A short walk from the satra, along a small unpaved, dirt road, which is hemmed in by homes and fields, is the Indo-Bangladesh boundary. Actually, one passes the fenced border before reaching Satrasal. The fence appears on one side of the road and then on the other, as the border changes direction. There are not many problems in driving along the narrow road that runs parallel to the barbed wire fence, not less than 10 feet high with rolls of concertina wire before it. There are several gates which allow Indian farmers and their livestock access to farmlands on the border. No construction is allowed for a distance of 200 metres from the actual border.

These gates control the approach to the frontier and are manned by guards from the BSF. To get through them, a villager must produce either identification or give details about himself and his residence to one of the guards, who writes it all down on a lined register book. The worker is then issued a cardboard token, which he or she must carry until the gates close for the night.

As I watched, a few boys flying kites wandered over to the Bangladesh side and then returned, intent on their sport. Some goats also trotted around. Were it not for the guards with automatic weapons and the barbed wire fences, the scene would have been quite pastoral.

Before the fence went up, says a resident of the satra, ‘Bangladeshis were entering Satrasal all the time.’ The man, Subhash Chandra Sarkar, a portly 43-year-old, said that in earlier days Bangladeshis would migrate to Delhi through Assam, return home after some years, marry there and again return to Delhi.

The conversations with Sarkar and with his fellow villagers recorded below were conducted in Assamese.

‘These days, they don’t return to Bangladesh to seek brides. There are enough Bangladeshi young women in Delhi and other parts of the country from whom they can choose!’

What is interesting about the movement of Bangladeshis into Assam, to Delhi and elsewhere is that it is predominantly male. The women who come work as maids or household helps, whether it is in Guwahati or in NOIDA, the New Okhla Industrial Development Area, on the northern edge of New Delhi. The men are invariably employed in unskilled areas as rickshaw-pullers, or petty traders (selling fish or the exquisite jhamdhani and tangail sarees of their country), or labourers. They come in, said Sarkar and others, under false names and make their way along established routes in Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and West Bengal.

Mahesh’s story tells us that.

Many do not stay in places such as Satrasal, which is dominated by Assamese speakers and the Koch Rajbonshi community. Except in the diaras, the chars, an immigrant Muslim would stick out like a sore thumb. Through a network of dalals (middlemen) and contacts, people travel on night buses and specially chartered vehicles from towns like Dhubri to Guwahati.