “but I think that some degree of stress is inevitable.”

He offers his story without me probing for it. He says the problem is not really between him and his wife. They love each other, he says. The problem is with their parents. They've had a falling out, her parents don’t ‘trust’ him, he says, for reasons unknown to him, and they've been pressuring her to end the marriage. This pressure has been causing them both a tremendous amount of anguish. His wife said she wants two months to think it over. I smile, “this is not an uncommon tactic when it comes to women,” I say. He tells me, “but I have my pride. I tell her she can have fifteen days - if she cannot be making up her mind in fifteen days then she cannot be making up her mind in two months, I think so.” He’s booked two tickets to London, for a holiday they’d planned, but now he has them on hold. “If we are no more then I will go to London alone,” he says. I can see the raw sadness in his eyes. He wants to be with her. I say to him, “perhaps you cannot change what her parents think. Perhaps you cannot change what your wife thinks. But you will feel less stress if you can feel good about the way you’re handling things. Be the man she fell in love with in the first place.” Ranjeet fidgets in his seat. He’s doesn’t look reassured.

The train arrives in Ludhiana. Ranjeet and his nephew gather their bags. “Will you do one thing for me?” he says, before he leaves. “When you go to the Golden Temple, will you pray for my marriage?” I shake his hand. “I promise you I will do this, Ranjeet.”

Sometimes it’s funny how things work. I’ve never prayed before in my life. I left Rishikesh to get away from Westerners play-acting religious rituals. And now, rolling towards Amristar, I’m on a mission to fulfill a promise to pray at the holiest Sikh temple on earth.

I take off my shoes and step through the pool at the entrance of the Golden Temple, to wash my feet. Stepping through the pool makes me think of the childhood joy of splashing in puddles. A man puts a head-scarf around my head. Near the front entrance Sikhs kneel and touch their foreheads to the marble ground in devotion. The Golden temple itself is in the centre of a pool, brilliant in the midday sun. Dozens bathe in the holy pool, washing, or simply gazing around, submerged up to their necks. The causeway to the temple is packed solid with hundreds of devotees awaiting their moment inside the shrine; they fan themselves with bits of cardboard to stay cool in the Punjabi sun. I decide not to join their ranks. There's a shaded area where people sit before a group of four musicians. One plays a violin-like instrument, one plays the tabla, and two are singing. They sing the hymns of Guru Nanak. I cannot understand the words, but I don't need to. I take a seat. This is the place, with the music surrounding me, to say a prayer for Ranjeet's marriage.

Later that night I brave the streets to find a restaurant, and come to a place that's fancier than I'd usually eat at. I order the chicken, the ‘Chef’s Specialty’ no less. I enjoy the meal, it feels like a luxurious treat. Then, as I'm about to take my final bite, I see a single dead fly sitting on the plate.

Prayer doesn’t come naturally to me.

I return to the mountains. The Golden Temple may glitter, and beautifully so, but these mountains are, to me, the glow. On a mountain trail I see a Tibetan monk, walking ahead of me. I watch as he comes to a small bird that is sitting on the path. The monk treads lightly, gently, trying not to frighten the bird. The bird begins to hop, just in front of him. They walk together like this for several moments before the bird suddenly takes flight, away into the mist. The monk, without knowing that anyone sees him, looks up with pure joy, with the joy of a child.

I can breathe again, in this air of simplicity. In the Himalayas, where I remind myself that you don’t really need to go looking, in this life, for it is enough to simply see. We catch an overnight bus to Manali. I don’t sleep, I know we’re returning to the big mountains. The bus stops somewhere, in some town. I climb off the bus and sit on an old wooden bench beneath a bright, fluorescent light. I’m too tired to think, my mind is still. I see a thousand insects flying around the light. As they fly, and beat against the light, I see a wing fall off, and flutter to the ground. I look down to see those with one wing, and those with no wings, flapping about helplessly, flapping about in a field of a thousand fallen wings. Jesus, they’re killing themselves, I think, they’re dying in this frantic effort to touch the light. But then I see the fallen, the wingless, walk away on tiny legs. They're not ants, they’re something I've never seen before. And when their wings fall off they begin to walk. Even as they’re dying, they’re being born.

Some people will tell you the Himalayan Range was born of an upthrust, a slow and massive collision of tectonic plates. Don’t believe them. This only delivered the raw materials - just a particularly large mound of rock, and earth. The sculptor is giving birth to the Himalayas, as art, works using nothing but water. It is the rivers that shaped the Himalaya. Rivers are the fingers of God, sculpting, with the Himalaya made beautiful by what is stripped away.

I may never find my temple. I may never feel comfortable enough to pray. But in the Himalaya I feel okay about that. In the Himalaya I may delight not in looking, but in seeing, and my every footstep is a silent prayer.