But cows and cattle have an interesting history in the history of the two countries, dating back to the days of East Pakistan. Cattle rustling by Bangladeshi gangs was a common enough event, especially on this sector of the border. Indeed, many years later I learned that the biggest single export by India (in the informal, read, illegal, sector of bilateral trade) was that of over 1,700,000 cattle to Bangladesh every year!

At Dalu, we had been warned about the sudden appearance of thugs and thieves by the BSF, and had shrugged off their offer of assistance (in the form of an armed guard). But our driver had been worried by the advice.

He called out to us several times from the apparent safety of the car, asking us to return. When his hailing had no effect on the intrepid band of explorers (comprising of my brother, a Garo friend of his and me), he resorted to a more direct method of persuasion.

He sent his deputy, a scrawny Bengali boy of about eighteen who doubled as car cleaner, with the following message: if we did not get back in the next fifteen minutes, he was going to leave and return to Tura. With an ultimatum like that, we were in no position to argue. When we turned on him in the car and shouted at him for getting us back, he only raised his hands in embarrassment and helplessness and said: ‘But, saar, if the car was attacked, then I would have to pay for the damage from my own pocket. Why take a chance, saar.’ Our telling him repeatedly that we would cover the costs in the event of any mishap had no effect.

We returned to Tura.

Of course, since that time, we are told that border patrolling has improved: that some fencing has come up and that there are segments of tar-topped roads along these lines of human division. It would be another thirteen years before I returned here, to another part of the border, both from the Indian and the Bangladeshi sides.

In 1998, Anindita Dasgupta managed to put together a micro-level map of one little bit of the border between the two countries. A quick look helps even a casual observer understand how easy it is to cross parts of this border: the river and its many channels are the key. There is another major factor—human greed, of those in uniform and out of it, that helps sustain the profitable business of people smuggling.

How on earth can anyone control the stealthy movement of people over nine channels of the main river? There are rivers which are slashed by the boundary markers of either country. So are the chars. What is there to prevent people walking from one part of the char to the other and thus crossing into another country? There are no barbed wire fences here, no rolls of concertina wire, the BSF patrol boats are few and far between. Anyone who thinks that patrol boats can keep a watch on these many streams, which wend in and out among the many islands, is badly mistaken.