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This article is the fourth part of a series. Read about Bishwanath Ghosh's experiences on the Western front at >Dera Baba Nanak , >Hussainiwala and >Attari , as well as a synopsis of the >Radcliffe Line
It took me just two steps to cross the Radcliffe Line, and I mentally added Bangladesh to the list of countries I have visited, even though I spent precisely 15 seconds on its soil.
Stepping into Bangladesh wasn’t the plan. The idea was to visit a border village, stare at the Bangladesh side, and get an elderly resident to reminisce about the pre-Partition days.
It was with that intention I had arrived at the Border Security Force camp at Digaltari, one of the remotest villages of West Bengal, about 40 km from the town of Cooch Behar; my driver wasn’t sure if we could go right up to the border without permission from the BSF.
The two junior officers I came across at the camp — their days must be spent staring at the green fields and dealing with villagers and smugglers — were evidently happy to be visited by a fellow countryman from the city, but at the same time they were also wary about my request that I be allowed to travel to the border. After all, I was a total stranger.
And so, while on the one hand I was offered a chair and served with water and subsequently tea, on the other I was subjected to repeated but polite questioning: What is your name again? Which paper did you say you work for? What is your designation? Why do you want to visit a border village? May I have your visiting card? May I see your ID card, please?
Fortunately for me, both the junior officers, men in their late twenties or early thirties, thought very highly of The Hindu — no, they didn’t hail from Chennai, but belonged to the Hindi belt.
“Should we send him to Paglabari?” one of them asked the other.
“But we need to ask CO saab [commanding officer],” replied the other.
“Yes, you are right. Let me call CO saab then,” the one who had suggested Paglabari said, as he stepped away to make the call.
Pagla, in Bengali, means a crazy or eccentric man; bari means home. A neighbourhood named after a crazy man’s home, that too by the border: not to be missed. Who was Pagla? Why was he called Pagla? When did he live? Did he see the Partition? My mind throbbed with these questions, but the most important question: would the CO agree?
I heard my name and designation being repeatedly mentioned over the phone, and after five minutes, the man who had been on the phone came up to me and said, “Ok, one of our men will accompany you. And no photographs please.”
I headed to the car followed by a BSF man in plainclothes, and soon we were driving on a path along the border, every few metres passing a rather inconspicuous pillar of demarcation. The imaginary line joining the pillars is Radcliffe Line. Sometimes, India lay on either side of the path; sometimes, India on the left and Bangladesh on the right; sometimes, India on the right and Bangladesh on the left.
“Gives you an idea how zigzagged the border is,” remarked the BSF man. The zigzaggedness makes the India-Bangladesh border the fifth-longest land border in the world.
Not many would have envied Sir Cyril Radcliffe back in 1947 when, on July 8 that year, he arrived in India, for the first and the only time, to partition Bengal and Punjab. The borders drawn by him were made public on August 17; by then Sir Cyril had already left India, without collecting his fee of 40,000 rupees, horrified by the killings that had already begun. He died in 1977 and never spoke about his work in India; though in 1966, the celebrated poet W.H. Auden described what Radcliffe’s days must have been like:
Shut up in a lonely mansion, with police night and day
Patrolling the gardens to keep assassins away,
He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate
Of millions. The maps at his disposal were out of date
And the Census Returns almost certainly incorrect,
But there was no time to check them, no time to inspect
Contested areas. The weather was frightfully hot,
And a bout of dysentery kept him constantly on the trot,
But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided,
A continent for better or worse divided.
And now I travelled on that line, whose creation uprooted 12 million people from their homes and killed up to one million. This particular stretch isn’t fenced. And the paddy fields on either side come up till the last inch of Zero Line. As a result there was greenery all around, the monotony occasionally broken by clusters of tin houses (no more humble mud houses), most of them equipped with dish antennae.
“I see only greenery all around. How do you make out which part of the green is India and which part of the green Bangladesh?” I asked the BSF man.
“We can tell from the pillars.”
