If it is Monday, then it is time to segue back in to Sepia timepassing gently. After all, you’ve had quite the weekend, I’m sure. Exercise your commenting skillz by playing the caption game! Don’t you know that working out without a proper warm-up isn’t wise? ;)
Many thanks to Paul, who guaranteed we’d be able to play today by sending in this tip (“a great candidate for a caption contest”); if any of you spot similarly interesting, “Brown” photographs, pass them along! This picture accompanied an article, some of which is available after the jump.
So, just what is going on here? I’m sure that a few of you already know (and may have witnessed the spectacle yourselves!), but if you don’t recognize the hotstepping, here’s the relatively-somber caption the L.A. Times gave this image:
A Pakistani guard, left, and an Indian counterpart march during a nightly border-closing ceremony. It’s an elaborate, almost comical, show of martial bravado and chest-puffing that has gone on for nearly 60 years. [LAT]
Not sure how to play? Peep these previous editions of captioning fun: Ondhu, Eradu, Mooru, Naal’ku, Aydhu, Aaru, EyLu…
WAGAH CROSSING, INDIA-PAKISTAN BORDER — If nations rose and fell according to their camp quotient and funny hats, then these rivals would still be locked in a total stalemate.
Who doesn’t love CAMP!
Most every evening for nearly 60 years, a peculiar ritual has unfolded here on what has been one of the world’s hottest borders. As twilight approaches and the gates are about to close between India and Pakistan, the guards on either side face off in an elaborate show of martial bravado and chest-puffing that nonetheless includes that most basic of fraternal gestures: the handshake.
Hundreds of spectators from both countries cheer as their men in uniform strut, goose-step and stamp their feet like impatient bulls. Individual guards on either side break ranks and power-walk toward one another as if to collide head-on, but stop just short of the line dividing their homelands and glower fiercely through their mustaches.
I’m rather anti-facial hair, which makes me a bad Malayalee, but I must say, the final five words of that quote almost make me appreciate a good meesha. ;)
Patriotic songs boom through loudspeakers as the national flags are lowered at exactly the same speed and the gates finally swing shut.
Would that the craptastic filmi dances one has to sit through at every single “community” event were as well-coordinated. If you want to imitate Bollywood, do it properly and don’t be THAT girl who’s constantly two beats behind. Especially during the turns or the dramatic sinking to the floor. It looks awful. Take a lesson from the glowering moustaches, ladkis.
The tightly choreographed ceremony is part colonial pomp, part macho posturing and part Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks. The rowdy tourist crowds eat it up.
If you ask me, there isn’t enough Monty Python in the world. Jai Hind! Er…and…Pakistan.
“Everything was just perfect,” Rajat Kalia, an electrical engineer who lives in Delhi, said after a recent viewing. “It’s impressive.”
It is also, of course, a manifestation of a very real rivalry that has produced three bloody wars since the twin birth of India and Pakistan in 1947.
For half an hour each evening at sunset, the decades of enmity are sublimated in a mostly good-natured, almost comical competition between the men in black, wearing headgear with fantails of the same color (Pakistan); and the men in khaki, whose hats are adorned with scarlet fantails (India).
They set up bleachers for this. They even have MCs to get the crowd hyped. No word on whether anyone does the wave or if either side is subjected to that stupid “right side/left side/who is louder?” game.
…Kalia, the engineer, found the event a good-humored, patriotic bit of fun, a friendly contest between two rival nations over pomp and circumstance. It wasn’t a competition in which national pride and prestige were really on the line.
“If it’s cricket,” he said, “then it’s a completely different feeling.” [LAT]
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Silly title courtesy of this annoying joint. Like you didn’t know.
