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Binoy Baghi

Player Number 2

Location: Venice

Pay close attention to the rules and conditions mentioned below, it is crucial that you play your turn accordingly. Do not reveal or mention these rules to the other players.

  • During your turn, all three dice are rolled once by the facilitator.

  • ​You will move forward the value of your lowest die. For example, if you get 4, 3, 6, you will move forward 3 tiles.

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Who is Binoy?

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I’m 30 years old. I’m from a Dalit background, an illegal immigrant in Venice - living here for over three years now. I am gay, but nobody back home knows about it. I sell fake jewellery and other trinkets on the streets near the tourist attractions of the city. I learnt to speak Italian very quickly -- it wasn't difficult at all. I speak Bengali of course and I’m learning English by talking to the tourists here. I send money back to my family whenever I can. My family live in the Sunderbans area. My father has asthma and my mother has rheumatism, and neither is able to work. The nearest public health facility is about 50km away. Cyclone Amphan badly damaged our home some years ago, and we still haven't put together all the money needed to repair it. 

 

I live with 20 other illegal immigrants here in a small two-bed house in the poorest part of Venice. There is just one toilet and bathroom in the house for all of us, and we have to queue up for our turn.  I only manage to bathe once every three days. The tap water still doesn’t ‘look’ good to me, despite drinking it for three years! I cannot afford to buy bottled water - no way! I sometimes worry about catching something after drinking the water as I am reminded of my close childhood friend, Shyam, who passed away from cholera when we were young.

 

I also ‘work’ as part of the septic tank cleaning team locally. I’m just on a verbal sub-contract with the person who is supposed to be doing it, Juan Carlos. Juan engages me on an ad-hoc basis and pays me half the minimum wage per hour for my help - he knows he can get away with it because I don't have any documentation and desperately need the work. Juan took me on when I was wandering around looking for work and noticed their team was struggling to clear a blocked septic tank. I said I know how to sort that -- I just used my hands and cleared the muck. I know all about this, because I used to hear about it from my brother, Piyush, who had migrated to Delhi and worked as a manual scavenger for the municipal corporation there. But one day Piyush went down a sewer and never came up again. Juan Carlos at least cares about me coming back alive  

 

I avoid thinking about my childhood days when I was a carefree young lad... school, friends ... we jumped in the water without a care in the world in my lovely home in the Sunderbans. Yeah! I would love to go back home. I seem to be spending more than saving -- Venice isn’t the cheapest place to live! But what else can I do? 

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