Holy Spirit

What once was still is, and yet, so much has changed in the city of Amritsar. The streets, the malls, the slight swank and the European swagger – yet scratch the surface and history unfolds.

- Satarupa Paul

Had Leo Tolstoy been born in India, he might have based the title of his magnum opus, War and Peace, on Amritsar. This is a city of contradictions, where the painful memories of a violent past coexist with an older, stronger emotion – that of an unshakeable belief in a higher power, and the peace and calm that faith often brings. This is a city whose people have experienced brutality, oppression and injustice, yet who have determinedly, devotedly, selflessly kept on serving the community. This is a city that has learnt to hold on to its past, to never forget, and yet it has moved on and become the better for it.

Look close, and you’ll find the contradictions in the very fabric of Amritsar. The relatively newer areas are slick, dotted with well-maintained bungalows and wide, tree-lined avenues; malls, multiplexes, pubs and clubs take care of the needs and demands of a modern city. The old town, on the other hand, the one that has lived through it all, is crooked and battered – narrow, dusty roads bordered by rows of old two-storey houses and hundreds-of-years-old shops whose fares and dealings seem to be from another time.

But the Amritsar of old is disappearing too, as if to mask the past beneath a coat of synthetic beauty and inescapable modernity. And nowhere is this change more prominent than in the recently unveiled Heritage Street – or what was once the familiar, chaotic trail that led from the historic Town Hall to the most famous landmark of the city, the Golden Temple.