Taki: Epar Bangla, Opar Bangla

Last night, we planned also to visit Taki from Basirhat. It is the Indian border with Bangladesh. It is about 15 kilometers from Basirhat, our ancestral town. Our ancestral house is at the Puratan Bazar, opposite the Basirhat Police Station. Taki is a town and a municipality under Hasnabad police station of Basirhat subdivision in North 24 Parganas district in the Indian state of West Bengal. Taki also has the root of General Shankar Roy Chowdhury, PVSM, ADC, the former Chief of Army Staff of the Indian Army.

We also have one of our ancestral places in Taki. Taki is the hometown of my grandmother — the mother of our father. They were the zamindars of Taki (sadar) town. But now no one is staying there after the sad demise of my cousin a few years ago. I had visited them with my parents during my schooldays several times. I still have faint memories of ponds, coconut trees, mango grove, Chandi mandap, etc. Taki is the land of a number of zamindars. Most of the zamindar baris (their palatial buildings) are in a dilapidated state or converted to tourist resorts.

In the morning, Jaya, Badal, Tota, Soumya, Dadubhai and I went to Taki in our car from our ancestral house in Basirhat. Taki is on the bank of Ichamati river that flows down from Nadia via Basirhat.

Ichamati river (ইছামতী নদী) is a distributory of the river Padma and joins Kalindi river near Hasnabad. It marks the international border between India and Bangladesh at Taki.

As Ichhamati river in Taki separates two countries, the boats on this river have to carry the national flags of their respective countries mandatorily.

There are many Border Security Force (BSF) watchtowers to monitor and prevent unwarranted cross border traffic/movements besides protection of our national boundaries.

As we did not have much time because we have to return today to Kolkata for our visit to Gangtok tomorrow, we just went to the Ichhamati river bordering the countries.

Taki is famous for its gamchha. Gamchha is a thin, coarse, traditional cotton towel found in India, Bangladesh as well as various parts of South and Southeast Asia and is used to dry the body after bathing or wiping sweat. Gamchha is the local term for a sweat towel. It is often just worn on one side of the shoulder.

We had some cold drinks and returned via our ancestral house at Taki. We did not go inside the house for paucity of time. May be, we will visit there during our next visit to Taki.

I would love to come over here again.