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This house came to be built by a Dr. Blake who was in the East India Company service.
Anthony Bourdain explores Amritsar in Indian Punjab: street food, the Golden Temple's langar, Sikh culture, wrestling, and the tense India-Pakistan border at Wagah.
Key Takeaways
- Punjab's food culture and hospitality, especially the langar, reflect Sikh values of service and equality.
- The 1947 Partition left lasting human and political consequences, particularly for border communities.
- Sikh religious identity and martial tradition are closely intertwined with notions of protection and self-respect.
- Vegetarian cuisine in Punjab is vibrant and flavorful, challenging Western assumptions about vegetarian food.
What the video covers
- Bourdain opens at a family house in Punjab, recalling his grandfather's role in British India before Partition.
- He visits Amritsar, Punjab's largest city, known for its legendary street food and vegetarian dishes.
- Kesar Da Dhaba is highlighted as a famous roadside dhaba serving chickpeas, dal, and crispy bread.
- Sikh identity is explored, including turbans, the Golden Temple, and the faith's principles of equality and tolerance.
- The Golden Temple's langar, a free vegetarian meal served continuously for about 300 years by volunteers, is featured.
- The Sikh tradition of martial readiness, including the ceremonial sword, is discussed as a duty to protect self, others, and country.
- Pehlwani wrestling is presented as a disciplined way of life with strict rules on diet and conduct.
- The nightly Wagah border closing ceremony between Indian and Pakistani forces is shown as theatrical national rivalry.
- Farmers living between the border fence and Pakistan face restrictions on crops and working hours.
- The episode explains the hasty 1947 Partition drawn by Sir Cyril Radcliffe in two months, which divided religious communities.
Chapters
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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My grandfather came to be a nominated to the body called the Council of State, which used to be a part of British India.
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It was another time. One that few still remember.
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The India before partition.
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When these rooms, this house, was part of the seat of power.
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I had the privilege of being born in this house upstairs.
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This was the Maharaja's bed.
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I'm in his chambers at present.
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And it was the routine that we'd all parade up into my grandfather's room to wish him good morning.
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And then we'd all come down for breakfast.
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The walls tell a story.
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Many stories.
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There used to be a lot of animosity.
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They were two very divided classes in India.
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So there was a lot of tension between the ruled and the rulers.
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But that was a different time, you know.
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Now I think back and it's more like a fairy tale.
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Day one in northern India near the Pakistan border.
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This is Amritsar, the Indian Punjab's largest city.
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Population about a million.
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This is a part of India I've never seen.
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A place I've always been curious about.
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Home to some pretty legendary cuisine.
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In Amritsar they have a saying, the best food isn't cooked in people's homes.
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You find it on the streets.
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Punjabis are known for their adventurous spirit, as brave warriors who spread throughout the world bringing great food with them.
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In fact, much of the good stuff we refer to simply as Indian food comes from here.
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The Punjab of the early 20th century saw some of the most violent resistance to British rule.
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And when the British finally cashed out in 1947, they carved off a huge piece, what is now Pakistan.
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And it remains a potential flash point for conflict.
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But that's easy to forget when you first smell the food.
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Go.
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There we go.
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Kesar Da Dhaba.
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Dhaba meaning side of the road food stall.
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And there are, like, countless dhabas to choose from in this town.
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But this one is legendary.
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See Tony eat vegetables.
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Mhm.
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And like it.
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You eat around this part of the world, Punjab in particular, get used to eating a lot of vegetarian.
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Chickpeas, dal.
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And India is one of the few places on Earth where even for me, Mhm.
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that's not a burden.
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What's that?
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Oh, I'll take that.
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Yeah, right here, my good man.
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Mhm.
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That's good stuff.
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In the Punjab, meat or no meat, you're almost guaranteed a free-for-all of intense colors, flavors, and spices.
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Unlike some of the joyless vegetarian restaurants in my sad experience, vegetables here are actually spicy, all taste different, different textures, and served with extraordinarily good bread.
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It's good.
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But this multi-tiered, crispy on the outside, chewy in the middle, it's a whole different experience.
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If this was what vegetarianism meant in most of the places that practice it in the West, I'd be at least half as much less of a dick about the subject.
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Look, hippy, if you made bread this good, I might eat at your restaurant.
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Mhm.
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Around here, one of the first things you notice that's different from the rest of India, turbans.
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Everywhere.
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The symbol of self-respect, bravery, and spirituality for Sikh men.
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Amritsar is the home, the spiritual center, of the Sikh faith.
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The world's fifth largest and maybe the misunderstood religion.
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In the heart of Amritsar stands the majestic Golden Temple, the Sikh equivalent of the Vatican.
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Sikhs are fundamentally against any caste system, believers in religious tolerance, but they are just as fundamentally warlike when it comes to defending their principles and what they see as their territory.
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Welcome to Golden Temple.
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Thank you.
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Today is a Guru Purab, one of the most auspicious days of the Sikh calendar.
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Pilgrims from all over the world come to worship, walk the perimeter, and bathe in the holy pool.
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All are welcome, of any faith or caste, to remove their shoes, wash their feet, cover their heads, and take part in a simple meal.
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This is the langar.
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This is the langar.
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A free vegetarian meal served to many thousands of visitors from every walk of life, every day of the year.
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They serve 16 hours a day?
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16 hours a day.
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For how many years?
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Continuously?
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300 years?
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300 years.
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Everyone doing the cooking, the serving, the washing of thousands and thousands of metal plates and utensils are volunteers.
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The sound is extraordinary.
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We have a teaching that everyone should serve all three things: money, mind and body.
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Right.
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Should be served to other people free of cost, and that's what we do.
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Walking me through it all today.
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Don't want sing.
