Earthquakes And Massacres

All India has been gripped by the news of the tragic earthquake in Pakistan, or PAK (Pakistan Administered Kashmir), as the worst effected area is referred to here. Aside from the basic human tragedy in the event, one suspects that India's territorial claim to the area and people most effected lends the event some added piquancy. There has been much trumpeting of improving relations between the two nuclear powers in recent weeks and it would be nice to think that a natural disaster of this magnitude that effects both neighbours might provide an unlooked for opportunity to build important bridges.

I felt the earthquake while in bed in Shimla, initially mistaking the shaking of my room for vigorous shagging activity in the bedroom next door. It last just a few moments and I didn't feel the subsequent aftershocks. I'm now in Amritsar which has been more directly effected, though there is no discernable sign of damage to buildings as you roam the town and life is very much proceeding as normal in the streets.

It's rather poignant coming to Amritsar straight from Shimla. The old British summer capital is still redolent of the British Raj in its heyday, offering a vision in stone and wood of the civilising influences of a supposedly liberal Empire. Here in Amritsar you get the flip side of the British imperial hand. Walking through a peaceful shaded garden I watched countless ordinary Indians paying homage to the martyrs of one of the worst atrocities on the long road to independence. Here, in 1919, a pumped up British colonel ordered his troops to open fire on a gathering of 20,000 unarmed civilians who were protesting about a draconian new powers of arrest bill which had been introduced in the aftermath of World War One. Unable to escape because the troops had blocked the only exit, over 2,000 protesters where killed and wounded in a hail of gunfire that lasted barely ten minutes. Incredibly, the officer in charge was exonerated by the ruling authorities, but news of the event lit a torch for freedom in India which was not to be extinguished until independence was achieved almost thirty years later.

Of course, the main reason to come to Amritsar is to visit the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs. It is an astonishingly beautiful sight. The golden roofed temple is contructed of translucent white marble, inlaid with the most delicate images and patterns done in enamel and coloured stone. The temple sits isolated in its own holy lake, which in turn is entirely surrounded by an elegant sequence of structures also faced in white marble. Alongside the Taj Mahal, this for me is the most beautiful place I have visited in India. The difference is that unlike the Taj the Golden Temple is a living place, a veritable hive of activity as Sikh pilgrims attired in brightly coloured turbans and saris perform their prayers and ablutions.