by SAMRAT
Borders are significant barriers only in the minds of those who have never walked across one. Anyone who does that learns that in most places there is no crack in the earth where one country ends and another begins.
I walked across the border from India into Bangladesh in 2002. It was for love; I was young and foolish. My then-girlfriend, who is from the northeast, had gone to the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh on a research trip for a doctoral thesis. This involved meeting rebels from the Chakma tribe who had long been battling the Bangladesh government, and so I was concerned about her safety. I decided to go in after her.
It proved not to be easy. My visa application went into some kind of strange limbo. I would call every day, to be told my visa still had not been approved, and that I would have to meet the minister for press and information at the Bangladeshi embassy in New Delhi. I tried to make an appointment with him but never got one. I tried calling the man, whom I knew. He stopped taking my calls when he realized what I was calling about. Once, I called from a landline. He answered his mobile phone and asked who was speaking. When he heard it was me, he said: “Sir is not here.”
Meanwhile my girlfriend had reached Chittagong. I decided I needed to work out an alternate way of getting in. If the Bangladeshis were going to be difficult about the visa, I’d simply do what so many Bangladeshis have allegedly done: I’d cross the border without a visa.
The New York Times for more
(Thanks to Robin Khundkar)