Well, I have come closer to Pakistan than I had intended - twice now!! We are up in the state of Punjab where, the state of turbans, butter chicken, and bhangra music. The city of Amritsar is about 30km from the Pakistan border crossing where there is a daily border closing ceremony at sunset. The whole ceremony essentially gives the Indians and Pakistanis a chance to duke out their political rivalry by seeing who can be the most patriotic from their respective sides of the border. Lots of flag-waving and chanting. Because this is the Indian travel season, there were a ton of Indian tourists in Punjab, so there must have been at least 1,500 people on the Indian side of the border. Interestingly, the women and men were separated on both sides of the border, although perhaps for different reasons. I suspect that the women on the Indian side were separated for fear that women would be hurt in a crowd of rowdy, patriotic men. I have to be honest that I was worried about going, given the latest news in Pakistan. To be so close to a country that has become so stigmatized by own country was truly surreal. And ultimately, pretty sad. With so many Indians waving their flags and partying it up Bollywood style (literally, they were staging impromptu dance parties), there were, at most, 200 Pakistanis in attendance. This makes sense that such a frivolous event would be poorly attended considering the political situation going on there. I can imagine that Pakistanis would be trying to avoid large groups of people at all costs.
But it was pretty profound, to actually be able to see into this country and see the faces of people living there. It personalizes all the things I have been reading in the news a bit. I did notice that in the VIP section of the Paki side that all the people appeared to be very conservative in comparison to the people in general seating. All the ‘burkas’ were sitting in VIP….interesting that the upper-class would also be the most conservative.
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