This weekend Ami, Kevin and I flew to the city of Amritsar in Punjab. It was a quick trip - we were there for fewer than 36 hours, but we made the most of our time in exploring this fascinating part of India.
View of Amritsar from my hotel room
We had a 5:45 am flight on Saturday, which meant that I only got 45 minutes of sleep in my bed on Friday night. For those of you who know how much I love my sleep, you can imagine how I was feeling and looking when I stepped off the plane in Amritsar. I didn't even want caffeine - it would have been like fighting a forest fire with a squirt gun. I was vaguely conscious of getting off the plane and into a taxi to the hotel, but I have to thank Ami and Kevin for being better at dealing with sleep deprivation than I am. If not for them, I very well may be sleeping underneath a bench in the Amritsar airport.
We were staying at the Hyatt - a nice hotel, as it turns out. Our one agenda item for Saturday (aside from a much needed nap) was to attend the border closing ceremony at the India-Pakistan border. We drove from Amritsar to Wagah, which is the only road crossing between the two countries, and which is also the site of this daily sunset ceremony. The drive took about 45 minutes from Amritsar, which we traversed in a hired car arranged by the hotel.
The car can't actually bring us to the border ceremony itself - it had to drop us off about 500 meters away from the border for security reasons. When we arrive at the drop-off point, we are stunned to see crowds and crowds of people, all there to witness the same event. After all, there isn't anything else within miles that would attract any kind of audience. I hadn't eaten anything since Friday, but my options are limited to street vendors. Hunger wins out over caution, and I try my first taste of street food. I can't emphasize enough to you how relieved I was to find out that I can handle it, but the more important point I want to make is how delicious it was! It was hands down the best samosa I'd ever had in my life. Plus I had some aloo tikki (basically a fried ball of mashed potatoes), which was similarly addictive.
This man held my life in his hands for an afternoon...
Once I've had my snack, we make our way into the crowds to figure out where exactly we should be heading. There are people everywhere, and they seemed to be lining up by gender, although it was only Indian people in those lines. We had been told by our hotel that there is separate seating for foreigners, which allows men and women to sit together, so we wanted to make sure we found the right gate for that seating. We start playing our own version of Where's Waldo - "spot the white people" - where we start scanning the crowd for non-Indians so that we can line up wherever they are. Not seeing any, we just head into the crowd and hope that we'll find someone foreign-looking along the way. After several mis-starts, we are directed by one of the many soldiers herding the crowds in the right direction. We find group of foreigners huddled by a gate along with some "VIP" Indians, who are basically people who had the foresight to get VIP tickets from the border security police a couple days earlier to get preferred seating.
We had to walk down what is essentially the median of the road to get around the lines of people...
We and about a billion other people are standing outside these gates (which are not the border, by the way) for about a half hour. There were vendors walking around selling bottled water, India flags, and India paper visors to the crowd. There were also people walking around with face paint, offering to paint an Indian flag on people's faces. Ami was asked if she wanted one - I was not (for obvious reasons, I suppose). We chatted with some fellow foreigners in line - it's always interesting to meet fellow travellers. Two guys from Colombia were on a several month trip around Southeast Asia - they were staying at the Golden Temple itself in Amritsar. Apparently there are free beds available there for pilgrims, although I expect it's for males only. Still, I'm kind of jealous that they got to sleep in that amazing place.
As I mentioned, there were scores of military personnel on hand to control the crowds and maintain some level of security. They open the main gates into the secure area, and the crowds of people start pushing through. We were off to the side at this point and decided to stay out of the way until the main thrust of the line had passed. People are waving flags and singing nationalist songs - it was a very festive mood. After about 300 meters of walking, we reach a security checkpoint. We had been forewarned that we would not be allowed to bring in any bags - purses, camera covers, whatever. I was carrying my camera, cell phone and wallet - that's it. People are walking every which way, trying to figure out where to go. Again there are lines of people forming, but there are not enough military people to tell us which is the correct line. A female soldier comes up and starts screaming at us - screaming! - in Hindi. An Indian woman standing next to me calmly says back to her in English, "Can you please lower your voice and speak to me in a normal tone? I can't understand you when you're shouting." The soldier (thankfully) responds by doing just that and telling us that women have to move to the side to be screened separately, but that we can rejoin our groups after the security checkpoint.
The security checkpoint turns out to be a bit of a joke. All of these women are lined up and pushing from behind to move forward. The woman behind me keeps pushing up against me with the baby in her arms. I'm surprised she didn't hurt the child! At one point I was caught with this terrible mother behind me and a wall of sheet metal in front of me. She was pressing me into the wall as if that would make it move! I didn't panic but started inching myself toward the edge of the wall and was able to break free, but the pressure from the line behind me didn't let up. I was close to throwing elbows so that I could have some breathing room, but thought better of it when I realized that it wouldn't be a good idea to start a brawl at the India-Pakistan border. At this point, the same Indian woman who scolded the soldier turns around and yells at the crowd of women "Stop pushing! We're all going to the same place - have some patience!" This woman is my new hero. It worked, although only for a few minutes, but it gave me enough space to avoid having a panic attack. Once we got to the front of the line, the reason for the bottleneck became clear. There was a single female soldier there eyeballing each of us, presumably to make sure we didn't have any bags with us. That was it - the stringent security check.
We rejoin Kevin and make our way onward to the entry gate into the ceremony grounds. We are able to find a sign pointing us toward the VIP/foreigner section (finally - signage!) and there have our passports checked to confirm that we are indeed foreigners. Not surprisingly, they didn't bother to look at my passport, but they checked both Ami's and Kevin's.
