I thought it was the most unlikely place to run into a Bangladeshi. One evening last October I sat by the basin of the Trevi fountain, that 18th century wonder in Rome. There was a young man, obviously from South Asia, selling flowers to visitors around the fountain.He too noticed me and my family as we entered the fountain area. Within minutes he walked up to us, evidently attracted by our Bengali conversation. He too was from (West) Bengal, he said. But his accent gave him away. "Come on," I said, "I know you are from Bangladesh." After a bit of hedging he gave in. Yes, he was from the Lakshmipur district of Bangladesh. It was my turn to be surprised now. For my ancestral place too is in the same district.Lakshmipur was part of Noakhali district, made famous by Mahatma Gandhi's visit there following the 1946 communal riots. It became a district after former Bangladesh president H.M. Ershad elevated 52 subdivisional headquarters into districts. I had visited my ancestral place as recently as June 1996,the first one in my family to have done so in almost half a century. My kinsmen had migrated to Calcutta before Partition.The young Bangladeshi was struck by the coincidence and poured his heart out. Hailing from a poor farmer's family, he set out about three years ago, seeking a better life on other shores. He first went to Dubai, where a manpower export agency in Bangladesh got him a nondescript job. He saved enough money to go on a holiday to, of all places, Bosnia. Upto this point he held a legal work permit for Dubai.But in Bosnia he met a few other Bangladeshis and together they sneaked into Italy, illegally. It wasn't as big a hassle, he said, as one might think. There were 30,000 Bangladeshis living illegally in Rome alone and they were always keen to help other compatriots. Corruption being quite deeprooted in Italy, the police and other authorities can be encouraged to look the other way for a decent amount of lira. "Well, if you don't believe me," said the Bangladeshi, " come to Victoria." Hemeant the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele, near the Roma Termini railway station, where Rome's Bangladeshis have carved out a home for themselves. He told us we could get an authentic Bengali lunch of rice and fish curry at many of the restaurants at `Victoria'. We could never make it to the Little Bangladesh in Rome, much as we longed for the fish curry.But over the next three days, we ran into other Bangladeshis, including the owner of a snack bar near the ruins of the Roman Forum. It was more or less the same story with each of them. There was that curious initial denial (about their illegal entry) and then the admission. And I saw the bigger picture in this. Hadn't I met similar men in Indian border towns like West Bengal's Siliguri, Bihar's Kishangunj or Assam's Silchar and heard the same story recounted scores of times? Ask a Siliguri rickshaw-puller where he is from. He gives a vague answer, naming an unsung place in some West Bengal district. Guide the conversation carefully and before long he tells youof his hometown in Bangladesh.At Kishan-gunj, old people would tell you that the infiltration from across the border has changed the town's demography. Several thousand natives have left it, having been forced to sell their property to the ever-increasing number of illegal settlers. Visiting Cooch Behar in north Bengal five years ago to do a story on infiltration from Bangladesh, I found Congress and CPI(M) politicians joining hands to bring Bangladeshis in Matador vans from the border and then putting them on to the Teesta-Torsa Express bound for the Nizamuddin railway station in Delhi. In Rome, the Bangladeshis don't vote in local elections. If the BJP is to be believed, electoral outcomes in 100 out 294 Assembly constituencies in West Bengal are now decided by Bangladeshis.
