THE official border checkpost with Nepal is about 200 metres away, but it may as well not exist. The garbage-and slush-ridden strip of No Man’s Land, with the white pillar marking the border serving mostly as a prop for bicycles, is where all the business in this small town is.

Barhni is not as well known a border town as Sonouli or Katarniaghat, but the porous border here serves to make it an important trading area: jackets, liquor, leather goods, electronic items, cosmetics and so forth from Nepal at discounted rates, and household goods like sewing machines, refrigerators, and fans from India.

The town has just one main street around which the entire population of some 5,000 is settled. Parallel to this and across the border is a similar street in the Nepalese town of Krishnanagar, in that country’s Kapilavastu district. A few houses lie in between.

But both towns depend on border trade — official and unofficial — for livelihood. By all accounts, official and unofficial, there’s absolute harmony between the sides.

“We often go to the other side to buy vegetables and chow mein, which is made only in their restaurants,” says Ruksar Ali, who runs a tea stall at the Barhni railway station. “Most of the shopkeepers there are Indian. It doesn’t even seem like another town there.”

Barhni does not have a cinema, or cellphone towers. But, thanks to the 1.5 km border with Nepal, townsfolk have access to the best electronic goods, clothes, blankets, pirated CDs, what have you.

... contd.