visit to amritsar and wagah border- Part 1

We just returned from a trip to Amritsar, the heartland of Sikhs. I thought I must share with you my feelings or opinion immediately. The first experience was in the train journey itself, the famous Swarn Shatabdi Express, which started from New Delhi Railway Station at 07:20 a.m, a comfortable time. The train was clean and right from the moment, the train departed, the attendants started feeding us. Good service with a smile and they could cater for all sorts of requirements, within the available resources. I would recommend those planning their  trip to Amritsar by train travel by this train.

We reached at 1:30 p.m comfortably well. I had enquired from people who had visited the city earlier, as to places to eat. Brothers Dhaba was recommended, which was corroborated by locals traveling with us. The two taxis straight headed to the famous eatery. The place looked chaotic, with so many people moving in and out, but it was lunch time, I should not have expected anything else. Soon enough, we got our place and ordered Roti and Rice Thali, since anything else would have amounted to experimenting, which we did not want to, since we were a group of nine, six of them post their sixties. The food was good, typically Punjabi, with two fine rotis, a dal, a chana masala katori, curd and little rice. Very sumptuous and adequate. Though, the service has much more scope for improvement. I then thought, if everything is so organized, what is in a Dhaba. Lots of noise, oil, that smell, tasty food, etc are the USPs of Dhabas.

We then tried to go in the car that we had hired to the hotel. The distance which should have taken us five minutes, took us almost half hour, with the car meandering its way through peak time traffic, what with road blocks and narrow lanes adding to it. But it was fun. The hotel I had booked through net was as deceiving as it could be, but then it’s USP was that it was very close to the Golden Temple, therefore, everything else was forgiven.

We left for the Wagah Border at around 4 p.m, the recommended time. Wagah is about 30 km from Amritsar. A comfortable drive on a good road, maintained by NHAI through some private party. We reached Wagah precisely in half hour. While walking from the place where the vehicle dropped us to the border post, I saw coolies busy arranging goods like dry dates, soda ash and other wares for export. I was thinking, probably one day commercial interests would dictate better terms between neighbours and make us live together. 

We managed to seat as close as possible to witness the much heard ceremony of retreat. The euphoria was slowly built up by the patriotic music being played by BSF personnel on our side and by Pakistani Rangers on the other side of border. Suddenly, I saw an old lady carrying a tricolour and running feverishly towards the gate. Wondering what happened, I looked around and found a BSF jawan handing over the tricolour to volunteers to take it around and there were quite a few already forming a line. Patriotism! I wonder, where are the patriots, when it comes to joining the Armed Forces? I realised later that Wagah border ceremony is more rhetoric, which has become more a tourist attraction, inciting a false sense of patriotism. I was sick and sat through the rest of the ceremony not knowing what to do.