The Weirdest Party I've Ever Been To: India-Pakistan Border Closing Ceremony

Remember that party you went to that one night in college? You didn't really want to go out but you'd rather suck it up than to hear your friends say one more time, "Are you gonna waste the best years of your life by sitting here alone reading?" You saunter to the car with low expectations hoping the night will end soon enough to get back to that silent room. Upon arrival you hear the lame overplayed radio dubstep music and the chatting coming from the backyard of the stereotypical deteriorating college house, fit with the classic beer bottle collection and posters of half naked girls on the walls. You find yourself planning your escape already; looking for the nearest exits and thinking of an excuse that could get you in the nearest cab and on your way home to that book you left dogeared on the bed. All while your friends have collected shot glasses and enough alcohol to subdue a civil war soldier awaiting amputation, and that's how you'll feel the morning after too, like your limbs have been cut but you're still experiencing the pains of infection. You'll have glimpses of the night before as if they were a dream you meant to remember. And with these scenes, full of skipped minutes and questionable decisions, the only word you'll have to describe such a night is a word that sums everything and nothing; WEIRD.

The India-Pakistan Border Closing Ceremony is equally confusing as this night in college you remember and all-together don't remember. And with the only word I have to describe this event I'll tell you that it was weird, very weird.

We had just gone to the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India, a beautiful and very important site for Sikhism, the main religion in India's northern region of Punjab. Here, thousands of visitors and believers flock to pay homage to God and the 10 Gurus of the Sikhist faith. I was very tired and upon hearing we were to go next to the border I sauntered to the car with low expectations hoping it would end soon enough to get back to an airconditioned room.

The Golden Temple

The line! In the heat!

So we stopped at the edge of India's border and had to pass through an inspection where men went through first and women were stopped and inspected throughly (Sari's are apparently excellent for hiding weapons). It took us more than 30 minutes to cross so it was no surprise that waters, ice cream, tiny plastic Indian flags as well as face painting were all available before entrance to the border. "What is this?" I thought, "Are we going to a border or a circus?" Turns out it was some monster combination of the two that quickly turned into the weirdest party of the year.  

We cross the border and come to a giant crowd where people are pushing to get to the front. Music and chanting can be heard and above the heads of strangers there are two large rising sets of bleachers like that of a football stadium. The noise sounded no different than that of football fans at a rival game, whooping and hollering like a Raiders Booster Club.

The Closing Ceremony opened with the strangest things I've ever seen. Men and women came down from the crowd and started running huge Indian flags from one side of the long center street to the border gate that closed India from Pakistan with music and chanting bellowing from some unknown source. From our seat we could see beyond the gate where two more sets of bleachers were full of Pakistani border-goers, waving tiny plastic Pakistan flags and face paint. They were a reflection of the Indian audience, from a birds eye view you would see two hoards arriving at the same party but cheering for opposite sides, separated by a single line of walled metal, a gate dividing two countries. So the competition grew; Whose music is louder? Whose participants happier? Whose people have more national pride?

Photo Credit Rebecca Weeks

The guards, with their huge fanned red hats, set out whistling at the heavy bleachers packed with people, motioning them to sit, or stand or be in the right section. But when they could whistle no more they quit and let the joy and nationalism that took over the crowd to come over them as well. They turned up the music and what happened next felt like a something I made up but truly am not clever enough...a dance party. Herds of Indian kids and teens as well as women unbelieving they were past their prime came to dance in the center of the street. Soon we joined too, not knowing the music but enjoying the beat.

Dancing party! Photo credit: Ghazala Irshad

After a while whistles blew and we were scooted back to our seats, for the ceremony was to begin. And this is where it gets weird...really weird. The red soldiers start off by showing the audience their high kicks. Yes, their high kicks. How they recruit for high kickers I'll never know but these guys kicked like their lives depended on it. "We'll show those Pakistani," I imagine them saying, "I want the best high kicker in all of India!"

The audience awed at those kicks and the soldiers, now boosted with confidence, ran to the opened gate like gazelles and did a high kick to the mirroring Pakistani soldier. It felt like a scene out of Monty Python where the Knight's Who Say Ni determine their rank by how high they can get their legs without them falling off. And so it went, five different soldiers proving their might and leaping to the border. All while the Pakistani hollered and shouted for their high kickers.

No, this is real.
Photo Credit: Six Pack Tech

Pakistani troops high kicking back!

What's high kicking without some agressive eyeballing?
Photo Credit The Telegraph

Looks more like a dance! Can, Can, can you do the Can Can can you do the Can Can!

So you'd think that'd be it, but it wasn't. Next there began a new competition between the Pakistan and Indian soldiers. It was not one of physical strength or mental ingenuity but of the cords set in the throats of men. Who can belt the loudest for the longest? Yep. On either side into a microphone men lifted an "AH" sound out of their diaphragms and into the audience, their voices carrying all the way across a border to a different people. The might of a country was dependent upon how long a single note was sung.

Known across the country for their meticulously manicured masculine mustaches the red guard of the Indian border takes its tune projection just as seriously. Photo Credit Maniac World 

The ceremony ended with the folding of the flag and singing from each side that reminded me of a high school sports game, "We want a batter not a broken ladder," I imagine them taunting.  

"Hindustan! Pakistan! Hindustan! Pakistan!", each crowd would yell.

Photo credit: Ben Tubby

And in the morning I felt like I had drank large quantities of alcohol and made the whole thing up. Only something so strange could come from my drunken encounters or dreamy hallucinations. But through the piecing together of this party on the India-Pakistan border, full of dancing and high kicks, the only word I have to describe such a night is a word that sums up everything and nothing; WEIRD.