THEY say that a disaster was avoided at Wagah last Sunday. The bomber whose arrival in Lahore had been announced by many papers days in advance was blocked from entering an area where he could have made a much bigger, wider, (even cross-border) impact than he did — killing around 60 people and leaving another 100 injured.

That must be a fact, given that many thousands were present in the Wagah drill arena on the Pakistani side alone, but the containment couldn’t prevent the city from experiencing some of its grimmest days in recent times. This was an attack not on a particular group to allow for the application of any convenient theory of anyone being more secure than the other. It was an attack on the people, generally. Wagah is where people converge to celebrate Pakistani nationhood. It was an attack on the nation.

For the crowd, the Wagah ceremony offers much more than a sneak peek into their patriotism and a glance at territory across the border. The openness of the ceremony makes it a rare opportunity for Pakistanis who arrive from near and far to have a look at their own soldiers on the job from close range. Like many who have been there to have a glimpse, if still a long-distance one, of their opposites on the Indian side, they are thrilled to have gotten this chance to rub shoulders with their men on the front.

The defiant souls who turned up a day after the bombing at Wagah had an additional duty to perform, even if the clamour remained directed at India.

It is a thrilling moment that Lahore provides them with, their beaming faces and their piercing chants convey.

In the midst of a sentiment so intense in its glory, who has the time and ear for the feeble who might be found nursing their sunken heart just when the exercise is at its peak?

If the story is to be told in full then let it be known that not everyone is blessed with the strong disposition to be part of the spectacular drill that has been taking place at Wagah each evening for the last so many decades.

The atmosphere is always so overwhelmingly thick with battle cries — and it does not just relate to a past long gone and buried. It is a reconfirmation of present tendencies. It is a contest where two sets of soldiers are pitted against each other in such an intimidating manner that the pretence of it being a mock show is lost on some.

The soldiers appear to be menacingly engaging the other, competing gesture for gesture, shout for shout, ‘mine’ always superior to ‘theirs’ — in physique, in appearance, in discipline, in the practice of the skills that brings them victory daily.

They are there to demonstrate their respective strengths before a gallery which comprises charged, patriotic crowds.

Each set tries to convince the crowd on their side of the border that they are safe so long as soldiers, with determination and grit put on display, are there manning the entrance to the homeland. They appear to do a very good job of it and are renowned the world over.

The flag-lowering ceremony has had to be one of the most frequently relayed events on Lahore’s calendar in the last few years. There are far too many dimensions to it for the world around to ignore. It is a spectacle that puts on view the closeness yet the distance between two neighbours, and which provides an opportunity for rationalisation of the killing instinct by using the tested method of stagecraft and dramatisation; it is theatre that keeps the bugles ringing in the minds long after they have been exposed to the show.

If that was not an attractive enough package, the show got more meaningful last Monday, in the wake of Sunday’s suicide bombing. The defiant souls who turned up a day after the bombing had an additional duty to perform even if the clamour remained directed at India, a more conventional challenge to deal with. Those who arrived there for Monday’s ceremony were also defying the enemies that had struck from the inside.

Not only this but the people had a choice to put any available face to the attacker. There was the standard option of blaming it on an external hand, but more than that, there were various organisations with a history of militancy in Pakistan vying with each other for the honours. They all belong under a single umbrella to thrive in diversity and united by a common cause as they threatened the country.

The competing claims about who had carried out the attack brought about the sameness of the purpose among the militants at a time when the law-enforcement agencies in the country were left looking at each other in order to pin responsibility. The police, who are primarily assigned to ensure law and order, came up with a lame excuse that the incident had taken place in an area which was under the charge of the Rangers.

There was no word as to how the attacker might have slipped through the defences in the presence of information that a plan was ready to target the Wagah border.

There was no explanation whether the alert had resulted in a combing operation by our own ‘collective’ of intelligence agencies. Hastily, a picture was dug up from somewhere of a young suspect. A day later, the youth whose image was flashed was caught in Multan.

Amid the public resolves declaring that the show must go on, Wagah, which unites people of Pakistan under a single chant, calls for all security people here to join hands against the militants who are as yet proliferating and breaking into new, mutually complementing satellites.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, November 7th, 2014