Lines on the map

The road to Dawki is rough and patchy. The low-floating clouds of Meghalaya have decided not to accompany us on this route, where men and machines are busy ravaging the limestone-rich mountains. Big chunks of once lush peaks are being scooped out and the stones loaded on to trucks waiting on the dusty road. These trucks will head to the Bangladesh border, on which Dawki sits. Time after time the courts have flagged this wonton plundering but the mining and quarrying continues.

It’s not a sight I had expected to come across on what was to be a pleasant journey to the Dawki river, which is known for blue-green waters so clear that the boats sailing on them appear to be floating on air. More disappointment awaits at the destination. We’ve chosen the wrong time of the year for Dawki. It has rained and the pre-monsoon showers have disturbed the placid river, bringing up the sediment and leaving the waters muddy.

Standing on the wide and rocky riverside, I take the scene in. Despite the muddy waters, it’s a pretty place.

Dawki (the official name is Umngot River) is a tourist spot, and like all tourist spots, it has its share of people selling snacks, knick-knacks and services. One of them, armed with a camera, insists that we get a picture clicked. “I’m a professional photographer, madam,” says the pesky fellow. It takes a few firm “Nos” before he gives up.

We’ve driven three hours from Shillong to reach here. Is there a way to salvage this trip, I wonder, and decide to ask a boatman if any bit of the river is clear. The boats with canopies in the distance look nice, so I start walking towards them. But I’ve barely taken two or three steps when shouts of “Madam”, “Madam”, “Madam” erupt around me. Hah! They know I want to rent a boat and are trying to grab my attention. I ignore them and take three more determined but careful steps so as not to slip on the rocky ground. The shouts of “madam, madam” continue and then someone yells, “Madam, you are in Bangladesh!”
 

What?! I jump, and turn around. People are staring. The Border Security Force (BSF) guy keeping watch from a nearby post, which is at a slight height, has been blowing his shrill whistle at me but the wind has carried the sound away. I hasten to retreat. Five steps and I’m back in India. Phew! The BSF fellow has now turned his attention to the others who, like me, have mistakenly walked to the other side.

Dawki is bang on the Bangladesh border. But where’s the mark that says this is where India’s boundary ends and Bangladesh begins, I ask. The pesky photographer points to a rock that’s slightly bigger than the thousands strewn on the riverside. Really? That? I look up, and notice a couple standing on the Bangladesh side, less than an arm’s distance from me. They’re just standing there, staring towards India, the way some on the India side are staring towards Bangladesh. The pesky photographer is now standing across that border-defining rock.

“You? Which side are you on?” I ask him, my feet now firmly planted on Indian territory. “Bangladesh,” says the cheeky chap. “And you’re doing business on both sides?” He grins. The fellow probably also doubles up as a money changer or perhaps has a friend who helps him convert the Indian rupee he earns on this side to the Bangladeshi taka. Who knows?

Borders. How they play on our psyche. How alarmed, and later excited, I was to learn that I’d stepped across a border. How mesmerised that couple staring across it was, even though it was the same muddy river and rocky terrain that ran on both sides.

Border stories, we know well enough, aren’t always light-hearted like this encounter of mine. Borders can be bloody. They can sear a wound on our hearts, like the Partition Museum at the Dara Shikoh Library in Delhi’s Ambedkar University shows. The museum, which opened in May, houses the memories and stories that thousands who were displaced carried across the border. Borders, once they are carved, don’t usually fade away. Memories do. The museum, the second after one in Amritsar, is an attempt to secure them.

Borders can be cruel, sometimes to their own people. We saw that in the early months of the pandemic, when thousands of migrant workers made desperate journeys to get back home. On the way they encountered borders as states sealed their boundaries to keep the deadly virus out. Bheed, a film shot in black and white to reflect the starkness of the time and what’s often our worldview, captures the trauma one such border inflicts. Borders, if we think about it, are all around us. How does one even begin to list what they do to people?