Word: panidhar
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...village of Panidhar is a cluster of 18 mud, brick and bamboo houses in a poor, wet corner of eastern India. Its problems will sound familiar to anyone who has traveled through the country's thick rural darkness. Panidhar's 195 residents live on rice and fish from the surrounding paddy fields and ponds; lucky children get vegetables and lentils, too, but few go to school. The brick factory across the Ichamati River sends boats to fetch a few of the young men; the rest have left for cities many miles away...
...accident of geography turns these ordinary lives into one of India's most surreal dramas. The border between India and Bangladesh, drawn in haste just before India's independence in 1947, snakes through Panidhar. It runs right in front of the modest, thatched-roof home of Fazlur Rehman, 50, the village's unofficial headman. His younger brother lives next door - in another country. "His child, my child are the same," Rehman says. But in Panidhar, the children violate international law every time they run around the small patch of mango and betel-nut trees. A few hundred meters away, Indian...
...Neither the children nor their parents can ignore the reality of the border - it's rushing up to meet them. Panidhar sits near Pillar No. 1, where the land border between the two countries begins. For the past 60 years, those markers were the only sign that there were two nations encompassed in this one village. But there is a new one nearby, made of steel, concrete and barbed wire. Like the U.S., Israel and other countries, India is constructing a massive frontier fence, hoping that it will act as a bulwark against what the government in New Delhi perceives...
...Like everywhere else on this border, mistrust lies just beneath what is meant to be an open exchange. In that way, Petrapole is no different from Panidhar. Here, the suspicion is out in the open. After dark, no one leaves their houses, or they risk getting stopped by the BSF, who have orders to shoot if threatened. On my way back to the main road with my BSF escorts, two men cross our paths. "They're Bangladeshi," one officer says. And they send them on their way. There's an unusual feature of the Ichamati River here: every six hours...
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