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A religion that's so concerned with tolerance, where does the grand Punjab military tradition come from, because it's a very, very powerful one.
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So powerful, people, so hard-working people.
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Every Sikh you see, if he's baptized, he wears a small sword.
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And our prophet, when we get baptized, he says you must protect yourself, you must protect others, and you must protect your country.
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So that makes us what we are.
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Morning.
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The smoke from countless burning fields covers Amritsar in a thick haze.
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The ancient art of Pehlwani evolved from Indian wrestling techniques that date back to the 5th century BC.
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Ready.
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Start.
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Training is rigid, as this is not just a sport, but a way of life.
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Wrestlers live and train together and have strict rules of diet and personal conduct.
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No smoking, no drinking, no contact with women.
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Here we go.
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I took high school wrestling actually so that I could get out of gym class.
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I was a dirty, dirty fighter.
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It is an all-too-natural segue between the aggressive posturing of opposing bodies of Pehlwani and this.
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The entire border between India and Pakistan has only one crossing here at Wagah.
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Every sunset, the border is officially closed with this bit of national theater.
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Wearing nearly duplicate uniforms, the Indian military and Pakistani Rangers are engaged in a game of theatrical contempt.
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Clearly, it's a popular show.
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So, where are we?
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We are right next to Pakistan.
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India and Pakistan were once one country.
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Ripped apart in one of the hastiest, ill-considered partitions imaginable.
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Beyond there, no more fence?
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No more fences.
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So, it's once you get past there.
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Yeah.
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You can go straight into Pakistan if you want.
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See, the problem is, the thing is, India is trying to stop people from coming in, the infiltrators, you know, drug dealers and terrorists.
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Uday is working on a documentary about the India-Pakistan border.
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Right.
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Wants to go into Pakistan.
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No one wants to go into Pakistan.
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No one in their right mind wants to go into Pakistan.
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Well, really?
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That's a fairly decisive statement.
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So, but they put up the fence, but the fence is on the Indian side.
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Yeah, it's uh, 150 m from the border.
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Right.
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So, beyond that fence, still Indian farmland.
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Yes.
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So, people who live over here can farm over there.
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Can farm over there.
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The Punjab is a fertile region in an otherwise very dry country.
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This is India's breadbasket.
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With over a billion people currently residing in India, every inch of fertile Punjabi soil has great value.
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These are people who owned land over there.
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Yes.
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Then they put the fence.
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Yes.
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Suddenly, your life became difficult.
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Exactly.
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They are restricted by many things.
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They can only grow some kind of crops, and they can't farm more than 8 hours in a day.
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How long does it take to get back and forth?
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The Border Security Force mans these gates.
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So, they have times, you know, when they can enter and come out.
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How much farther can we go before they start to get worried?
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Yeah, I think we shouldn't just go to that pole.
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When India and Pakistan were separated, the attempt was to try to draw a line across religious lines.
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Drained by the colossal task of fighting two World Wars, in 1947, Great Britain decided to end their nearly 200-year rule over India.
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In an attempt to prevent what the colonials saw as an inevitable civil war between Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs, the British commissioned Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a lawyer from Wales, to draw up a new border.
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He was given two months, you know.
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Two months to divide.
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Two months to divide the
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Create a n
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Nearly every village credited with having its own deity. Getting there, you might well have an opportunity to meet one of those deities.
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As you tear around narrow guardrail-free mountain roads overlooking terrifying drop-offs. I could do heights. I you know, I've done the jumping out of planes thing a number of times.
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But I feel it. You know, like looking over precipices like that one, I feel it in my knees.
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You know, like if my knees could vomit with terror, they would be. They'd be They'd be vomiting with terror right now.
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They should have little underwear stops on this road, you know, where you could like get a fresh pair every couple of miles. It's like, "Woohoo! That was scary." Overloaded buses, water trucks with worn brake pads, aggressive truck drivers can
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come wailing around the corner at any time. And they do, about every 2 minutes.
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Squeeze your cheeks tight and close your eyes. Oh, the enchantment of India. The remote locations of these isolated mountain villages has kept old traditions alive.
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Village fair serves an opportunity for families who live very far apart to get together, play games, eat, and partake in religious rites honoring local deities.
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Quite a ride getting here. Yeah. How do you enjoy that road? Uh white knuckles.
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Meet Hashim. He runs motorcycle tours through these parts. This is my It's the holy grail of motorcycling.
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We're traveling almost 1,000 km on a trip. It's so unbelievably beautiful and diverse. So, we got here vegetable curry?
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Yogurt-based curry, quite typical in these parts. Vegetables again? Surprisingly, not a problem. That's good.
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This is one of the few places in the world that I could eat vegetarian every day.
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Yeah. Still be happy. Mostly the people in this community are farmers farming? Farming agriculture.
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Yeah. What are they growing? Uh they're doing a lot of corn, potatoes peas. And wheat. People growing marijuana here?
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Yes, loads of Loads of it as an export product or for for personal use for uh Everything. Mixture of everything.
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So, you think you want to go check out the fair a little bit? Yeah, let's take a walk through town.
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See what's See what's going on. Predominantly an occasion for all these mountain villages to come together and socialize because Right.
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I mean, people are busy in their farms. They're not going to come and walk down and socialize with people.
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But this, you know, because it's autumn, everyone is done with all the agriculture. Right.
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Now they're just bedding down for winter. There's a lot of romance in the air.
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I've been to Mumbai, Kolkata, Sunderbans, Rajasthan, Kerala. This is a part of India that's different than any other part. Look, it's it's it's fascinating and beautiful.
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Oh yeah. Sweet. Wow, it's moving. Well I end of the road.
Topics:Anthony BourdainPunjabAmritsarGolden TempleSikhlangarIndia-Pakistan borderPartitionstreet foodWagah
