Amazing Biharis

It is amazing how Biharis continue to be in the news in spite of no known bomb blasts in Patna sicne the salad days of JP Narain and George Fernandes. In this day and age it takes a lot to be in the news for a people and state which does not have a Narendra Mody, a Mamta Banerjee, any serial blasts, no cyclones, no big investments, No Behen Mayawati not even an Amar Singh.
How do Biharis do it year after year? And prove that when it comes to newsworthiness it is unique. It is a simple recipe really.... but supreme sacrifice mixed with a little violence turned inside. The sacrifice story is simple... either there are floods or they are beated up on other states. As perhaps the largest group of internal and seasonal migrants in India, Biharis have been threatened from Kashmir to Maharashtra. This trend is likely to extend to Bangalore soon [my driver's cousin has a pan shop in Bangalore and he is eating up local jobs there, I guess] and perhaps reach Chennai very soon. One day it might also cross the Palk Strait and enter Sri Lanka. In the north, the past time of Bihari baiting is likely to go any further than Kashmir unless, but who knows the next frontier may be Afghanistan or Pakistan may be even China. In any case I will probably not live to see the day when a prospective US presidential candidate makes "Bihari Bhagao" the main plank of her election campaign. With the expanding frontiers of migration and unlimited supply of migrants, Bihar is sure to continue to grab headlines just by the virtue of being beated up by everyone across the country and perhaps across the globe [that will be true globalisation Bihari style].
The second method of getting in to the newsheadlines is natural with extremes of weather forces working on a poor people, Bihar is going to be in the in the monsoons, summer and winter. Unless the weather becomes moderate or the people become rich enough to fight the elements. Both seem very unlikely in the very long run.
It is by being at the receiving end of the weather and every body else that Bihar manages to beat otehr states in grabbing coverage. Sometime when it does not work [rare is such an occasion] there is always the inward looking violence - just kill a few people of other caste and get killed; or burn some trains in your own state; or attack trains passing through your own state. Endorsing the negative perception that most of the country holds about Bihar. Who is to blame? I do not know. But two things are simple: a migration is an economic and social process and cannot be stopped by clubbing a few Biharis. Second, politicians who have screwed up the state along caste and communitarian lines have no right to preach to others who are treating Biharis as outsiders.
By the way whatever happened to the floods in Bihar this year? Has the breach in Kosi been mended? Have people returned to their villages? How did they celebrate Diwali? No news? Not even a human interest story?

That Time of the Year

It is that time of the year when the place in north east Bihar where I grew up is in the news for the right reason. But even the right reason is not very right and certainly not bright. At this time of the year, that region is in the news not because some MLA killing his rival, or one caste killing a dozen of another in an evening of macho sports not even that of a minister caught with his pants down, no train accidents either. It is that time of the year when my favourite part of the world for the last half a century [I have lived through 40 of those years] has a divine and devastating visitation in the form of floods surrounded or enclosed as it is by three riviers which are either very large or very wily or both: the Ganga, Kosi and the Mananda. the last two rushing to merge in the Ganga to the south.
For those who are usually upset at what is no more than waterlogging in our cities like Mumbai and now increasingly Delhi would note that this area is visited by floods [not water logging] every year for half a century.
Imagine a situation where there is almost clear sky but water rising inside your house or fields in dealthly silence. The scariest part is that you will not know how high the water will rise. Every year it is high enough for a quater of the population of this area [what used to to be the old Purnea district now divided into many others] seeking shelter along with their worldly possessions on sundry embankments or railway line[if these are spared] and surviving anywhere between 10 to 15 days each year on dry chidwa and gur thrown at them from helicopters by a "sympathetic government". Before they went back to their villages to salvage whatever they could. In some areas the rains, flood and the water logging seamlessly merges with the bitter winter [but that is another story]
This is the environment which gives rise to heartwarming stories like the one in which a poisonsous snake and a man spents three nights in perfect harmony on a tree-top just above the water level each too respectful of the other's situation.
This year though, the situation is slightly different: No do not worry I am not going to make you feel happy by saying that the situation is better [situations never get better in my part of the world]. In point of fact, the situation is far far worse than one can imagine. The most wily river of all, Kosi has this year decided to change its course. It has made a breach of 3 miles which is growing at the rate of 200 metres a day and carving out a new course towards the Ganga 100 kms downsrtream. There is a fair possibility that some of the districts in the upper reaches on the boarder with Nepal will cease to exist after the new route of intercourse between Kosi and Ganga is completed and some of the districts further south will be irreparably damaged.
The best part of the story is that very few will ever know of this and yet fewer will act on it. After all who cares about Bihar anyways!

