Neighbouring visit

Other than Pakistan, the other nations in South Asia are pretty easy for us to get into. With Nepal there is barely a border and people can visit quite easily. This is also true of Bhutan, though there is news that the government there will now ask Indians to spend the minimum dollar amount it requires other foreigners to do (which will seriously impact the numbers going there). Sri Lanka is also not difficult. 

The other thing about these nations is that they are familiar places for us in terms of the weather, the broad culture and the food. We are not out of place and they don’t seem particularly foreign. Pakistan is all those things listed above, but it is hard, very hard to get into. Unless one is influential and knows people in the embassy or one has relations on the other side, there’s pretty much no chance that one will ever experience Lahore and Karachi. That is a shame but that is moving away from the subject, which is, the neighbours we can easily get into. This week I went to Bangladesh.  

My in-laws live in Kolkata and the family is from the other side of the border, having chosen India after Partition. But they had never been to Bangladesh and so we decided to go over and have a look. A visa was required but took little time and did not even require our presence. This is a relief. It has become quite a headache for Indians to travel to Europe and the US because of the hoops they make us jump through. 

There are regular flights connecting Kolkata and Dhaka and we booked ourselves on one. Sadly, we had a tragedy in the family the day after we came to Kolkata and we were not able to make the flight. The trip was pretty much a write-off but after the rituals and ceremonies for the tragedy were over, we discovered that there was a train we could take from Kolkata to Khulna in Bangladesh.

The bank of Buriganga River in Sadarghat, Old Dhaka

 

Getting the train tickets was an adventure, of course. This being India and it being Kolkata in particular, there was anarchy at the station and it was not clear what one had to do and which queue was the right one. From getting the numbered form, which gave you your turn (getting that form took 45 minutes because there was nobody at the counter to hand them out), to getting the tickets took three hours. 

The man handing them out recognised me from pictures and we chatted about politics (he appeared to be a fan of the present dispensation). He said I should have identified myself before and it wouldn’t have taken as long to get the tickets. Of course, one doesn’t know what to say in response to something like that. The other interesting thing is that a guard came up behind the ticket seller as we were chatting and greeted him with “Jai Shri Ram”. It seemed to amuse them quite a bit to say it loudly (in a room full mostly of Bangladeshis buying tickets to return home). 

The train left at 7 am but we had to get there early to clear immigration and customs though this barely took five minutes. The train to Khulna is not as popular as the one to Dhaka and there were perhaps 80 or so people in all travelling. But our numbered were bolstered by the very large presence of the Border Security Force guards — both men and women — carrying rifles. When the train started, they were at the door of each coach to stop people from getting in and out. 

The ride was not long. About an hour to the border and a little more than a couple of hours after that. 

Customs and immigration in Bangladesh again took very little time. Those dressed as the middle-class might be were waved through without a check, while the poorer lungi-clad ones were stopped and screened. 

Bangladesh is not unlike India and it would not be easy for most people to be able to tell Bangladesh apart from West Bengal. The cities are smaller and there is little sign of wealth, but that is also true of large parts of India. About the traffic and noise I need not say anything because it is no different. The food is the same too of course.

The things that were slightly different I can tell you about. First, the villages in the delta and the Sunderbans are more orderly and organised than In India. There is less litter because there is less consumption. 

Some of the vehicles are different. The trucks are the same — Leylands, Eichers, Tatas — because they go from India as do many of the motorcycles. But the cars are not from here, being mostly Japanese imports.

There are many more mosques than temples and that is to be expected. Bangladesh is the heart of the Partition movement and if the British had not been forced by the Congress to reverse the partition of Bengal, the larger Partition of 1947 might not have happened. 

It has become impossible for us to visit Pakistan but it is easy to go to Bangladesh. A visit will help us understand a little better the basis for what happened in 1947 and why we remain, despite all of the similarities, seven decades later, three nations and not one.