Rendezvous at the border

The border appeared to blur on ‘Pahela Boishakh’ in the eyes of hundreds of people living on either side who met relatives in the frontier district of Panchagarh, despite the geo-political divide. They met for over two hours at Amarkhana frontier on Monday, the 1st day of the Bengali New Year. Hundreds of men, women and children thronged Bangladesh-India border in the northern-most district and exchanged greetings from either side of an inviolable barbed-wire fence. Most carried gifts, but they had to toss them across to their relatives waiting on the other side of the fence. The five-kilometre stretch buzzed with conversation loud enough to be heard on the other side, flashing smiles, and – less audibly – the hum of sobs. People began gathering from early morning, coming from places such as Panchagarh, Thakurgaon, Dinajpur, Nilphamari and India’s Jalpaiguri and Siliguri districts and Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal state. Amarkhana Union Parishad Chairman Md Nuruzzaman said the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) was at first reluctant to let people get near the barbed-wire fence but later relented, according to bdnews24.com.