Sunil Sethi: Return to Amritsar

The city's modern history of war and peace is underpinned by an indomitable Punjabi chutzpah. But its problems today are of rapid urbanisation without adequate planning

Squeezing an hour or two out from covering the election campaign in Amritsar last week, I paid a late-afternoon visit to the Golden Temple. Leaving the chaos and choking traffic of Katra Jaimal Singh, where culinary landmarks such as "Bharawan da Dhaba" and "Gyan Lassiwalla" now jostle for custom with Cafe Coffee Day and McDonald's, past Jallianwala Bagh, the pace became more orderly, the atmosphere calmer.

There is a convenient multi-storeyed car park and battery-operated vehicles for those unable to walk to the shrine. Extensive renovation is in progress to enlarge the forecourt of the Temple, a vast marble expanse with arcades and benches; aesthetically pleasing stonework jaalis are being raised to screen the area from the congested inner city.

Groups of Gujarati and Bengali visitors alongside foreign tourists - at least 100,000 people visit daily - gawped at the sight of gilded Harmandir Sahib rising from its tranquil Pool of Nectar. My driver, Kabul Singh, angry at wrong instructions (and directions) at my presumed foreknowledge in the city of my birth and childhood, suddenly grew protective. He turned out to be an ex-raagi (gurudwara singer) and sang most tunefully to the hymns of Guru Ram Das, in the melodious ragamala of the granth that wafted across the waters. An elderly Sikh devotee tapped me on my shoulder on the walkway to the inner sanctum. "Put that away safely," he said pointing to the wallet in my back trouser pocket. "I used to serve in the police here."

Growing up in Amritsar, a visit to the Golden Temple counted like attending the family chapel; many generations of my family worshipped here several times a week. Until the early 20th century, they occupied a house nearby in Gali Chajju Misr, Loon Mandi. My paternal grandmother was so loath to leave it, citing proximity to the Golden Temple during the worst massacres of 1947, that she refused to move to "Sunbeam", the bungalow her eldest son built in Civil Lines in 1923. She intoned a popular Punjabi proverb: "Jo sukh Chajju dey chhabarey/ Na Balkh naa Bukharey" (The peace poor Chajju finds in his rooftop dwelling/ Is found neither in Balkh nor in Bukhara).

At the peak of the Punjab insurgency in 1982-84, I returned here often to see the Temple complex turned into a bastion of militancy led by the fanatical preacher Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, surrounded by armed followers and spewing hatred against Hindus. The reign of terror that gripped the city finally exploded in Operation Blue Star in June 1984, when troops, tanks, artillery and helicopters were sent in by Indira Gandhi to purge the Temple and its precincts. I went back that August - "cleansing" operations were still in progress - to find a city shrouded in eerie silence, parts of its sacred centre reduced to rubble, pickets and sandbags at every corner. Thousands of Sikhs died in targeted killings - some 3,000 in Delhi alone - after Mrs Gandhi's assassination, but little communal violence was reported from Amritsar.

The city's modern history of war and peace is underpinned by an indomitable Punjabi chutzpah, a spirit of moving on. But its problems today are of rapid urbanisation without adequate planning and infrastructure. Its population has grown 60 per cent in a decade, but manufacturing and industry have declined; ritzy hotels cater to increased tourism, but the traffic is appalling. I can hardly spot the leafy lane off Mall Road where I grew up for the shopping malls that loom at its head. The elevated city metro - like the proposed Amritsar-Kolkata industrial corridor - is a distant project. Widespread unemployment is seen as the main reason behind rampant drug addiction in the hinterland.

That doesn't quench the Amritsari taste for good food and brazen opinions. No conversation here is complete without tips on where to find the best stuffed kulcha, mutton tikka, poori aloo or fish fry. Outside a college not far from the Golden Temple, I saw a cheeky poster that welcomed visitors to the "city of rang, bhang tey murgay di tang". A man hurrying past asked if I spoke English and handed me a leaflet that read: "You must vote but if you find none of the candidates good enough to vote... press NOTA... None of the above... Remember: if you do not come out to vote it means you voted for all."