Punjab

You hear the Golden Temple before you see it, the Gurbani kirtan broadcast gently across the surrounding streets, so that the last five minutes of any approach are already inside the shrine. Then the gateway, the marble parikrama, and the thing itself: Harmandir Sahib, sheeted in gold, standing in the middle of the Amrit Sarovar, the pool of nectar that named the city, joined to the shore by one causeway and to everything else by four doors, one in each direction, built open on the instruction of the Gurus to say in architecture what the faith says in scripture: every direction, every caste, every faith, every person, enter. I arrived in the late afternoon, sat on the cool marble edge of the pool as the gold began its evening performance on the water, and stayed through the night ceremony, when the Guru Granth Sahib, the scripture that is itself the eternal Guru, is carried in a golden palki to its rest chamber on the shoulders of volunteers, petals falling, the crowd pressing gently forward for a turn under the weight. A shrine whose central nightly ritual is putting a book to bed: I had seen gods tucked in at Madurai; here it was the word itself.