The crowd breaks repeatedly into good-natured applause and cheers, led by a moustached man with a cordless mike on the road below us. He has a sonorous way of bellowing slogans from time to time, which of course we all bellow back at him. He periodically points to someone in the audience and urges that someone to yell, but curiously, every time he points, he also runs his hand quickly over his chin, indicating a beard.
Again and again he shouts: "You over there with the beard! Bellow up!"
But why does he single out guys with beards? I mean, considering this is Punjab, there are indeed plenty with beards around me. In fact, I would say the great majority of the males are bearded. (Many have turbans too.) So of what use is it to indicate a beard to pick someone out of a crowd?
Later, several khaki-uniformed men march up to the gate and back. I use that word march advisedly, for what they really do is a quick strut. Like wind-up clockwork dolls, the crests atop their turbans shaking angrily, they zip in formation along the road, due west into the sunsetting haze, turn abruptly at the gate and zip back on the other side of the road. As they turn, I notice that a similar posse, but in black and with marginally larger and angrier crests, is doing the same on the other side of the gate.