“But they are placed so haphazardly, and sometimes can remain hidden amid the crops.”
“It is our job to know where they are.”
We stopped outside a cluster of tin houses. Paglabari, as it turned out, was not a neighbourhood as I had imagined, but the house of a man called Pagla who was very much alive. Mr. Pagla, clad in a vest and lungi, rushed out to greet us as soon as we got down from the car -- BSF men are VIPs in border villages.
I shook Pagla’s hand and asked him if he had a proper name.
“Of course, Nadir Sheikh.”
“Then why are you called Pagla?”
“I have been called Pagla ever since I was a child. I don’t know how I got the name.”
“How old are you?”
“About sixty.”
We walked past Pagla’s tin house into his courtyard where, barely 10ft away, stood an identical house. From the shrubs separating the two houses sprouted a weather-worn pillar: ‘977 | 7-S IND’. Which meant Radcliffe Line ran between the two. Pagla’s house was in the village of East Digaltari village — in India. His neighbour’s in South Bansjani village — in Bangladesh.
The children and the chicken running about in the courtyard didn’t recognise the border. Neither did the adults. “There are 12-13 houses here, some in India, some in Bangladesh. We always visit one another’s homes during weddings and funerals. This place is like my own village,” said Pagla.
Members of his neighbour’s family — they had by now gathered outside their house out of curiosity but were careful not to cross the imaginary line because the BSF man was present — agreed vehemently. “We are always together in times of need,” a male member said.
They listened on intently as I spoke to Pagla. The BSF man listened too.
Pagla was born in the village and his family now consists of his wife, son and daughter-in-law, and a grandson. He also has a daughter, who is 12. There is no one in the family old enough to have witnessed the drawing of Radcliffe Line.
As a child, Pagla studied in a nearby madrasa and went on to become a farmer, growing paddy, jute and sometimes wheat. His son, who studied in a nearby high school, now worked in a brick kiln near Delhi. About 30% of the men in this cluster worked in big cities in north India, mostly as labourers. They came home once a year, during the harvest season.
“Life is peaceful for me, I have no complaints,” Pagla said.
“What do you do for entertainment?” I asked him.
“Why, I have a dish antenna. I watch movies.”
“Do you watch Bangladeshi programmes too?”
“I watch everything.”
Suddenly, a bare-chested boy from across the border interrupted us. “We also have dish antenna - Airtel,” he exclaimed. His name was Sujan, 15 years old, studying in the 10th standard.
“Do you watch Indian films?”
“All of them, especially films of Ankush and Dev (both present-day Bengali actors).”
“What about Hindi films?”
“Of course.”
“And your favourite hero?”
“Salman Khan!” he spat out the name ecstatically.
As I chatted with him about Salman Khan — he hadn’t watched Bajrangi Bhaijaan yet, quite understandably — it struck me how, even during moments of excitement induced by hero-worship, not once did he come closer to me. He remained in his part of the courtyard, about 5 ft away, respecting the divide established by the Radcliffe Line. Same people, same culture, same religion, same customs, same sources of joy and suffering — yet an imaginary line dividing them into two nations. How cruel and meaningless.
“If I go and stand where the boy is standing now, will I be entering Bangladesh?” I asked aloud, to no one in particular.
“Yes!” came the answer in unison.
I looked at the BSF man, who didn’t look very pleased.
Pagla’s neighbours urged me, “Aasen na! Aasen na! Kichhu hobe na!”—Please come, please come, nothing is going to happen to you.
Pagla too egged me on, “Jaan na! Kichhu hobe na!” — Go ahead, nothing is going to happen to you.
I took two strides and I was in Bangladesh.
One of Pagla’s neighbours suggested I take a leisurely walk in their courtyard before returning to India. “What’s the hurry?” he said. I turned to the BSF man for approval but he looked nervous and motioned me to come back. I complied.
Relieved that I had listened to him, the BSF man smiled: “So you just travelled to a foreign country. Congratulations!”
