Bullets and bugles `over-the-fence'

YOU CAN tell the border is approaching when the ratio of uniforms per square hundred metres increases rapidly. On the outskirts of Lahore there are only occasional checkposts manned by uninterested-looking paramilitaries. Soon, although the milestones show the border is 10 miles away, combat- suited soldiers appear at ever-decreasing intervals among the tall trees lining the road.

Beyond the trees the broad fields of the Punjab stretch away in the late afternoon haze. It is a vision that recalls all the Western cliches about the Orient - bullocks sway along the verge, driven by thin, old men in ragged, stained linen dhotis; women walk along the banks of irrigation channels with terracotta pots on their heads.

Wagah, the border station, looks incongruous in the wide, flat landscape. Beyond a scruffy bus stop and the bungalow offices of the customs men, a broad road runs for 250 metres towards a green-and-white painted gate, a large red arch - and then India.

At 5pm the red sun, swollen by the pollution above the distant city of Lahore, was setting. Throughout the huge unbroken sky, small clouds were picked out in pink. It was time for one of the most extraordinary, but somehow saddening, rituals of the sub-continent - the flag ceremony at the only open point on the 1,800-mile border between India and Pakistan.

For 50-odd years - barring the occasional war - soldiers of the two countries have ceremonially raised and then lowered their respective flags at dawn and at dusk. Twice a day, like two neighbours in an over-the-fence feud, they glare at each other over their gates before taking part in a bizarre ritual resembling an It's a Knock-Out competition, in which points are awarded to the faster marchers, loudest shouters and most flamboyant uniforms.

On all but the latter count the Pakistanis appear to be winning - much to the enjoyment of the hundred or so onlookers, all men, who had driven out from Lahore to watch the show. Every yelled command was greeted by shouts and every stamped foot with cheers and applause.

"We are here to feel strong about Pakistan," said Mansoor Ahmed, a 30- year-old shopkeeper, who was crushed against me in the crowd. His face glowed with nationalist pride. "Can you not feel the spirit?" he asked. Mr Ahmed's friends obviously felt it - they shouted so hard they spat on the people in front.

The uniforms grew more extravagant as the ceremony progressed. First, policemen in khaki shirts and ill-fitting black trousers shepherded us into pens with their bamboo staves. But soon the regular army soldiers took over. They wore pea-green shirts and olive trousers and arrived in an eggshell-blue jeep giving them a pleasantly co-ordinated pastel look which their sub-machine guns did nothing to spoil.

They gave way to magnificent looking men from the Punjab Rangers, fabulously decked out in pressed black shalwar-kameez (the traditional Pakiser suits), thick red sashes, striped neck scarves, and gold domed hats wrapped in black cloth sprouting into foot-high fans.

But, despite close competition from a troop of bagpipers with white tunics, scarlet plaid capes and gold epaulettes, the Indian buglers won with their combination of khaki fatigues, white puttees and fantastic red and gold- crested caps.

The border is closed to Pakistani and Indian citizens. The two great nations, separated at birth when they gained their independence from the British in 1947, have a tradition of enmity that can seem neurotic to outsiders. They have fought three wars and held dozens of rounds of talks aimed at improving relations. The most recent ended earlier this month with absolutely no progress. A hundred or so miles north of Wagah, in Kashmir, Indian and Pakistani troops routinely lob shells at each other and at any villagers who get in the way.

On the Siachen glacier, at altitudes of over 7,300m, soldiers are fighting, and dying. A proposed bus link between Delhi in India and Lahore in Pakistan has been held up by bureaucratic tussles; trade between the neighbours is minuscule.

After the ceremony, we found a small group of south Asian peaceniks drinking tea. They were delegates from the "India-Pakistan People's Forum for Peace and Democracy", a group of well-meaning intellectuals who gather every year or so to discuss ways of bringing the two countries closer together. This year the conference was in the western Pakistani city of Peshawar.

"There is so much commonality between us," said Ratti Bartholomew, a theatre director from Delhi, "Not on a government level but on a person- to-person level. Ordinary people don't feel any real enmity. It is just at a state-to-state level that things go wrong."

We laughed over how well the two nations' troops had co-ordinated the timing of their flag-striking and bugle-blowing. "It is so ironic," Mrs Bartholomew said. "After more than 50 years of independence the only thing we seem to be able to co-operate on is when to blow the `Last Post'."