Khan has a brother there. Whenever Khan wants to visit him, he gets in touch with village fishermen going out to sea. They get him a boat-hand's work permit, which is for a week. Out at sea, the fishermen have a rendezvous with their counterparts from Pakistan. The exchange takes place: Khan gets into a Pakistani boat, and a Pakistani boards his.

To Karachi then, goes Khan, assuming the name of the Pakistani who has crossed to India and using his work permit. The Pakistani does likewise. Both get three or four days to be in each other's country before they return after another out-at-sea exchange.

Across the Indo-Pak border in the Kutch district, illegal trafficking is not only in contraband or only of terrorists and intelligence agents. Most people living along both sidesof the border have relatives across the border. While visiting them, the villagers make do without paperwork, taking either the land or the sea route.

``After all we are brothers separated by Partition. We do not see ourselves as Indians and Pakistanis,'' says Abdul Gafur of Navinar village.

Back in the eighties, he recounts, two girls from his village were given in marriage to boys from a Pakistani village. Gafur's daughter was one of the brides.

``Both the baarats were small -- just about 10 people in each -- but they did come across the border, walking just like that, and went back after the marriage,'' he says. The number of cross-border marriages has gone down in the nineties; the illegal crossings haven't. The district's difficult terrain makes the cross-border traffic hard to check. The Rann of Kutch is a desert, but during monsoon most of it gets flooded with sea water. The Border Security Force (BSF) has few men to patrol these long stretches. The Coast Guard patrols only the bigger creeks.There are favoured routes for crossing over.

In the Khadva region, camel owners on either side send a person across on camel-back for a fee. In the Haji Pir area, people cross over on foot. Another favoured spot is the Harami Nala, so called because the disputed creek is claimed by both countries. Customs of both countries do not patrol this creek, so fishing boats do brisk work.

While most Indians go across to visit relatives, the Pakistanis come here for work. In India, they can earn over Rs 20,000 during the six-month fishing season. The earnings are worth the risk. For Indian employers, hiring illegal aliens is cheaper as they can be forced into working for longer periods. The fear of exposure keeps them servile.

In fact, most of the stuff sent with fishermen going across is harmless; videotapes of Hindi and Urdu films, gifts and letters. Sending them by post takes 15 to 20 days and hence the preferred short-cut.

Then there are the pilgrims. The Urs celebration in Kutch attracts several pilgrimsfrom Pakistan. They find it easier to reach the shrine without papers. Similarly, there are pilgrims to the Kwaja Moin-un-deen Chisti shrine in Ajmer.