In the aftermath of the Assam agitation, the students and other leaders had demanded the ‘sealing’ of the Indo-Bangladesh border with a fence and a road alongside, to patrol and keep a lookout for Bangladeshis trying to sneak in. We were assured by Yadav and others that the border was, indeed, closely monitored and was difficult to cross.

After tea, we decided to go for a little drive along the border. Out of sight of the BSF, especially its watch tower (there was supposed to be one at a distance of every kilometre), we stopped our sturdy Ambassador at a turning in the dirt road. There was no sign of people; the sound of birds and crickets filled the air. A few hundred feet across the bushes were the paddy fields of Mymensingh district in Bangladesh.

We walked those several hundred feet, looking backwards from time to time to check if the BSF or the BDR were coming after. us. It was a lazy late morning and the cows on the fields looked at us with scant interest. What did it matter to them if we were Indian or Bangladeshi? Do cows have a nationality?

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.