[The accompanying picture taken by an overseas visitor and used without permission]

Is the Sun Rising Over Bihar?

As a young boy growing up in Bihar one of the less lurid and suggestive local songs I heard went something like this.... "धीरे धीरे लागे कलाई थामने; उनको ऊँगली थामना ग़ज़ब हो गया" This was sung by a woman, narrating the fact that "misfortune" stuck her the day she gave an inch to a wily man! This song could not have been a more realistic representation to what happened in Bihar in the last 60 years since independence, especially since the mid-1970s - a period which also marked the height of political movement in बीihar under the leadership of the formidable JaiPrakash Narain. Those were heady days when most Biharis thought that the Sun would rise in Bihar. Little did they realise that that was the beginning of a long sunset for Bihar. Each successive government since then has taken advantage of the ungli [finger] and gone for the kalai [wrist] and much more... and Bihar all the while has acted as the helpless girl who can't say no, taken over by the persuation.... The result was for all of us to see.
It might sound unbelievable to many that till the early 1980s when my cousins used to literally fail exams due to what was known in Calcutta as Load Shedding, we in a small town in Bihar did not know what power cuts were. Of course, by the 1990s, we did not know and did not need to know that there was a something called the Bihar State Electricity Board we were connected on private gensets.
But for the past two years, we have been hearing informally that things are changing and last week there was some proof in the sense that a leading English daily carried the story of turnaround in Bihar as headlines. It was after many years, most certainly since I started reading English newpapers daily, that Bihar made the headlines for all the right reasons.
Of course, there is still a long way to go to reach just where we were in 1980s. But it still feels good to know that there is a group of people who are taking us back to where we began.
We biharis are practical people, please do not show us dreams of an utopia, light at the end of the tunnel, bright future etc etc. Just please take us back to what we left behind, give us back what we had, we will be happy with it. In fact we never wanted more than that...

Furore over Fart

Police is looking for a man in Poland who jumped bail after being arrested for insulting the head of the state. He did not have much respect for the President and his brother and when asked to apologise for his loose remarks about them, he farted loudly in the presence of police officers: at which he was arrested.

Real, funny and sardonic, isn't it?

Before the Victorian social norms cast its long shadow over much of the globe and colonised the minds and bodies of the colonised, bodily functions were a form of modeof protest against the high and the mighty especially in complex and hierarchical societies.

Earliest record of such modes of protest to my knowledge goes back to the late 17th century when the Jats apparently desecrated the tomb of Akbar protesting against the Mughal authority [desecreated in Victorian English means defacated]

Later, this was also adopted as a mode of protest by the plantation workers across the globe. In India, this urnating and defacating and plunging them into the burra sahib's bungalows was quite popular.

The practice can not be said to have died out totally. Growing up in Bihar in the 1980s I came to learn early that no one took punga with the Municipal "Bhangis/mehtars" and generously gave them Bakhshish whether they carried out their chores or not. The reason, you would not want a can of nightsoil emptied in from your door in the morning!

This seems to be a global phenomenon which seems to have outlived the Victorian diktats! Here goes an old Sudanese proverb: "When the great lord passes, the poor peasant bows deeply and loudly farts!

My take: Farting is a serious and real mechanism of venting grievances, Let a thousand farts ring!