AMRITSAR. 17th-18th October

Friday (arriving at Amritsar). I've worked out from the sketch map in Lonely Planet that the 'Tourist Hotel' that I rang this morning is a short walk from the railway station. Unfortunately, the sketch maps in Lonely Planet are just that, and leave out a lot of (sometimes indispensible)detail. What looks like a straight road turns out to go through a couple of horrendously busy roundabouts, and a couple of policemen that I ask swear that they have never heard of the hotel.
A young middle-class sort of a guy with a motor-bike has, and offers to give me a lift there, but I don't quite see me and my 2 packs fitting onto the bike in safety. Finally arrive on foot, and make a mental note to get a rickshaw next time.

At the hotel I have a small but pleasant room on one side of a courtyard, well off the road, with the potential for quiet, as I've deliberately chosen the'Tourist' because it's away from the main part of town. After bathing, I front up at the dining room attached to the hotel. There are four people already in the dining-room, a fifties-something English couple, and two buxom English girls. The couple both seem very familiar. To look at, the guy is a carbon-copy of Bill Blakely (?), (the one who teaches remedial English in Dandenong Library), albeit with a strong Cockney accent. The woman bears an extremely strong resemblance to Catherine Cookson, a stage actress of the 'fifties whose path I'd crossed a couple of times in the thespian days of my youth. The two girls, Donna and Pooja, come from Deal (Kent) and Greenwich respectively, and are on some long trip through Asia and are going to work in Oz for a year at the end of it. Anyway, all four of them are good value, and we have a riotous five-way conversation for a couple of hours. Pooja has an English accent like the Indian girl in 'Bend It Like Beckham', but also has fluent Hindi, and does a sterling job of trying to cajoule the waiter into bringing me some substantial food, but it is a bit late for that, and I have to make do with a big bowl of veggie soup and bread, with three 4-cup pots of tea, as I'd only taken (quickly-perspirable) sips of water all day, so that I wouldn't have to use the 'loo on the train.

My mattress is of a somewhat lumpy composition, probably kapok, and for the first time since leaving Oz, I score a couple of bed-bug bites on my neck. I invariably spray my bed before getting in, as hotel rooms, even in Europe, often seem to be inhabited by what I think of as carpet mites, which can give you little pin-prick sort of bites, but are easily vanquished with a light spray. Now I go berserk with the spray-can, and I sleep in my summer-weight sleeping-bag, rather than under the opened-up bag - a strategy I worked out in Indo years ago - and no more bugs. The only minus is that the hotel is not that far from the railway line, and throughout the first part of the night there are occasional long mournful blasts from railway engines, which reminds me of every movie about the American deep-south I've ever seen, which nearly always, sooner or later, will feature that same sound in the middle of the night. I'm still hyper anyway from two hours of crossfire conversation, and lie there in between trains, trying to recall the words of numbers like 'John Henry', 'The Wreck of the Old '97', and '100 Miles' 'If you know the train I'm on, then you'll know that I am gone, you can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles....' etc, etc.

I've only allowed myself one day for Amritsar, so I get up at 9.30. At breakfast, Donna makes copious notes from my 'Lonely Planet India', to cover their activities for the next few days, as today they are getting a bus to Dharamsala. She and Pooja are horrified at the details of my train trip from Delhi (which I'd assumed was quite normal), and insist that next time I go air-con class (with windows!). After brekkie I walk to Jallianwala Bagh. Historical note : The Rowlett Act (1919) gave the British authorities emergency powers to imprison without trial Indians suspected of sedition. Hartals (one-day strikes) were organised in protest, and escalated into rioting and looting. In Amritsar, some Indian protesters were killed, and in reprisal three British bank managers were murdered. General Dyer was called upon to return order to the city. On 19th April 1919, some 20,000 Indians were holding a peaceful demonstration in Jallianwala Bagh, a large open space surrounded by high walls. Dyer arrived with 150 troops and and without warning they opened fire. Six minutes later, 400 people were dead, and 1500 wounded.
This action galvanised Indian nationalism. Gandhi responded with his programme of civil disobedience, announcing that 'co-operation in any shape or form with this satanic government is sinful'. I remember that we went into this incident in some detail when I was doing a semester on 'Gandhi's India', and I spent an hour or so looking around, at a martyr's memorial, an eternal flame, a spot where machine guns were set up, the large well into which many jumped to escape the bullets, and the walls at the far end of the area, pock-marked with bullet indentations.