No Man's Land...

This happened a couple of weeks ago.

Four of us (Anurag, Sumedh, Ravi and yours truly) decided to go and have a dekko at Nicosia. Nicosia is the capital of Cyprus, a status it has enjoyed for more than a 1000 years. It now also endures an unfortunate distinction. After the unification of Berlin it is now Europe's only militarily divided city, split apart by the 'Green Line' - a 'Berlin Wall' of concrete and barbed wire.

In 1995 the Greek Cypriot national assembly voted unanimously to change the divided city's name to Lefkosia. Turkish Cypriots already referred to their half of the city as Lefkosha.

Nicosia is no great shakes as a tourist spot. There is the Liberty Monument and Archbishopric where we took the obligatory pics. These are the very kind of statues that, in India, do not get second looks only pigeon shit but over here compells us to stand in front and flash our pearly whites for the camera.

Once we had got the photos out of the way we still had a few hours left to kill so we decided to make a sortie of Northern Cyprus. Soon we were in the UN buffer zone, stuck in a long line of cars, cracking jokes about how the sinister looking soldier would soon be taking potshots at us with his rifle if we so much as dared to take a photograph. Mental scars from the partition of India and our love-hate relationship with Pakistan? Maybe. But then, isn't every other thing that goes wrong in India blamed on the partition, Gandhiji or Laloo Prasad Yadav.

While I was rambling about nostalgically back home, we had reached the end of the line. Here we find out that we cannot enter Northern Cyprus without our original passports. We just had copies with us. The originals where with the company for processing our work permits. And here we were, happy go lucky fellows who had set out on our evening walk and decided to just hop across a UN Buffer Zone, sinister looking soldier be damned.

"Sorry. Nothing doing", said the guy at immigration.

Soon we were coursing through the buffer zone headed back in the direction from which we came. Back to home sweet home.

But wait! What's this? Like a long forgotten aunt, the Greek Cyprus check post looms up ahead. A quick look at the others' faces told me that I wasn't the only one who had brilliantly concluded that we were in Deep Shit.

"Passport?" said the soldier at the check post.

To help matters this guy was much more sinister looking than the other fellow. Or maybe this is how Deep Shit affects you.

We took out the copies of our passport.

I do not know what looked more foolish, the looks on our faces or the pieces of paper that we were holding out to the soldier and this other guy who had turned up, maybe hoping for some much needed target practice.

Anyway the looks on the soldiers' faces meant only one thing. They needed explanations and fast.

They gave us a patient hearing. Then one of them asked us to park the car.

The greek word for 'ok' is 'dhaksi'. We said ,"ok".

Our car revs up a tad too much while we move to park the car.

The response was a thunderous yell that chilled our blood. Infact I was half expecting lightning to strike.

We parked the car. One of the soldiers makes a call and checks up on our car number.

After a few minutes of parakalo's (pleases) and dhaksi's he waved us away.

We returned home and lived happily ever after.

********************************

My apologies to those who were expecting a few shots fired and some blood spilled. Go watch a movie. I refuse to cater to your gladiatorial instincts.

Coming up next: Lefkosha