Bangla to Beed: Love’s labour lost 20-yr-old crosses border to meet lady love; she disowns him

Bangla to Beed: Love’s labour lost

20-yr-old crosses border to meet lady love; she disowns him

First love, they say, ain’t easy to forget. More so, if you’re a lovelorn boy barely out of your teens. Twenty-year-old Bangladeshi resident Prodip Basak would agree hands down. Five years after his eyes first fell on a young maiden who had come a-visiting in his neighbourhood in southwestern Bangladesh, Prodip slipped out of home and reached Beed in Maharashtra’s Marathwada region to meet his first love. As luck would have it, the girl refused to acknowledge him, and a heartbroken Prodip is now waiting to be packed off home. Locals in Beed, who found Prodip’s movements fishy, alerted the police. What the police stumbled upon was a tale of innocuous teenage infatuation. Five years ago, the girl and her family had gone to Bangladesh to meet her uncle who is Prodip’s neighbour. Prodip, then 15 years old, told the Beed city police that he took an instant liking to the girl who was then 14. After the girl and her family left for Beed, a besotted Prodip had clandestinely sought the family’s phone number from his neighbour and tried to contact the girl. “The girl’s father refused to hand over the phone to her and disconnected each time,” said inspector Vidhyanand Kale. Fed up, Prodip decided to cross every barrier to go meet his lady love. Prodip, who left Bangladesh on October 17, reached Kolkata from where he hopped aboard the Geetanjali Express and came to Mumbai Central. From here, he took a state transport bus and got to Beed on Monday. “Prodip was sipping tea at a stall. People around suspected him as he spoke neither Marathi nor Hindi,” said inspector Kale. When the police summoned the girl’s family to confirm Prodip’s story, the girl said she had never noticed him during their stay in Bangladesh. A Bangladeshi passport and Indian tourist visa were found in his possession.