The Day The Earth Turned Orange

"Will there be many people in Anandpur Sahib this weekend?" A asks.
"A., there will be people in Anandpur Sahib like there is water in the sea."

People flock to Adanpur Sahib, the second holiest temple in the Sikh religion, for the Holi Festival. The roads to this pilgrimage cite are as overwhelmed as the vehicles that grace them: caravans of trucks, tractor, and car interrupted by honking buses whose passengers cling from doors, windows, and rooftops.

The weather has changed (once again) and I can feel the last glimpses of spring loosening their grip to summer's unwavering heat. While this means that there are severe days to come, it meant that we rode in rooftop perfection: sundrops and warming air mix with honking horns and voices. For me, this is freedom. One sunlit rooftop bus-ride would have been more enough to soothe the itching, stirring feeling that has crept into my bones this past week. But, perhaps as fate would deem it, the aching and wandering heart of my heart were no match for a Saturday sunny pilgrimage.

And rooftop bus-driven freedom was just the weekend's warm-up.

As M. explains to me, orange is one of Sikhism's colors. This explains why my green world has been displaced. Orange erupts everywhere: flags and turbans, car decorations and flowing scarves. The further we drive the deeper these colors are transformed until our surroundings are but specks in this earth of orange.

And then the food phenomenon occurs. To our left, to our right, on every side and in every direction are loud speakers and make-shift temples set for meals. As is the custom here, long mats are laid out, steel plates placed at feet, and enormous buckets of dal follow handfuls of chapati. This delights me everywhere, always. Every person, of every status, sits on the ground and dines together, indulging in dal-soaked chapatis as fingertips meet lips. A perk, if you will, of attending temple.

But now these open dining rooms are everywhere. Public restaurants created by whoever (everyone, it seems) with loud speakers announcing the menu. Teenagers and young men affiliated with these different "restaurants" fling themselves in front of cars, climb on the front of buses, stand erect in front of approaching motorbikes in efforts to get anyone, everyone, to join in the feast. FOR ME THIS IS HEAVEN. People are physically forcing us to eat their delicious, savory food. I am riding on a bus roof through Punjab at March's door, the world is bursting with flavor, and every 300 feet there is another dining opportunity. Our bus stops for lunch, and then two minutes after we begin again we stop for chai (cups of which are lifted to our rooftop seats). It then spent the next hour and a half dodging stands of food and fry and juice.

The day of orange continued just as it had begun: surprising, delightful perfection. Anandpur Sahib was overflowing with people, with bare feet caked in dirt traipsing to the temple's doors, the sound of prayers mixing with the beating ribbons in the breeze. A harmony of spring's abrupt arrival and end. Afternoon faded to dusk, and evening's arrival was greeted by diner under the full moon and the temple's glowing lights, colors dangling from the white peaks as a backdrop to a outside meal with silent strangers.

I fell asleep on a mat in a building hosting pilgrims from the guduwara nearby our home, awakened later in the night to discover that I was surrounded by sleeping Punjabi women, smiled for the small girl curled into A.'s side, and easily returned to delighted slumber.