ATARI, West Pakistan, Oct. 29—A Pakistani soldier stepped across the white painted line that marks the border between West Pakistan and India at this lonely crossroad, shook hands and joked for a few minutes with an Indian soldier.

“We are friends here,” the Indian said. The Pakistani smiled but shook his head and said nothing. Both men wished each other well, until the next watch.

Despite the rise of tensions and the threat of military action between the two countries, a tour along part of India's western border, between Atari in West Pakistan and Ferozepore in India, about 250 miles northwest of New Delhi, showed that the situation was relatively calm.

Government spokesmen in New Delhi have reported “no incidents of consequence” along the entire western border with Pakistan, while both sides have charged many violations on the eastern border.

Armies Move Up

But a few miles north and south of Atari, regular soldiers of the Pakistani Army and, later, of the Indian Army have moved to within a few hundred yards of the border as trouble has increased between the two countries over the issues of Pakistani suppression and Indian support of the rebellion in East Pakistan, a thousand miles away.

The Indian soldiers, at least those in the 50‐mile stretch between Atari and Ferozepore, appear to be occupying defensive positions in bunkers behind fortified earthworks a few miles back from the boundary. No armor or concentrations of troops were visible, though tanks have been seen here and on their way north to Kashmir.

The Punjabi farmers here are now using camels and bullock carts to bring in one of the largest rice harvests in recent years, ignoring the military build‐ups, and staying at home in their villages. Official Indian reports say the Pakistanis have evacuated many of their villages.

Friendships Cross Border

Many of the local farmers have relatives or friends in West Pakistan, where many Pakistanis, though they are Moslems and not Hindus, are also Punjabis.

In 1965, Pakistani armored columns moved east in a surprise attack. This time, the build‐up has been slower and rumblings and threats of war have been coming out of New Delhi and Islamabad for months. One Punjabi farmer near the border crossing of Ferozepore said today: “There won't be a war. War comes in a couple of minutes.”

Nevertheless, Indian soldiers of both the Border Security Force, which normally guards the frontier, and the regular army, which has taken command in the last few weeks, are making preparations for war that the chief of the Border Security Force in Punjab, Inspector General Ashwani Kumar, described in an interview as “reaction only.”

The Border Security Force refuses however, to permit close inspection of these preparations or to talk about them. An American visitor who made his way to the small border village of Khalra, north of Ferozepore, while Inspector General Kumar was making a speech to the farmers there yesterday, was ordered to get out.

An Indian businessman who accompanied the American was taken aside by a palice inspector and asked: “Why are you bringing him here? You know Americans are hostile to us. Have you no sense of patriotic responsibility? Take him back immediately.”

‘Afraid of Spies’

Last evening the Indian businessman was interrogated for several hours by the police. “They are afraid of Pakistani spies, he explained, in some embarrassment.

Inspector General Kumar said his speech to the villagers “was to build up their confidence and let them know we are there, and we are ready, and if fighting comes we will carry it to the Pakistanis.”

Today Inspector General Kumar spent part of his time getting the son of a Pakistani, who had served with him before the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, out of a Punjabi jail where ha had been imprisoned for trying to sneak across the border north of Atari. The man had crossed from East Pakistan illegally last spring to escape the fighting there and his father had recently written to Inspector General Kumar to intercede.

“The Prime Minister agreed to reduce his sentence,” Inspector General Kumar said, “hut the Pakistanis would not give him a passport, so I rang up his father today and told him to come to the border at Atari and get his son. If any harm comes to him, it won't be our fault.”