A long time ago, during our second trip to the Peruvian Amazon forest, I had one of those eye opening experiences. You know the kind when all of a sudden one conversation makes you awaken to a different reality?

A bunch of us were sitting around the breakfast table and I don’t even remember what I said but a middle aged plus guy from California, former hippie type who made a bunch of money, said to me, “Wait. So I don’t get it. Every morning you wake up with the thought that you’ll try to be a better person that day?”

He was genuinely perplexed and I had one of those ah ha moments when I realized that what I had assumed to be a given for most everybody just…wasn’t. Sort of like when I realized that not everyone takes the skin off chicken before cooking it. But a little more disconcerting.

So I don’t know how you’ll take what I’m about to write. Maybe you’ll think it’s weird. Maybe it IS weird. I’ve certainly thought, said, and done much weirder stuff, though, so here goes.

One of the places high on our list of places to go in India has always been Amritsar in the Punjab region. We almost made it last trip but Covid pushed us in a different direction – homeward. Most people go to Amritsar to see The Golden Temple, as did we. Perhaps the only difference is that we weren’t interested in going into the temple itself. Aside from the 90 minute wait in line in 40 degrees (104 degrees Fahrenheit), my partner doesn’t go into temples for religious reasons so I choose the temples I go to carefully as he waits outside.

No, we wanted to volunteer in the langar hall which serves food for free to between 50,000-100,000 people every day. Open 24/7, food is served to whoever shows up, no questions asked, no judgement. Each “sitting” lasts 15 minutes. The food is simple but healthy – lentils, rice, chapatti (Indian flatbread), and water.

We told the Sikh at the entrance that we wanted to volunteer. It took a few tries before he understood. He directed us to Langar Hall. We got there, barefoot and after two foot baths, with our heads appropriately covered with orange material. The Sikh workers there tried repeatedly to push a plate and cup into our hands so we could join the others to eat.

What to do with these foreigners??

Each one pointed us up the next couple of stairs for the next Sikh worker to deal with us. The fourth or fifth turbaned guy realized what we intended and called a younger worker over who knew a few words in English. He beckoned us to follow him, which we did, up three flights of stone stairs at a very fast pace.

On the third floor he led us on a circuitous route which ended in a large room with 2 machines churning out chapattis and a low table where about eight women and a very stern Sikh man sat on low stools.

The room was stifling hot.

I was pointed to a designated stool and joined the women.

For the next two hours I schmeered hot oil on chapattis with a piece of cloth wound around and attached to a stick. A young man dumped the chappatis out of a basket onto the table straight out of the ovens. They were burning hot. I think the FBI will have a hard time finger printing me should they need to – my finger tips were scorched.

The chappatis came relatively slowly at first and I learned the routine and got into the rhythm. Then the lunch rush hour must’ve started because they started coming fast and furious. Remember Mickey Mouse carrying buckets of water in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice or Lucille Ball working in the bakery?

At first the other women were wary of the foreigner in their midst. But, like any group of women anywhere, it wasn’t too long before they were trying to communicate with me. At first the two women in charge of quality control, making piles of good chapattis and throwing misshapen or overly burnt ones in a bin, only sent a few chapatti my way. After 15 minutes or so they were throwing big stacks my way. Yep, I was one of the gang.

A young woman from The Netherlands joined us after about an hour, and then we were two.

The second day my partner decided to join in. He’d only watched the first day, feeling odd about the whole Sikh thing. We’d talked the evening after our first visit about how the Sikhs’ generosity of heart knows no bounds and makes no differentiation between foreigners, Hindus, Christians, or anyone else. I think he came out of the conversation feeling the beauty of the universality of it all.

In any case, we were already part of the work party by the second day, directed to stools and given our sticks and bowls of hot oil.

An Ayurvedic doctor joined us that day. My partner gained insight into the sad reality of many Indian families whose children emigrate and become Westernized and upwardly mobile and basically estranged from their families.

Before we’d found Langar Hall the first day we’d gone into the Sikh museum also within the temple complex. Sikhism has only been around for about 500 years. Their history is bloody and filled with martyrs killed in cruel and blood curdling ways.

To this day they carry a sword and are actually permitted to do so in public places, like banks and airports, by law.

It’s hard to reconcile their history of brutality with their unprecedented compassion and kindness shown in the Langar Halls in Delhi and Amritsar. Another if life’s inconsistencies.

We left after redeeming our shoes, passing by hundreds of people resting or, unbelievably, sleeping on the hard granite floors. Another unique Indian experience.

As for our Californian Amazon traveling companion, “Yes, Paul, I do in fact wake up every morning with the thought of how I can be a better person.” It’s not a burden or a hardship. It brings me joy and fills me with gratitude that I’ve been blessed with a life which allows me to open my eyes and my heart to other people who share this often challenging world with me.

The heat of the chapatti room, the loud music, the scorching chapattis, the shy smiles of the other women, the knowledge that those oil schmeered chapattis would help fill the bellies of people who might otherwise go hungry…as my delightful yogi in Rishikesh would say…and that.