Bordering on Friendship.

(Diplomatist plus June 2012) 

Bordering on Friendship

Fifteen members of our family travelled together to Amritsar recently. Among several enjoyable highlights of the trip, including visiting the magnificent Golden Temple, was witnessing the change of guard ceremony. This happens every evening at the Wagah border between Pakistan and India.

For those who have not yet seen the ceremony at the Wagah border, it is quite a big local event! 

Fundamentally, it is a change in shift duty of the guards accompanied by the usual army practice of lowering the national flag at sundown; but it has a lot of tradition, pomp and grandeur built around it. Thick gates separate the Pakistani army barrack from the Indian barrack with a metre of no man’s land in between. A large photograph of Mahatma Gandhi adorns one wall on the Indian side and on the Pakistani side a photo of Mr Jinnah is displayed. Facing the barracks on both sides are wide stone steps where people can sit and watch the ceremony.

People come from near and far to watch the ceremony which takes place daily. The audience starts taking up vantage positions on the stone steps in the early afternoon itself. Patriotic songs blare from microphones two or three hours before the event and really build up the mood. Many from the audience climb down onto the road below and start to dance enthusiastically. At 5 o’clock this party is interrupted by the master of ceremonies. The dance floor goes back to being a road and the revellers remember what they came for in the first place. A relative silence descends as all wait for the more serious business of the ceremony to start.

A powerful command from the guard commander suddenly pierces the silence and heralds the beginning of the event. The commanders on both sides compete to keep their voices as loud as possible and the words stretched out as long as their breath allows, giving us a slight feel of the Opera. Suddenly, the lead pair of soldiers start marching smartly to the gate. On that particular evening, it was heartening to see two young women in uniform take the lead. Thereafter, more soldiers march individually or in small groups to the gate. It is a matter of prestige for the soldiers to be well turned out and to march with such agility that their legs touch their foreheads on the upswing. When they come close to the gate (and consequently face to face with their rivals), they swagger, click their heels smartly, thrust out their chests and adjust their headgear with mock-aggressiveness. All these gestures are meant to convey confidence and intimidate their counterparts on the other side. Throughout the hour-long show, the master of ceremonies, mike in hand, guides the audience on when to clap or shout and when to be (relatively) quiet. At one point, the gates are opened, the soldiers shake hands and the flags of the two sides are lowered in perfect unison. After that all too brief interlude of togetherness, the gates are shut again.

Those thinking that a guard changing ceremony might be a solemn occasion, will find themselves mistaken. It is more along the lines of a boisterous and friendly cricket match. There is a sense of drama and various emotions course through the mind. Though each side fervently encourages their own soldiers with loud shouts and clapping, there is a healthy curiosity for what is happening on the other side of the gate. Everyone keeps looking over to the other side to see how they are faring in the friendly competition of smartness and bravado. There is a desire to wave out to the audience on other side (people often do that) and establish a rapport.

Surely, there is a sense of pride in one’s particular country. But for those who originally belonged to undivided India there is also a deep sense of longing and nostalgia. Their past seems so tantalisingly close and yet so far away. As my mother in law wistfully said “Do you know Lahore is only 31 miles away from where we are sitting now?” Many people of that generation earned their professional degrees in Lahore. Several think about where they were born, where they lived and worked and are engulfed by a curiosity to see what changes time has brought to their old haunts.

What is impressive is the perfect harmony and unison of the so-called rivals when performing the ceremony. Each side keeps a watch on the other and they synchronise their movements perfectly making it look beautiful. Even the flags are lowered simultaneously with hardly an inch of difference between their heights. One can’t help but reflect on how well we work together as a team.

As individuals, many of us have faced the sorrow of a good sound friendship suddenly turning sour. A single incident can spark the unravelling of a relationship and sometimes things come undone at such breakneck speed that all concerned are left a little breathless. We may feel shattered. We may feel a deep sense of loss. There may be anger, bitterness and sorrow but underlying these is a secret longing to go back to the way things were before all hell broke loose.

 
If we extrapolate this to an entire community, one can try and imagine somewhat the collective sense of loss felt after the bloodshed and displacement of the days of partition. No doubt, the minds of many revert back to and relive the months and days of horror when it all came apart. When friendships established over a lifetime were destroyed in one fell swoop.

 
There must be profound regrets on both sides about the process by which a hardworking and close-knit community fell apart into fragments.

I can recall Jagjit Singh’s mellifluous voice reminding us of that moment in which love comes alive “woh pal ki jis mein mohabbat jawan hoti hai”. I wonder how many people across the border feel nostalgic and await that moment when, by some miracle things can come together once more. Can we be friends all over again? It would be so heartening if in our lifetime, the gates are opened and Indians and Pakistanis alike dance to a common tune…for example Ghulam Ali singing “Bichad ke bhi mujhe tujhse….”