This was the experience that a group of young Bangladeshis had to go through as they undertook an illegal journey in early 2005 to reach Spain. They trailed through the Sahara Desert -- sometimes by a jeep, sometimes on foot -- with hardly enough to eat or drink, and always afraid of being shot at by border patrols. After barely surviving the desert, and spending weeks in jails in horrendous conditions, the group had to take a small rubber boat to cross the mighty Mediterranean Sea. The boat's engine stopped after a few hours and they were stranded on the boat for about 10 days until the Algerian authorities rescued them. Some survived to tell the heart-wrenching story of the entire journey -- the inhuman suffering in having to drink one's own urine, the pain of watching a brother or a friend slowly starve to death, and the horror of making the cruel choice between death and eating up body parts of a dead friend.

The making
It was in March 2006 that we started interviewing the survivors of that harrowing journey. What unfolded was a picture that we did not quite expect -- almost none of the 26 people who went on that journey came from families suffering abject poverty. Most had TV in their houses and many had other family members sending money from abroad; two even came from a middle class family with own apartment in the heart of Dhaka. Clearly poverty was not a major factor behind these people taking such life-and-death risks in trying to emigrate to a developed country. But then, what was?

Our quest to find the answer to this is what forms the underlying basis of Deshantori. In the process of making the film, we roamed across the nation interviewing the youth from various walks of life asking their views on Bangladesh's future, their possible role in it, and their reasons for wanting to migrate so desperately. What we found was a deep-rooted frustration caused by the endemic injustice that in their minds was almost a permanent phenomenon. Widespread corruption, extortion by politicians and their allies, unpunished crimes, armed politics in university campuses -- these are only parts of why they felt that they do not see any future in Bangladesh. One interviewee summarised the widespread psyche of many young people in Bangladesh: "With my qualifications, I cannot do anything worthwhile in Bangladesh; if I can go abroad, I know I can."

Even those who came from relatively well-off families and had the ability to gather some decent amount of money did not seem to have the confidence to use it for any investment in the country. Rabiul, one of the survivors of the journey, had borrowed a substantial sum of money from his relatives. He said during the interview: "If I were to ask my relatives money for starting a business in Bangladesh, none of them would give me money, not even my parents. If I tell them that I will use the money to go abroad, only then will they give me money." We found that the thought that "Bangladesh is not a country worth living in if there is a way out" is quite deeply embedded in the psyche of much of the young generation.

However, that was not all that we found.

Mridul Chowdhury is currently a graduate student at Harvard University. Updates on upcoming Deshantori screenings can be obtained from: www.deshantori.com.