Fences, Goods and “Police”: Figurations of the Border in Manjira Saha's Chhotoder Border

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, I closely read Manjira Saha’s 2018 volume Chhotoder Border. a collection of children's line drawings and short narratives collated from school children in the India- Bangladesh borderlands. Certain recurring tropes emerge from these rough drawings and short descriptions, rife with spelling mistakes. The border, an English word repeatedly transcribed in Bengali, does not need an introduction or justification in the lives of these children of the borderlands–the materiality of the border is represented through barbed wire fences, through the “police” who are at once scary and helpful, and the repeated, casual reference to trafficking in goods. I identify the materiality and the affective dimensions of the border through the narratives and drawings in Chhotoder Border. This article analyses the linguistic and visual texts collected by Saha in the volume to understand the framing of the materiality of the Indo- Bangladesh border as well as its affective import among the students who are the contributors to Saha's volume. In so doing, it contributes to the burgeoning discourse around the “cultural aspect of borders”. By investigating the “figurations” or narrative tropes/themes present in these border narratives this article furthers the understanding of discursive construction and circulation of borders.