Monty Python is alive and well… and living at the Wagah border

Last weekend we took the train to Amritsar, 6 hours north of Delhi, and the closest city to the only road border crossing between India and her neighbour, Pakistan. The relationship between the two countries isn’t great. You wouldn’t find them chatting over the garden fence, nor would they pop around to borrow an egg or a cup of sugar. Raju, our driver, is adamant 95% of Pakistanis are terrorists, and that dropping a nuclear bomb on Pakistan would be a good thing. Raju is not alone in these sentiments. So you might think that all things considered, a trip out to see the border would be cold and unfriendly, and not something a tourist, or any random Indian would choose to do. But you’d be so wrong…

Between 10am and 4pm the border operates as normally as any border between two not so friendly countries. Trucks of vegetables pass through to Pakistan from the farmlands of the Punjab, and trucks of dried fruit come into India. But at 4 o’clock the border guards stop processing vehicles and passports, and begin the real job of the day. Crowds of Indians, who have no intention of crossing into Pakistan, fill large grandstands on either side of the Grand Trunk Road. Loudspeakers play the Hindi Top 40, and lots of ladies dance in the road in front of the brick guardhouse. They don’t dance around their handbags, because handbags are not allowed - you can only take to the border what you can wear. A camera around your neck was just jewellery, but the camera bag was not allowed. Their arms in the air, they jingle their bracelets, and sing along to the music.

We came armed with our passports, which gets us into the “Foreigners Enclosure” in front of the main grandstands. There’s quite a few people in the Foreigners Enclosure who would have needed a passport to prove they weren’t Indian. We weren’t in that category, but we took them just in case. After all, this is an army border crossing, and lots of people have guns. Hopefully only the ones who work there. On the other side of the gate, in Pakistan, crowds are filling up their segregated grandstands, the women kept apart from the men. There’s no dancing in the road, but there’s lots of flag waving going on, and a decent attempt to drown out the Hindi Top 40 with patriotic chanting.

At ten to five someone turns down the music. A man with a microphone and a voice loud enough not to need one yells “Hindustan”, a catchier name than the Republic of India. The crowd replies, “Zindabad”, which means long live. Somehow they all knew the right words - unlike us, they must have been here before. On the other side of the border their guy with the microphone calls out “Pakistan”, the crowd yells back “Zindabad”. A line of border guards stands proudly in their uniforms. They are drawn from all over India for their six month stints, chosen it seemed because they were all really tall. The average height for an Indian man is 5ft 5 inches, and these guys were all over 6 ft. Unfortunately they seemed to be wearing trousers designed for the average Indian. The other selection criteria: funny facial hair and an ability to stamp your feet and march in a manner which would make Monty Python proud. They can only work at the border for six months, because all the high kicking and foot stamping takes a toll on their bodies. One guy was a little shorter than the others, but he could yell a note for a very, very long time. And he had a well waxed handlebar moustache…

The guards take turns showing us how they can march up to the border, and this whips the crowd into an uproarious frenzy. When they get close to the gates we can see the Pakistani guards on the other side, because they’re matching the Indians every move. This is a “whatever you can do, I can do better” situation. And in this case, “my uniform’s scarier than your uniform”. The Pakistanis are in a menacing black garb, with a hint of Ninja to them. They look much more fierce than Indians, who are in Army khaki with those too short trousers. The trousers are a mistake, really. As a consolation, the Indians get some fancy headgear, with plumage on top. I got the impression that they were aiming to hit that plumage with their toes while they marched.

The Pakistani crowd is just as vocal as the one on this side of the border. The whole spectacle is a little bit football match, a little bit theatrical performance. It’s bizarre…but fun.

After the marching there’s the “Lowering of the Flags” ceremony. The flags at the border gates (because there’s an Indian gate and a Pakistani gate, with a little bit of land with a white line down the middle between them), and those on the arches at the end of the grandstands are slowly lowered synchronously, so neither country appears to have the upper hand at any stage. Once off the flagpoles, the flags are folded and marched back into the guardhouse, the gates are closed and locked, and the border between India and Pakistan is closed until the morning.