Golden Temple of Amritsar
When you see a cockroach sniffing around on your dining table, what would you expect the common reaction to be? Swat the living daylights out of the poor fella or flatten it so bad it would never get up again?
On the night train from Doon to Amritsar about a month ago, I had an encounter with such a creature and left me with good sobering thoughts. (Doon or correctly Dehra Dun is a typical dusty Indian city in the northwest on the foothills of the Himalayas. The Austrian mountaineer Heinreich Farrer was once held here as a POW of the British. But I have digressed)
Coming back to our cockcroach story, the friendly train crew chatted us up and in the midst of our conversation this cockroach decided to join the dinner as well. A rather young specimen, this one and certainly not knowing the danger of encroaching on a human having his dinner.
The train man spotted him and I half expected him to deliver the fatal stroke. To my surprise, he didn’t but instead gently brushed him off. The clever cockcroach scooted off and wisely did not make a reappearance for the rest of the evening.
What a respect for life! What a great way to start the trip to the holy (some consider as the holiest) city of Amritsar.
I hope to write a little about Amritsar in coming posts and also share a few tips at the same time.
