"No. He left the country many years ago, but has not yet gotten a passport because of lack of documentation. Maybe he can get one soon," replied Arif. What was unsaid but implied is that his uncle is an undocumented migrant in India.

Beside Arif, Babul handed Tk 1,000 to a red-shirted porter and asked him to give it to a woman in a bright orange sari. The porters, who help people carry their bags over the border, are the only ones who can cross over and come back without a visa. "That is my cousin. I need her to send some medicines from India, and there is no other way to send money from Bangladesh," explained Babul, sheepish at having been caught in the illegal act.

Back at Chapainawabganj, near the Sonamasjid-Mahdipur border, the political boundary is as odd as it gets. The border skirts the Kashinathpur-Rajshahi highway for a good few hundred yards before one encounters the immigration office. They are so close, that say if a vehicle skidded off the highway, it would fall into a ditch on the Indian side.

A derelict, abandoned Border Guard Bangladesh checkpoint, which locals have resourcefully co-opted as a dustbin, attempts to let people know that they are now on Indian land -- in vain. Bangladeshi traders and passengers alike took advantage of the shade provided by the large mango-trees on Indian land.

It is at this spot where Bismillah bhaater hotel begins off in Bangladesh, and ends in India. The modest outfit offers an expansive buffet of the local cuisine for tired travelers, all of which is cooked in its kitchen on Indian land. "Our kitchen is in India," laughs Azizur, one of the cooks, as he kneaded dough for puri, adding cheekily "and so is our toilet!"

And it is here that we found a mentally disabled man, straddling the border. He spends his days sitting under the shade of Indian trees, and then crosses over to Bismillah hotel in Bangladesh for scraps of food. He neither tells anyone his name, nor whether he is Bangladeshi or Indian. All that anybody can say about him is that one day two years ago, he turned up here.