Two Flags at the Same Speed: Sunset at the Wagah Border — Epoche B1
The choreography at the border Last month I drove the thirty kilometres out from Amritsar to Attari, where the Grand Trunk Road crosses into Pakistan at Wagah. I had come, like several thousand other people that evening, for the flag ceremony that the two countries have performed at this gate almost every sunset since 1959. There are stadium stands on the Indian side, and through the gateway you can see stadium stands on the Pakistani side, and both were full and roaring like a football final. The show itself is a series of mirrors, and I slowly stopped watching one side at a time. A soldier of India's Border Security Force, in a red-fanned headdress, storms down the tarmac and kicks his boot above his head — and through the gate, at the same instant, a Pakistan Ranger in black answers with the same kick. A bugle call from one side is answered from the other. A shouted command is held, impossibly long, until it overlaps the shout coming back. Then the part I could not look away from. At sunset the two flags come down together — slowly, and at exactly matched speed, so that at no moment is either flag lower than the other. They are folded, carried off, and the gates slam with a crash that got the biggest cheer I heard all evening. It was on my dark drive back that the obvious thing arrived. Every mirrored kick, every answered bugle, every synchronised inch of rope has to be agreed in advance. Two armies that face each other rehearse the same drill, to the same clock, every day. The evening is sold as defiance, and it cannot begin without cooperation. References Lonely Planet (2020). India. Lonely Planet Publications.