Outside the high gate of Mrs Bhandari’s Guesthouse I flag a cycle rickshaw, and out of the ragged scarves of morning mist a scrawny lad swings to the side of road with some panache and groaning brakes. ‘Golden Temple,’ I say, but not a stir on the stony look of his thin face, like the inscrutable Indian yes-no tilt of the head. ‘Tampel,’ he repeats, no flicker of recognition in eyes trained so hard on keeping alive on the road that they seem to gaze beyond you, to some place you and he will never get to, beyond the Golden Temple. ‘Golden Temple, Old City.’ ‘Ol Siti,’ he responds. ‘Old City, Golden Temple,’ I point to where I think the resplendent shrine is, the flaming orb of the gurdhwara afloat on the pool of nectar. I can see Indira Gandhi’s troops flushing the turbaned warriors out, and the wide calm mirror of the water tank rent with rippling shadows. I was a soldier then, and dreamed of India, of the Golden Temple, and release from the cycle of national service, of hating and loving, of samsara and moksha. The rickshaw wallah must be the age I was then, and he is married to his machine like I was to my M16, but this gives him life, bread, though it may also kill him. He stops a fellow wallah, a wizened Sikh who could be forty or sixty, his orange turban a halo of pale fire in the winter mist, his worn dhoti riding up his thin bamboo-thin shins. ‘Golden Temple,’ I say. ‘Harmindar Sahib,’ he tells the young man. And the penny drops. The Temple of God.  

‘A hundred rupees?’ I propose. And he gestures for me to get on the high seat sloped towards the rider, and we are off, my dusty life in his young hands, as he steps on it, standing his bony weight on the pedals, and hurls us into the flow, and across it, his skinny frame straining, leaning forward as if getting away from the cargo, and Calvin Klein on the back of his brown jumper stares at me, the letters jiggling as his shoulders pump up and down, and we are breezing through outer Amritsar, past broken bungalows, riding into the city, rows of grimy blocks surfacing out of the smog. The carriage registering the lesions of the road, my body reading the potholes, the cracks, wondering if this lad will live to forty, the average span for rickshaw wallahs, his lungs swimming in diesel clouds, and he doesn’t miss a beat, hardly pausing, slowing only over craters too big to avoid, then stepping on it again, slicing between other rickshaws heaped with cartons, one balancing a double bed, one ferrying five school girls, his hand signalling as we take a roundabout, the timing no room for error, the oncoming trucks and auto rickshaws barely slowing, then the pedal tempo increasing till we are at cruising speed, I marvelling the miracle of Indian roads, that there are no pile-ups, no rules, only inches to spare, my Calvin Klein man, his hand so casual, fingers elegant, graceful and magical, and an auto rickshaw packed with a dozen schoolgirls, four facing back, smiling as they overtake, then giggling when they see the Chinese man holding on for dear life, keeping his rear up on the torn seat, and I forget the Golden Temple, and laugh with the four angels with double-plaited hair, and my wallah is singing snatches of a Bollywood hit, a mantra that will keep us in one piece, the prayer to the patron saint of rickshaw wallahs, the words dying as he rises from the saddle and hauls the cycle, throws all he has got at the rise of the Bhandari Bridge, built by Mrs Bhandari’s engineer husband, arched over tracks going east to Delhi and west to Lahore, he dismisses my offer to get off and walk, and I feel all the weight of my middle age in his hands, in the upward Sisyphean tilt of that body, the way in the army we flung ourselves up the hill we were told to take down in mock attack, and I know I can trust my life to my rickshaw man, and we are over the top, gliding home past the ancient gate to the Old City, the dusty lanes and crumbling havelis, and I am wishing we could go on, beyond the temple’s dazzling white walls, keep going till we find where we have to go, but he squeezes the brakes to a hissing stop. I hand him the note and look for more change but he is already gone.