“Balli and I walked to the Harmandir Sahib every Tuesday morning. Not for religious reasons — Balli was a devout Sikh who prayed with the sincerity of a person for whom faith was as natural as breathing, but I went for the light. The way the sun hit the gold of the temple's dome, reflected off the Amrit Sarovar's still water, and turned the entire complex into something that existed simultaneously in the physical world and somewhere else entirely — that was the thing I wanted to paint. Had wanted to paint since I was twelve. Would spend my life trying to paint and would never quite succeed, because the light at the Harmandir Sahib was not a colour. It was an experience. And experiences resist canvas.”