Amritsar Favorites

Favorite thing: Giddha is a very vigorous folk dance of the women of Punjab performed during family and festive occasions. It has almost the same intensity as Bhangra. In Giddha, women translate bolian-verses (light-hearted satirical verse) into gestures. The folk poetry satirizes politics, the in-laws, loneliness of a young bride, evils of society and almost any other subject. The dance rhythm is set by the dhols and the distinctive hand claps of the dancers. So quick is the movement of the feet as the tempo rises that it is difficult for the spectator even to wink till the tempo falls again. The embroidered 'duppattas' and heavy jewellery of the participants further exaggerate the movements.

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Favorite thing: Originated in the Western Punjab, Bhangra reflects the vigour and the cheerfulness infused among the rural folk by the promise of a bumper crop. The Bhangra season starts with the wheat sowing. On every full moon day young men, in every village, dance for hours in open fields. The dancers move around the 'dhol' drummer in a circle. As the tempo increases, their hands, their feet and their whole bodies comes into action. They whirl round and round bending and straightening their bodies alternatively, hopping on one leg, raising their hands and clapping with their handkerchiefs. Colourful clothes comprised of the flowing turbans, chadra (covering for the lower body) and long kurtas (shirts) and waistcoats make this a very attractive dance to watch. The Bhangra season concludes with the Baisakhi fair when the wheat is harvested.

Favorite thing: Bajwa dramatically illustrates the class gap in contemporary India in her debut novel, focusing on the fortunes of Ramchand, a lowly, disaffected clerk in a popular sari shop. The novel opens with Ramchand happily going about his duties serving the shop's mostly upper-class clients. Opportunity for advancement comes from an unlikely source when he attracts the attention of the beautiful, literate Rina Kapoor, whose family hires the shop to provide saris for her upcoming wedding. Inspired by his foray into a wider world ("there were cars and flowerpots and frosted glass trays with peacocks on them"), Ramchand embarks on a half-baked self-improvement effort that includes a reading program and some unintentionally comic attempts to learn English. Shortly afterwards, though, Ramchand sees the other side of Indian life when the wife of one of his co-workers, a woman named Kamla, descends into public drunkenness. Ramchand is a tenderly drawn character, reminiscent of Naipaul's innocent strivers, and the rest of the cast is vividly sketched. There are several typical first-novel flaws: the narrative is slow in the first half, and Bajwa's transitions between her character-driven subplots are occasionally uneven and erratic. But Bajwa's loving attention to detail—Ramchand washing his feet with lemon juice before he visits the Kapoors, the malicious chatter of the sari-shopping ladies—paints a compelling, acerbic picture of urban India.
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Favorite thing: Don't ask me to give detail info on each of my photo tips, I am just a tourists of sightseeing, not much yet into archeological researches in Amritsar. I build tips based on what I see beautiful and also for my own personal record.

Favorite thing: Heatness is our bus was a good experience, I uploaded another picture to show tourists how we sweat that long night without sleep well. It was not just heatness, somehow the bus driver's way of driving was too crazy. He can put his hand on the honk to do it every 3 to 10 minutes. The voice of their honk was not normal, they actually modified it to sound like some latest digital audio effect of wave sound, and we can hear it all the night. So it was sweat and weird honks that cultural shocked me.

Favorite thing: 41 is average for June. Too hot to me, eventough I came from tropical country, still felt uncomfortable, dry especially. Picture is our bus overnight from New Delhi where my partner Andy complaint for no air-con. It was cheated by the travel agent in New Delhi that they told us better to take fan bus, and we believed their story. Anyway, a good experience to sweat all night long.

Favorite thing: Generality is a way of seeing using our sight organs to capture the generality in the generality itself to bring out the...the true generalitivity. The picture we have here is the generality of Amritsar.

Favorite thing: My Amritsar general tip contained not just that, you know, this tip involved ecological movement of ambulating. Consequently, readers of my tip shall gained a surplus of full comprehend of ambulating, ecological ambulating.