If you are a Sikh, I’m sorry.
I thought sneaking a few pictures on my iphone would be the most disrespectful thing I did at the Sikh mosque. The tour guide said I could, and while it still felt wrong, the gold altar (is it called an altar?) was amazingly ornate. We sat on the floor to admire and then I tried to inconspicuously snap a few pictures.
But then as we left the mosque, my tour guide (I should really look up his name again…) stopped and held out his hands to a guy with a big pot of something. I wasn’t sure what it was, but did the same. I was told to hold out both hands and as the man scooped a mushy ball of goop into my hands, the tour guide told me it was holy food and to eat it. I considered this and quickly decided there was no way I was putting this unknown stuff into my mouth, whether or not it is considered holy. I had made it to the last day of my trip without being sick, it didn’t seem like the time to take a (stupid) chance. Not only was the goop probably mixed with local water, I didn’t even know what ‘it’ was, and the giant pot outside didn’t seem so sanitary. So I kept it in my hand, trying my best to cover it from the hundreds of assumingly very religious people all around me. It isn’t like there were tourists everywhere, these people were here praying with their families.
As I put my shoes back on, thankful for flip flops that I didn’t need to have two hands to put on, my brain was racing thinking of how I could respectfully get rid of the goop and what would happen if god forbid someone saw me and was offended. I am relieved when I remember I have tissues in my bag (back up emergency toilet paper). The next stop after shoes was to wash our hands in the big outdoor sinks. I can’t do this with the holy substance in my one hand. Finally as my guide is washing his hands, I quickly grab a tissue out of my bag and get most of the goop into a tissue, only a little lands right in my bag. I close the bag with this dirty tissue inside, hope that my guide didn’t see, really that no one saw, wash my hands and try to get out of there quickly to find a place to dispose of the evidence. I am sure it was beyond disrespectful to throw this holy food into the trash, I was a guest in the mosque, etc, etc, but I just couldn’t dare to eat it. Surely my guide should have known better?