Posted by No, not really. It’s the tone of irreverent escapism, you see. This gets us through a lot of things, but it takes on a very different hue when it’s applied to a situation where people are actually dying.
We went to the India-Pakistan border once. It was 20-odd years ago now, which is a faintly harrowing realisation from a personal perspective. We went and watched the Attari–Wagah border ceremony, a faintly bonkers daily ritual carried out by the security forces of the two nations that essentially amounts to a uniformed dance-off.
Michael Palin went to see the ceremony for a BBC programme around the same sort of time. He described it as “carefully choreographed contempt” and also “chauvinism at its most camp.”
There are loads of videos out there, none of which fully capture the speed of the marching or the ferocity of some of the movements.
We like the bit where they smile and have a quick handshake.
They still do all this today. Well, possibly not today – although they did continue through the 2016 tensions, so maybe today. (You always have to call these lethal flare-ups “tensions,” even though that must feel woefully inadequate to those directly affected. “Yes, unfortunately our son was killed last week after that bit of tension with the neighbours.”)
So yeah, we like it when they shake hands and we also like it when India and Pakistan feel able to play cricket against each other. We’re rather less keen on the phases where people are being killed – which is trite, but what else can you say?
Right now, “tension” is sufficiently high that the two nations can’t even play cricket independently, let alone against each other. The Pakistan Super League (PSL) got in there first, booking every available slot at the leisure centres of the UAE so that it can play to completion in a different country.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) has since announced a one-week suspension, which seems a strangely specific and brief span of time. Does the BCCI know something the rest of us don’t? It’s quite possible given the strong links between Indian cricket and the current government, but at the same time surely no-one can confidently predict how all of this will play out.
The IPL suspension comes after a bizarre situation in Dharamshala yesterday where a Punjab Kings match against Delhi Capitals was abandoned after 10.1 overs, supposedly because of floodlight issues, but absolutely not in reality because of floodlight issues.
The local airport was already closed by the time Delhi arrived in the area. Not only that, but the Mumbai Indians match that was scheduled for Sunday had already been moved to Ahmedabad. Very reasuring.
Peter Lalor reports that after the match was abandoned, the players were sent back to their hotel, where they were told not very much at all. We saw one report that said the BCCI has been trying to organise “a special train” for everyone to leave.
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