We Accompanied The BSF On Their Night Patrol At The Indo-Bangladesh Border & Here's What We Learnt

It's 5.30 pm, Constable Puraram Beniwal is out in his camouflage. He's armed with an SLR rifle, a high capacity flashlight, a radio set and a simple camouflage string bag slung over his shoulder. He walks out of the Mantrichar post at 6, part of a 12-people patrol party, headed to patrol the 8 km fence.

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Beniwal has a simple mustache, is skinny, and is about 5 ft 11 inches in his regulation jungle boots. Earlier in the day, he was unlucky in the lottery and picked out post 1 to patrol, the furthest corner of his BOP's mandate.

If you met him anywhere else you'd never peg him down as someone from the forces. There is a sort of quiet resolve about him. As we start the walk to the fence from the BOP, the patrol party forks off into two - we follow to the right. It's not a confused breaking off but one that has been strategised and executed millions of times.

As we start the walk, one jawan after another keeps dropping out at their stretches of the fence. Beniwal and some of our crew make their way to a boat moored in a small water channel. It's dark, humid, I've barely walked one kilometre and I'm out of breath and have sweat through my t-shirt. It's a simple boat, wooden, no oars and towing the fine line between well-weathered and ramshackle. The jawans to be relieved (12-6pm) pull us across after the jawans from this side get us unstuck with bamboos. It's 6.35, we're late today to relieve the men who've been patrolling in the blazing daytime heat.

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We're finally down to Beniwal, stumbling along in the darkness, the black barbed wire fence to the left, fields to the right, noisy frogs all around and a spanking clear view of the Milky Way.

Beniwal is one of four brothers. His elder brothers are both teachers. Actually, he himself was a primary school teacher back home in Barmer till BSF called.

I ask him how many rounds he makes between the 200-300 metres entrusted to him, he laughs: "I tried, but lost track each time," he smiles. I imagine he smiles when he says that. It's pitch dark and the only source of light are the torchlights pointed on the other side of the fence. This side of the border has received Border Flood Lights but the generator only powers it for 2 hours as of now. Once it gets handed over from CPWD to BSF, the lights will be up longer.

Beniwal's first order of business is to move his torch from side to side, checking, double checking to ensure there are no breaks in the fence. Nothing similar had happened recently in this sector, but it's a risk no one really wants to take.

From one darkened BFL pillar to the other, Beniwal has to walk 200 mts repeatedly for 6 hours, go back to camp and repeat it again for 6 hours.

I ask him if he's counted steps, he hasn't. We count them together - I lose track a couple of times and arrive at 286, he's done it in 246 steps. "Your count is off," he tells me, a difference of 20 steps is okay, but this is too much." It is. I try again this time is 250.

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The border fence along Mantrichar isn't one of the more glamorous ones. There is no elaborate ceremony like Wagah. Unlike Tanot, there is no one clamouring over each other to fly a drone over a camel patrol. Which is why you need much more dedication to be here and complete selflessness.

Beniwal is on his 6th round, and I try to keep up with him. Fail miserably, flop down at a makeshift, muddy post made for soldiers to rest or escape the pouring rain. It's 7.25. I'm buggered, dehydrated.

Our friend is just getting started. His father is a farmer back home in Barmer, and grows cumin. "Jeera grows on a bush about this tall," he explains lowering his torch-holding hand slightly below his knee. "It needs water," but the family has a "tube well." "On one plant you can get 100-200 gms of cumin," he explains.

Beniwal isn't the chattiest person in the party, but at 29 he has the sort of focus most of us would envy. He is however beginning to open up by now. He wants to know why we are there. I explain the concept of Frontlines, he nods, he understands but I don't see that he can relate to it. He sees his night patrol as just a duty like anything else, it's very cut and dry. There's no grand realisations of how vital his duty is for the country.

The conversation moves to food. I ask him if he smuggles some food in his bag to eat late at night (who can eat at 5.30 PM) like other guards, he refuses. He wants to know when I'm eating my dinner. I tell him, I'm still waiting for it to be sent out. "There's Parwal for dinner," he tells me. Chicken is served on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. "I don't eat chicken though, I'm vegetarian." Those who are vegetarian get paneer or milk instead. There is kheer too sometimes.

I tell him, we've been on the road and really missed not getting churma in Rajasthan this time. He smiles. This time it's earnest. "I've got ghee from home this time. Let's make it," he suggests. Who'll make it, I ask him? He volunteers.

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It's 8.19, I don't have any network on my phone, and I'm having serious FOMO. How can someone spend 6 hours walking, peering, with only a crackling radio for company? "Every hour I meet the men on border patrol on either side of my area." They chat for 3-4 minutes and then get on with their patrolling.

It's 9.03 and I've sweat through my t-shirt again, the mosquitoes are getting violent and everywhere. In the hurry to make the patrol, I've managed to forget my water behind. Beniwal lends me some from his bottle. It's a battered former mineral water bottle, the water is a lil salty, not too cold, but I gulp it down guiltily and hungrily. It's the only bottle he has.

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I try another couple of rounds with Beniwal, he explains that a weird noise we hear is probably a frog being eaten by a cobra. There's many cobras in the area.

At 9.30 the border flood lights come on for an hour.

At 1020 pm, my dinner arrives. I feel guilty about the relatively posh meal I'm about to have on the outpost. He quietly moves away, probably glad he doesn't need to make a conversation for a little bit.

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The border flood lights have come on, and it's a beautiful giant orange moon in the background. By the time I finish, Beniwal tells me he's going to climb up to the watchtower. I egg him to the radio in for a night vision device. Point 3 has it.

10.50, the night vision device arrives. He points out features on the Bangladesh side. I try to take some pictures with it on my iPhone.

It's 11.09 I tell Beniwal a joke about Punjab Police and stuff it up. I forget the Hindi name for a bear. He promises to tell me a better one.

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He does later, it's a joke about a boy who failed his exam. "A boy tells his father, the Sarpanch's son failed his exam. His father asks him what happened to his result. He tells his father, the headmaster's son has failed his exam. The irritated father asks him, what happened to his results. He tells him, 'It's not like you're the prime minister that your son would pass." I laugh, it is better than the one I'd made.

It's 11.30, I borrow some more water. I'm now using it to keep myself awake.

It's half hour to go before his duty ends. The lights have come on again. The fence is now lit up, has an almost orange hue. He doesn't take the time to appreciate it. He's got a job to do.

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It's 12, the crew has packed up, but Beniwal is having nothing of it. He will hold his post till someone comes to relieve him. His reliever makes his way to post 1, Beniwal hands him a grenade and the wireless, gives a short report and then pushes on.

We're dead tired from the 6 hours out, but he isn't. He doesn't complain, even though we make him wait a little to shoot the video. It's a 20 min walk back to the BOP, no one says anything on the way back - except one murmur when our camera person takes too long - we have to 'wake up in 4.5 hours'.

Someone tries to make a joke on the walky, I hear the words 'go over' and 'other side'. A small snigger goes through the company which then instantly falls quiet. Our heroes are tired, they've to wake up in 5 hours and go on patrol again. The churma Beniwal promised will have to wait for another time.