Sumpreet, the sassy girl from outside, explained that the boys were poor and possibly came to eat every day, while the man was a rich businessmen. A little shyly, she added: “I am studying for a geography degree, and come only when an exam is nearing and I am needing extra luck.”

A line of servers scurried in from behind. They slung chapatis and dished out dhal with hilarious inaccuracy, but they were volunteers, and already the next sitting was agitating at the door. It’s the same in gurdwaras everywhere; rich and poor, young and old, men and women, all eating together. The food may be basic, but the symbolism was fine fusion.

()WITHOUT QUESTION, the Golden Temple has all the grace and beauty of the Taj Mahal. It’s not as big or as grand, but it is certainly as stunning. And while the Taj is a mausoleum, moribund except for the swarms of tourists and touts, the Golden Temple pulses with the energy of a thriving living community — the spiritual and temporal centre of the Sikh faith.

It is hardly visited by non-Indian or non-Sikh tourists, but there is an information office. After a cup of tea, information officer Sundeep Dalbir Singh (Retired) led me on a free tour of the temple.

Mr Singh was an old man with a forthright chest and bow legs. He had served in the Indian army before independence and referred to the Raj constantly, usually while staring into space, as though he were remembering a long-dead pet.

I followed him up the narrow steps to the museum, where walls were crammed with paintings. They were of the Sikh gurus and their followers, teaching, fighting and suffering, but mainly suffering.

In front of one particularly gruesome canvas, my guide scrunched up his face excitedly, like a schoolboy recounting an infamous scrap, saying that these three martyrs were tortured “very extensively, very extensively indeed”. Each “very” was projected loudly, like when a giant first appears in a bedtime story.

Another picture showed a Sikh being sliced in two with an axe — lengthways; and another panel brimmed with black-and-white photographs of Sikh youths who had been shot by the Indian army. They were like school portraits, but madly macabre, and “very extensively” began echoing all around.

So much for blood and guts, bricks and mortar — I had a killer theological question that I wanted to air. So I asked: “What’s the main difference between the Sikh salvation and the Christian heaven?” He thoughtfully twizzled his thinning grey beard and fell silent for a long time. A very long time. Then, with eureka certainty, he said: “The Christian heaven has better facilities.”

IT WAS mid-afternoon when the heat finally won out and, overcoming my shyness, I “went local” and joined some other pilgrims snoozing in the dependable shade of a loggia.

Lying on the marble was refreshingly cool, like face-pressing a fridge door in a heat wave; and wafting over the water on a jasmine-scented breeze came hypnotic chanting amplified from the temple roof. I fell asleep.

Suddenly, a young boy in a white dhoti was frantically prodding me awake, shouting: “The water is coming; the water is coming — look!” Advancing at a slow walk were at least 100 people. Sikhs were scoop-filling buckets from the edge of the tank, then passing them on to the next person in the chain. The pails swung across the crest of the crowd, water spilling and pails clattering. When they reached the last person in the row, the water was hurled over the marble. It was like watching a Sikh Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

Then the crowd engulfed me, too. It was like a childhood summer — foot-stampingly happy days spent spraying friends with garden hoses. By the time a teenager tapped me on the shoulder and offered me a heavy pail, I was laughing aloud. “What on earth is going on?” I asked with a happy shrug.

“We are cleaning the pathway. Here,” he said, handing me a full bucket. I took the weight, then hesitated and looked around. This couldn’t really be allowed, could it — in what is the Sikh equivalent of Canterbury Cathedral? I lunged forward like a first-timer in a bowling alley and the water arched through the air, splattering onto the white stone. The youth beamed, grabbed back the bucket, then rushed off to the pool.

This was a long way from my village church in Derbyshire. All I remembered from there was frustrated fidgeting and drowsy daydreaming. What a shame that they never let us help wash the aisles.

Richard Green travelled as a guest of CTS Horizons (020 7836 9911, www.ctshorizons.com), which has three nights in Delhi and three in Amritsar from £995pp, including flights from Heathrow to Delhi, return train tickets to Amritsar, private transfers and local guides. Or try Colours of India (020 8343 3446, www.colours-of-india.co.uk), or Pettitts (01892 515966, www.pettitts.co.uk)

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