In this brilliantly evocative lyrical work by Bhaskar Roy, multiple boundaries come to the fore, spanning different regions with their unique demographics and layers of intersectionality of class, caste and gender. While the private lives, hopes and aspirations of ex-diplomat Arijit Basu and his fiancée Nandita Kapoor are destroyed in their efforts to rescue illegal Bangladeshi migrant Rabeya, alias Rita, Gurkha guard Ram Bahadur Chhetri succeeds in ” to create a new identity”. ', and hopefully a new life for both of them.
The plot is both familiar and unique. Year after year, hundreds if not thousands cross the border between India and Bangladesh, where women, more vulnerable than men, choose an acceptable Hindu name and even apply a bindi or vermilion (if the situation warrants it). Even if obtaining the new identity card is more difficult, it is not a paradigm of impossibility, since the new migrants often lead a marginal existence and women prefer to work as domestic helpers. So Rita finds a job in Arjit Basu's apartment in the newly built Blue Lotus Grove across the state border on the other side of the Hindon River. Rita was trained in the culinary arts by her father, who was employed by an American documentary filmmaker. She is courted by Jamal, another migrant from her own village, who is very good at his job of shaping iron bars. However, he is discovered and indoctrinated by Islamic hardliners and given instructions by a Pakistani major who speaks of 'the spineless veggie Hindus' with disdain. Jamal loves Rita to the core, but her feelings towards him are ambivalent, especially because she is afraid of the violence in him.
As Arijit finds out the truth about her status, he feels protective of her – almost like a father, and she too reciprocates by moving from sir to uncle to the more loving and lovable Kaku in her relationship with him. Arijit's fiancée, Nandita Kapoor, also takes an immediate liking to her and, at least halfway through the book, it seems as if the story could have a happy ending – with Arijit and Nandita settling in a farmhouse on the outskirts of the city and Rita settling in with Nandita's driver, Bharat home. However, this was not to happen because just before Rita could move into the new EWS apartment, the JJ group of these undocumented migrants is set on fire by the arsonists who want to rid Bharat of the foreign vermin. The fire department doesn't arrive, and the police do what they do best: they abuse the vulnerable women and take five thousand rupees to release them for not filing the complaint about their illegal status on this land.
Shy and charming Rita is simply great at her job – she has perfected both Continental and Bangla cuisine, runs the house perfectly and even finds time for the intricate needlework and embroidery she learned from her mother. In contrast to her cousin Rekha, who becomes Mrs. Varghese after her marriage, she is reserved in dealing with her admirers; And that makes her even more attractive to Nandita's driver Bharat and of course to Chettri, who has been her “protector” from the beginning of the story. It is he who has the earthy sense to give her a makeover and kidnap her from the capital, after the connection between her and Jamal – the terrorist – has probably been traced.
However, Jamal's calls to Nandita related to her home repairs are now being exaggerated by the paparazzi to start a case against her as she had been one of India's most famous writers in Paris, and we get a glimpse of how top anchors can operate for as long as they like to increase their TRP rating. She fights back and wins – but something has broken and she doesn't have the will to marry Arijit, not because she doesn't love him, but for his sake and for the sake of her sanity and privacy.
Roy takes us through many different worlds: we absorb the conferences, dialogue and diplomacy of Arijit Basu, who fits seamlessly into the upper-middle-class Bengali household of his sister in Calcutta, his niece in Dehradun and Mussoorie and his daughter in the USA inserts. Then there is the world of Nandita Kapoor and her mother – the upper class Punjabis, Neha Arora's Hindutva brigade and the vigilantes, the bauls and fakirs of Chandni Bagh, who speak of universal love – a sharp contrast to the venom-spitting Maulana Saheb, who wants to exterminate the Jews, Christians and Hindus, the spouse swap of the upper class of the new professionals, the street theater activist Ranjana Mathur, who is also there They are at home – both in the famous Prithvi Theater and in the miserable slums, and of course in the world of real estate agents who flaunt state power to drive farmers off the land they have farmed for generations.
The domestic staff's vulnerability, identity crisis, desperation and possible sexual assault are a recurring theme in contemporary fiction in India. From Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger to Mahasweta Devi's Truth/Untruth (translated by Anjum Katyal) to Udayan Mukherjee's No Way In, the asymmetry in the relationship between the Saheb and the woman versus the driver and the maid is quite there clear: the latter are more vulnerable and are often on the receiving end. In Border Crossers, they have the same agency as those on the edge – they make their decisions, shape their fates, achieve their dreams and make intelligent compromises to survive. Maybe Roy can make a sequel to the life of the lively Gurkhaand, the maiden from Rupda (Bangladesh), as they settle Down Under – perhaps under another non-de-plume.
Finally, any questions? Have border fences ever worked in history? Well, the best they could do was stem the tide, because the inexorable laws of the market often drive people from starvation wages to greener pastures. What happens if the population structure changes to such an extent that indigenous people fear becoming a voting minority? Is their vulnerability real, imagined, exaggerated, or a mix of all of the above? For a nuanced look at these issues and the drivers and motivations behind the many shades of terror and religious intolerance that characterize the Indian subcontinent, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of this highly readable book by Bhaskar Roy, whose writing has been described as “rich and sensual with an extremely good depiction of the sights, sounds and smells of India and Bangladesh”.
The author, a former director of the LBS National Academy of Administration, is currently a historian, policy analyst and columnist and serves as festival director of Valley of Words – a festival of arts and literature