I have been to Amritsar before it takes almost 8-9 hours from Delhi in train. The route is quite pleasant with scenes of fertile land and boisterous people in stations. Traveling in train is always great fun provided you have the reservation and climate is agreeable, this March I was passing through MP and AP and the compartment had become a furnace something you associate with months of April and May, the dreaded Indian summer. Traveling in train though always is an experience, these interesting lines by Bill Aitken (in ‘Travels by a Lesser Line’) I came across sometime back that I found very funny:
My love for the train no doubt stems from an infantile urge to thrash phallic steel stallions into tunneled yonis as the earth heaves in Hemmingway approval. Frankly, while I have great regard for both Freud and Hemmingway, I fear they overrate the size of my piston. In short my love for panting monsters falls far short of obsession. The railway is the ground of one’s journeying but my joy in motion is by no means restricted to the gentle sway of one’s carriage. The train is but one convenient vehicle on the voyage to unravel life’s meaning or in this instance the geographical quest of unlimited access. The bauls, I am told, ride the trains of West Bengal and sing of life as a train journey. I think it was Jung who interpreted the station master as guru, while my own guru interprets the presence of railway guard in dreams as ‘God’. I ride railways because they give pleasure and good value, especially in India.
My co-passenger was an elderly Sardarji (Sikh for uninitiated), who was coming all the way from Mumbai. His hotel business is suffering because of lack of parking space he says. Now this is something I never thought about before! At lunch time he opened his bag and invited me to share “aoji roti khao”, this is typical of the place here. The sharing of food is considered most natural of acts (as mentioned earlier this has its roots in Langar or community eating). Other places the co-passengers would enquire whether you not having food “aap khana nahi kha rahe hai?” (You not having food?) or the most commonly asked “khana khyenge?” (like to have food?), this just a formality. The sikh gentleman though had more than formal intentions he kept insisting for few minutes and also added that he had enough food for two. Almost a decade back I had shared Kakhras with Gujaratis (when they travel they really travel!!) but things has changed drastically in last few years, sharing food now is inviting trouble -many incidents of laced intoxicants and stealing has been reported, one has to be vigilant. These incidents don’t affect me though since I travel very light and I don’t really have any valuable further I avoid eating much while traveling restricting to fruits or something very light.
Sharing food is something I associate with since my childhood. In middle class families when something special is cooked they tend to pass it to the neighbors (aaj hamare ghar meh ye khas bana hai !), many times we had sardarjis as neighbors that is how I first tasted Kadi!. Another tradition is that the utensil is never returned empty, it is considered very wrong. So if nothing else a cup of sugar will do! As I moved into richer societies these were replaced by weekend parties and so on, somewhere the old world charm of sharing special delicacy made with lot of care by not very rich family, got lost in the Westernized surroundings. Later as I got on with my life in places like Delhi I found that interacting with neighbors can really get into trouble, particularly when it is a family, your well meaning intentions can backfire seriously. It is better to restrict interactions; I guess that is how life works in big cities.
Since Amritsar is a border city, and out of the way from the Jammu-Delhi main route most trains terminate at this station. I took a room in a decent looking hotel nearby, the cause of initial concern was door sized sliding ventilator in the toilet!!. Dinner at the dabha was quite tasty there though was some skirmish as one fellow insisted on drinking liquor. The pious looking elderly Sardarji who probably ran the place had no words of piety, he told him in no mean terms that if he tried both his legs will be broken (dono tange tod doonga).
Amritsar is a city with long history, the narrow crisscrossing alleys, old shops and houses is like stepping into different era, it remi
nded me of chandni chowk (in Delhi) also a bit of Varanasi in certain places in its chaos. After paying my obeisance at Harmandir Sahibji (Golden Temple- I spend few hours here more about it sometime later) I walked around the city, it was a very agreeable sunny day. Ideally curd should be avoided in the morning that too balmy early spring but I gave caution a go and settled for one huge glass of lassi for breakfast and flipped through Punjab Kesari Newspaper (hindi) that was kept on the table. The main news included bomb blast in Lahore, which probably was around 20-30Kms from where I was located; the shopkeeper who had a cheerful demeanor knotted his brows to express some concern.
The entrance to the place looked innocuous for the most heinous acts committed by the colonial British. Jallianwala Bagh massacre i
s one the defining moment of India’s freedom struggle. The year was 1919, date April 13, New Year day-Bisakhi, British Indian Army commanded by Gen. Dyer opened fire on thousands of unarmed people who had gathered here to protest against the arrest of Satya Pal and Saifudin Kitchlew, two popular leaders of the region. Since this Park had very narrow entrance, foot soldiers were used. As the park was surrounded by buildings, with no exit, people desperately tried to climb the walls of the park. Many jumped into a well inside the compound to escape from the bullets. A plaque in the monument says that 120 bodies were taken out of the well. Official figures put the dead at around 400, hundreds were maimed. If bloggers have seen Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi they will recall this poignant scene.
I had my lunch at Bharawan da Dabha, it is quite a popular place for vegetarian food (ask for Rotis without butter, people in here are seriously into ghee). I liked the food in particular the black daal (lentil). Amritsari Machchi (fish fry) is pretty famous in this region, the frying is done in two stages ending with a pinch of tangy salt with twist of lemon. An ability to identify more than ten varieties of fish in its taste and texture, as also having tried fish delicacies from different part of the country, Amritsari Machchi somehow did not impress me much.
