You think your job has excess ritual...

[da]

Fascinating.

The road between the Indian city of Amritsar and the Pakistani city Lahore crosses the border through the village of Wahga (or Wagah, depending on which side of the border you’re on) ... By day, people and goods flow across the border, often with porters of one nation handing packages across the border to porters from the other. However at sunset, troops from the two countries parade in aggressive fashion, with much stamping, staring, brandishing of weapons, slamming of gates ... crowds from both nations packing their own grandstand for a lively and festive celebration of nationalism.

From this video, it's hard to believe they do this every single day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeSX6AZ5xEI

Humans are weird.

Comments

[metalana.livejournal.com]

So by having this symbolic battle scene, do the nations work out their aggressions, so they can get back to business the next day? That would be a very important ritual!

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

OK, I think that's actually gayer than the handbell choir at the Yuletide Spectacular.

Wow.

[bats22.livejournal.com]

It stands in sharp contrast to the North Korea-South Korea DMZ border. Here is a YouTube video of it, but what prompted my thoughts about it was this Atlantic Monthly article "When North Korea Falls":

On the Korean peninsula, the Cold War has never ended. On the somber, seaweed-toned border dividing the two Koreas, amid the cries of egrets and Manchurian cranes, I observed South Korean soldiers standing frozen in tae kwon do ready positions, their fists clenched and forearms tightened, staring into the faces of their North Korean counterparts. Each side picks its tallest, most intimidating soldiers for the task (they are still short by American standards).

In the immediate aftermath of the Korean War, the South raised a 328-foot flagpole; the North responded with a 525-foot pole, then put a flag on it whose dry weight is 595 pounds. The North built a two-story building in the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom; the South built a three-story one. The North then added another story to its building. “The land of one-upmanship,” is how one U.S. Army sergeant describes the DMZ, or demilitarized zone. The two sides once held a meeting in Panmunjom that went on for eleven hours. Because there was no formal agreement about when to take a bathroom break, neither side budged. The meeting became known as the “Battle of the Bladders.”

That one is a pretty scary place.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Wow. I don't want to work there, either.