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Looks that Lost for Killings

Border (noun) is the line that divides two countries or areas; the land near this line

 

Identity (noun) who or what somebody/something is

 

X-ray (verb) to photograph and examine bones and organs inside the body

The x-ray plates used in the storytelling unfold the identity crisis at the international border in West Bengal of India separates Bangladesh. The plates are a testament of torture and atrocities which are self-explanatory without the need of further statements, as they encounter every day in the border zone. People with similar looks and a common language confound the Indian security guards to Bangladeshis. It is hard to distinguish Bengali or Bangali Indians from Bangladeshis, which frustrates Indian security forces to think that the locals are intruders. The mistaken identity causes pain and suffering to the border people. It is difficult to determine a person's identity by seeing an X-ray plate that confuses nationality.

 

A nation-state's limits cease at a border with the emergence of another state. It is a stretch of land where countries confront each other. The place is unique when a land demarcated and shared by states has a name - an identity. Then the people in the land fall into the categorical identity. It is a meeting place where local people of different nation-states embrace mobility, sometimes without legal validity. Here, linguistic identity becomes paramount important to dissolve state identity. 

 

In the storytelling, I want the viewers to identify through the x-ray plate of the person who belongs to which country or what nationality the person is  - India or Bangladesh.  The images represent people who have souls, with flesh and blood, have family or a wife of a husband or a mother and so on, but aliens how security forces think about the local people, to them all are illegal immigrants. For decades, the border region has witnessed the atrocities of Indian border guards whose firepower reigns over the people of that area.  The Indian border guards are from different parts of India whose cultural identity differs from the local history, so to them, every intruder on their territory is a foreigner. Because of this, hundreds of innocent people die on the Bengal border, whereas the security forces enjoy impunity.

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