Terai

Once the house of the ancient centre of Mithila known for its cultural and philosophical traditions, where Sitā wedded Lord Rām in the epic text of Rāmāyṇ, and Siddharth Gautam was born and began his journey across the region to become the Buddhā. In 1816, this is where the treaty of Sugauli was signed between the Kingdom of Nepal and the British East India Company after the renowned Gurkha fighters successfully prevented a British invasion. The region is named after its geographical location between the Himalayan foothills and the Indian plains. It is Terai, meaning foothills/wetland in the Hindi word तराई, which suggests the agricultural value of this region. 

Today, the region sits between the nation-states of India and Nepal and houses the open (and at times a disputed) border between the two countries. The cultural-familial relations between the two countries are invoked through the much-emphasised 'roti-beti' relations (suggesting a cultural bridge of sharing food and the ritual of wedding Nepali daughters to Indian grooms following the marriage of Sitā and Rām) in their foreign policy and local individual connections. The fate of being a landlocked country pushes most of Nepal's trade and people toward crossing the border, making it an essential point/line for the daily lives of the people in the borderland areas. 

Unfortunately, the 1751km long border is plagued with illegal trade, along with human, drug, and liquor trafficking. If this was not enough, many border checkpoints and border crossings are chronically underdeveloped in relation to the amount of cross-border mobility. As both the countries sharing this region move forward in the 21st century, the borderland populations await more attention and affection with respect to the representation of cultural, traditional, and economic connections that the border stands for today. Only time will tell if this region of such historical and mythological magnitude for the people in the Indian sub-continent remains relevant.