It's the annual Chamliyal mela, celebrated at two spots, 600 yards apart. The mela is 300 years old, the festivities are as colourful as ever.

The only difference -- for the past 50 years -- is the border which has come between the two holy spots. Now Chamliyal is in India, Saidawali in Pakistan.

The devotees stood, six hundred yards apart, looking at each other as the BSF jawans and Pak Rangers watched. They dropped their guns for a day and were busy taking the prasad from the shrine of Baba Dalip Singh in Chamliyal to the devotees across the border at Saidawali. The Rangers sent a chaddar (shawal) and a box of fruits to the Baba's shrine at around 1.00pm. The BSF, in turn, supplied them the prasad to be distributed among the devotees in Pakistan.

The annual fair, celebrated by the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs in both the countries, relates to Baba Dalip Singh Manhas of Chamliyal. Legend has it that the Baba was assaulted by some criminals when he was returning from his fields. He died while fighting and his body fell at Saidawali and his head in Chamliyal.

One night, one of his disciples saw the Baba in his dream, telling him about the medicinal value of the land where his head had fallen. The Baba told him that his skin ailment will be cured if he mixed the soil and water of that land and applied it on his affected parts. The next morning, the legend says, the disciple applied the mud on his skin and got cured. He told others and the word spread.

And for the past three hundred years, devotees have been celebrating the annual mela and waiting for the soil (shakkar) and water(sharbat).

Today, the shrine of Chamliyal Baba wassurrounded by a makeshift market, loudspeakers blared, drum beats drowned kirtans and around 25,000 devotees turned up.

The scene was similar at Saidawali on the other side of the border. Around 50,000 people had gathered to collect shakkar and sharbat, which was to be brought from the Baba's shrine on the Indian side.

Like last year, the Rangers, however, did not agree to the BSF's offer of taking shakkar and sharbat to the other side of the border. The BSF commandant, Mohinder Singh Malik, who held a flag meeting with his Pakistani counterpart, Faizal Hafeez, said the Rangers expressed their inability to distribute shakkar and sharbat to such a large number of devotees.

In fact, the Rangers had agreed to distribute them earlier and the BSF had kept tractor trolleys ready for carrying shakkar and sharbat from the shrine to the zero line. Malik said the Rangers had requested them to arrange the supply up to the zero line.

But today they told theBSF that it would not be possible as the crowd at Saidanwali was very big and difficult to control. Instead, they agreed to accept and distribute prasad to the devotees in Pakistan.