Seeing actual Pakistanis in person -- hey they look like us :-)
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Back again. A big backlog of things to blog about, as also of stuff to do in Bangalore so I'm feeling somewhat overwhelmed. Well, lets try to get blogging up to date a little.
Going back to the trip to Himachal etc., we spent a day in Amritsar. The highlight of that would be a visit to the Indo-Pak border at Wagah, which is a few miles from Amristar. There is a road line that runs through the border here, one of the few connections to get from one country to the other.
View of the Pakistani 'stadium'
There is a ceremony every evening held to officially close the gates of the border. All sorts of ceremonial things happen, with soldiers on both sides of the border clicking heels and marching around and closing the gates, lowering flag stuff like that. All fine so far. The bizarre thing is that both countries have gone and built huge stadium like structures on their side of the gates. During the ceremonies, people are allowed into these stadiums, and there is a huge racket that is set up by the people. They're shouting all kinds of stuff, mostly "india zindabad", "pakistan zindabad" kind of thing. Its not directly hostile for the most part, but definitely has a nationalistic element. As friends would know, I don't have much enthusiasm for gung-ho patriotism, but as spectacle this display is remarkly jaw-dropping. The Indo-Pak problems are such a deep part of our identity, and at the same time we never come across anything concrete, especially in the South, that we can relate to the conflict. At the border here, you get an eyeful, earful and more.
At the end of ceremonies the people in the stadium are 'set free' and they race forward to the gates and continue screaming from there. Wierd, dude.
Photo: A BSF officer came and talked to us for a while.
I would say kind of a must-see sight for most Indians. I'm glad I got this opportunity. Not only that through the good offices of the relevant swamiji (the head of the mission center in Amristar) we got VIP treatment and didn't sit with the crowd in the stadium, but instead in a garden right next to the border. We were close enough at one point of the evening to be within hailing distance of the Pakistani side and several people on the Indian side including yours truly tried to make gestures of friendship and say 'bhai bhai' stuff. The Paki people came across as definitely as interested in fraternality, though somewhat more restrained in their demonstration :-)
My absorption of the spectacle was somewhat spoiled by the 'camera-lady' who kept hectoring me capture this and that event. I'm a somewhat lackadaisical photographer, preferring most of the time to take in the sights rather than to capture them for postierity so I had a fair amount of trouble from camera-lady, who could get somewhat acerbic, during the trip, regarding this. I had to take it with a stiff-upper-lip, given the magnitude of what I had visited on the said lady in the first place.
Photo: Our group.
Photo: Me with the parents, you can see some of the layout of the area in the background
I've cut-n-pasted the Lonely Planet description of this phenomenon:
A harmless but entertaining manifestation of this long-standing rivalry can be witnessed every evening at the Wagah border, the only road crossing between the two countries.
About 30 minutes before sunset, the guards on each side assemble to parade and preen themselves in an immaculately turned out display of synchronised marching and bellowed military commands. The flag of each country is then lowered and the gates on each side are slammed shut. Crowds congregate on each side of the border, with the Indians and Pakistanis cheering on the efforts of their own guards and deriding those of the opposition. Some make a special journey from Amritsar simply to witness the spectacle.
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Next, hopefully soon: Long post about the whole Vaishodevi experience.
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