http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/world/1199614
WAGAH, India -- The Hate starts daily at 4:45 p.m.
As India and Pakistan trade shells and hesitant diplomacy, here at this border checkpoint on a dusty plain their armies take part in a different, more mysterious exchange. The lone road crossing for the countries, Wagah is a place of wood smoke, Sikhs riding in horse-drawn carts and soldiers twirling with their rivals in a dance of war.
In a ritual that dates to the 1947 founding of their nations, guards on both sides strut and kick extravagantly, then meet in a small space between their territories to lower their national flags. Frenzied crowds wave fists and chant from bleachers on both sides. Nothing on this border seamed by an electric fence divides the groups except two gates, just yards apart, festooned with metal stars and flowers.
To outsiders watching the nations' latest crisis unfold, the Wagah ritual seems baffling -- an orderly Two Minutes' Hate, from Orwell's 1984. Decoded, though, the ceremony displays the deep and ancient bonds of these uneasy neighbors.
|