After passing through 2-3 other checkpoints, we finally reach the ceremony grounds. We are pointed in the direction of concrete stadium seating, a small sliver of which had been apportioned to foreigners. The area that I'm terming the ceremony grounds are laid out around the road that connects India and Pakistan. Each country has its own set of iron gates at the line of the border.
The India gate on one side, the Pakistani gate on the other...
Each side also has similar arrangements of stadium seating for the crowds that gather to watch the ceremony. About 100m down the road from the border, each country also has an impressive gateway with the name of the country and a portrait of a national figure, welcoming new arrivals to the country.
The ceremony takes place at sunset every day, and we still had at least an hour to go before the ceremony would start. During this hour, a guy in a white border security branded track suit takes a microphone and starts revving the crowd up. First, some children are invited to run up and down the road holding large Indian national flags while the crowd cheered them on.
Next, we were treated to some Bollywood-style music played over the loudspeakers, with women being invited to come down onto the street and dance along. For those of you who are wondering - no, I didn't go dance.
Finally, the ceremony began. I have to admit that I didn't understand a lot of what was going on. It was a very theatrical event and seemed to be more about aggressive posturing on both sides of the border rather than executing a ceremonial duty. The ceremony starts with buglers on both sides, and then launches into what appeared to be a competition of sorts between the two countries. The announcer on each side would start screaming "Hoooooooooooooooo" into the microphone and continue with that cheer as long as they possibly could. Whoever held the chant the longest would get a roar of applause from their corresponding crowd. At the end of some of these chants, drums would start beating and a soldier would step into the road and quickly high-step down to the border and start doing some kicks and dance-like moves while facing the other side of the border.
Marching aggressively...
The uniforms of the soldiers who are taking part in this ceremony are very...unique. The most striking part of the uniform is the headpiece, which resembles a fan. The way that the soldiers were posturing, it made them appear like peacocks on the prowl. The uniforms look vaguely British, so I'm guessing that they've been around since India's independence. The uniforms on each side of the border are almost identical except for the colors - India's headpieces and accents are a reddish orange, whereas Pakistan's are a dark green.
The ceremony picks up pace with multiple soldiers going into the road at once and doing synchronized kicks and movements. These guys are pretty limber - they're all tall (especially for Indian men - at least 6') and these dudes are high kicking so hard that their feet are above their heads! I don't know about you, but I certainly can't do that while keeping both legs and my back straight...
Synchronized kicking...
Once all of the soldiers are at the border gates, then they start doing a routine of these aggressive moves all together. At the same time, the Pakistani soldiers are making similar movements. I didn't have the greatest vantage point to see the nuances of this interaction, but I can only imagine the 100-yard stares that each of these soldiers had on his face.
Peacockin' at the border...
Finally, it's time for the lowering of the flags, which was the overt purpose of the entire ceremony. Each flag was lowered in exact synchronization. After all, heaven forbid if the India flag is flying for a second when the Pakistani flag is not. That would symbolize some imbalance in the tense relations between the two countries, with repercussions I don't want to imagine.
Flags being lowered....
Once the flags have been lowered, the soldiers open and close the border gates a few times, then finally close them for the day and march away. At this point, the crowd clearly wants to surge out of their seats to exit the ceremony - or possibly go up to the border gates to take photos.
Note to self: don't get trampled...
The soldiers keep the entire crowd back so that the VIPs and foreigners can exit first. We are even given the latitude to wander up to the border and take photos with the guys in the peacock uniforms - all while the entire non-VIP Indian population is being held behind a chain on the road.
Does this feel wrong to anyone else?
Ami and I got a photo with one of the soldiers, but it was on her camera so I'll have to get that from her and post it later. The photo was taken as close to the border gates as we could get. I imagine this is the closest I will ever get to the country of Pakistan. For all of my wanderlust, there are very few places in this world that I have absolutely no inclination to visit, and Pakistan is on that list...
Ami and Kevin near the border...you can see the Pakistani entrance gateway behind them
Since attending the ceremony, I've been pondering what my opinion is of what I saw at the Wagah border. On the one hand, there was a ton of nationalist pride surrounding us during the ceremony. Flag waving, song singing, and pro-India chanting were practically ubiquitous. From what I could tell, the Pakistani side had a similar level of nationalistic fervor emanating from their crowd as well. On the other hand, however, the ceremony felt TOO dramatic and theatrical at times. Can the soldiers really take the ceremony seriously if they have to do this same peacocking every day? Are the participants soldiers or are they more like actors in a national drama? Also - what purpose does this ceremony serve? Most of the antics seemed to be aimed at getting the crowd riled up, making me think that the ceremony's purpose is to entertain people rather than to perform some solemn duty.
One other thing that reinforced this impression was that the soldiers didn't stand at attention when they weren't the one marching down the road. I remember hearing stories about the Australian military and how the only excuse for not standing at attention during a ceremonial parade in 100+ degree heat that lasts 4+ hours is if you fainted. These soldiers seemed far less disciplined - they were more like athletes waiting for their chance at the long jump than soldiers marching in a parade. They were shaking their legs to limber up, turning to each other and chatting, and they would even make comments to their comrades who had just finished their marches. I have no clue what they were saying, but I imagined it was something along the lines of "Hey that kick was higher than yesterday - surprised you didn't split your pant seams..." All of this served to make me feel like they didn't take it as seriously as they should, given the importance of the symbolism behind this ceremony. I found myself wondering what my Indian friends would think about the theatrical nature of the ceremony. Is it ok for this event to be both entertaining and symbolic? Or are the two attributes mutually exclusive?
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