India, 2009
The girl at the bank grew excited. I’d gone there in advance of my trip to exchange dollars for rupees. They couldn’t do this, but I forgot all about it as soon as her eyes lit.
“My family is from Punjab,” she said, her face glowing. “You have to go—the Golden Temple. I went last summer. It’s… it’s beautiful. The music, the people—everything. Promise me?”
She even wrote its name on a receipt so I wouldn’t forget.
I emailed my brother that evening with a simple request: “When I come to visit next week, I want to go to the Golden Temple.”
~
I awoke in the soft light of morning, feeling the gentle sway of the tracks beneath my cot. The rhythm slowed—we were nearing a station. I had set no alarm and heard no announcement, but I knew we’d arrived.
“Wake up,” I said to my brother. “Amritsar.”
A bus to the Golden Temple was already idling outside. We climbed aboard and found seats near the back. The bus filled, and so did the air—first with one voice, then many. Passengers began chanting. I watched from my seat, noticing their long black hair, their metal bracelets. Their mouths moved in unison—quite individually, but loud together—filling the bus with the rise and fall of lyrical prayer.
One of the singers looked at me.
~
At the Golden Temple, I stayed on the bus longer than needed, letting the pilgrims exit first and create some space. Then I rejoined my brother and stepped into the midday sun.
The air smelled faintly of incense, water, and stone. A trough of water flowed across the entrance. I removed my shoes and stepped through it, letting the current carry away the filth of the city and the hardship of my journey. Then I picked a scrap of golden cloth from a tote nearby and hesitantly tied it over my head. I looked at my brother—his own hair now covered with a frayed scrap of gray fabric—and gave him an awkward smile. Now, physically prepared, I took my first step on the sanctified ground.
The bare marble felt cool and slick under my bare feet, and the sun did not feel so harsh here. Live music and chanted scriptures filled the air, emanating from the temple, where they kept the religion’s sacred texts by day. Men and children bathed in the surrounding pools, dipping themselves among schools of fish.
A priest intercepted us.
“Have you heard of Baba Singh?” He said. Then he told me a story of a saint decapitated in battle, who picked his head off the ground, held it to his shoulders, and fought his way to this very temple that he might die a hero.
I shook my head to dismiss his nonsense and headed right to the sanctum.
It rested on a platform in the middle of a wide, man-made pool, its gilded walls and domes reflecting across the water. Over the centuries, patrons had added more than a thousand pounds of gold leaf, which gave the shrine its name and radiance.
As we exited the sanctum, priests gave me a scoop of lentil pudding with their bare hands. It was open to all people, regardless of caste or creed—me included—although I did not see it that way then. I held the pudding awkwardly for several minutes, and, to my brother’s distress, tossed it over the railing to the fish.
~
I returned by myself, after dinner that night, to photograph the temple lit up and shining in the darkness.
To my surprise, I found it more crowded at night than during the day. Busier, but softer. The music had ended at sundown, and although the temple itself could not be entered, worshipers still gathered here. They bathed in the pools, they knelt in prayer in the alcoves.
I’d hardly noticed originally, but white palaces encircle the ground. Within these support buildings, the Golden Temple held the largest free kitchen in the world, feeding tens of thousands daily. Now, those hungry pilgrims, drawn here by faith, had made cots from blankets to sleep on this holy ground.
There were so many.