few days ago I went to spend the weekend at Amritsar . The basic objectives were twofold: to go and wash the dishes in the kitchens of the Golden Temple (yes, I sometimes still are like that ...) and go see for yourself how you hold the Guru Granth Sahib , ie the holy book of Sikhs. The first goal was easy to reach. Simply obtain the indispensable cloth (with more or less questionable esthetics), go to the table of the temple (the Langar), where they feed at all Sikh pilgrims and look a bit 'round. The dish room is actually an area covered by roof, with a lot of basins and a terrifying noise of beaten metal, and there I joined the volunteers. Three quarters of an hour engaged to clean the three objects of steel that are delivered to each pilgrim at the entrance: a bowl (for water), a tray with four compartments (for the stuff to eat) and a spoon. It was worth it - because, as it turns to the other side, the cooks are volunteers really good.
The second goal proved more complex, because the Guru Granth Sahib during the day was held at the Golden Temple, in the midst of the "lake of ambrosia" which occupies a good part of the sacred area. The lines to get there, depending on the time, are very long ... and so I decided to abandon the first attempt and go there at night.
In the meantime, I went to see the main attraction of non-Sikhs in Amritsar: the evening closing ceremony of the border between India and Pakistan , thirty kilometers from the city. There, separated by high gates, two large amphitheaters, one on each side of the border, home to the Indians and Pakistanis are to encourage their troops. An hour of folk songs, dances (including waka waka) and screams Hindustan zindavan one hand, as part of an hour, with the variant Pakistan zindavan . Then there is a kind of grotesque parade, in which the soldiers of both sides are running exactly the same movements, the flag drops and the gates are closed until the next day.
So far so good, indeed, very funny. In return, however, the tour group to which I had queued stopped to see one thing that pushed far beyond the ceremonious: a modern Hindu temple of Mata Mandir. There, in a sort of cross between the sacred and the building of the carnival sideshow, you follow a set course between Krishna and neon-lit tunnel with water on earth, until you reach a series of ceremonies shouted.
For a number of reasons, I was not in the mood for this sort of thing (well, I do not think they ever in the mood). I left annoyed. Even more annoyed because, going back to the Golden Temple, the delays of the day I left several jobs to do: finish review the entry test of the Faculty of Humanities, for example. Attend to the work, or watch the procession bearing the Guru Granth Sahib in the building that houses the night?
But the spectacle of the Golden Temple at night is fantastic - and the queues are shorter. So in the end I managed to enter at a reasonable hour in the first room, where the book is kept under a veil and a group of musicians playing tabla and harmonium to accompany the uninterrupted reading of the text.
OK, nothing too impressive ... but then I went upstairs. And there, in a carpeted room, there was another ritual: a Sikh turban in orange reading public in another copy of the book, one page after another, barely moving his lips. And around, an audience of devotees, seated on the floor, read them too, by a series of paperback books. And upstairs, almost the same scene.
Well, there are many ways to worship a book ... but keep it under a cloth, after all, is not that much. adore reading, however, is another matter entirely ... I left so happy and satisfied that I preferred to avoid disappointment, skip directly to the computer to hunt for the procession and review questions.
Wikipedia tells me then that the Guru Grant Sahib is worshiped as a text, not as a physical object, and then each copy is considered sacred as any other, and that the Indian law considers this book "legal person" and that writing Gurmukhi was invented specifically for writing it, and that the book is considered the last and eternal guru of Sikhs, and that when the book is printed, any paper botched be cremated with a sacred rite, and that ...
In short, we still have to explain why I wanted to go to Amritsar?
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