[Reader-list] Loneliness of a Long Distance Bihari

[Ravikant]

Here is another. Remembered village in a city. Enjoy
ravikant


Loneliness of a Long Distance Bihari

an essay by
Tarun Bhartiya
								

1.

Childhood contrary to all expectations can be, and is, cruel. That too if you 
encounter those heavily unpopular bleeders called Bengalis. My father in all 
his wisdom, inspired, no doubt, by that crazy little thing called career, had 
decided to relocate. 
Shillong. 1980. 
Me - only ten and with little experience of anything but Patna, Kanpur and 
Ranchi. A little bit of Hindi, a lot of Maithili and no English apart from 
that usual translation stuff. Translate: Gaya, Gaya gaya so gaya hi rah gaya. 
Gaya went to Gaya and remained there. Meaning, I had had the usual Bihari 
childhood with two tiny twists, we spoke Maithili and whenever someone 
confounded by my name Tarun Bhartiya, asked me about my caste, I was supposed 
to answer, Jaat Paat pooche na koi, hari ke bhaje so hari ke hoe (Don't 
inquire of someone's caste, one who worships the God belong's to the caste of 
the God). I was ten and all of it was a game. 
Reaching for childhood memories may be and should be suspect, a retrieval of 
make believe. But there is no other way of discoursing on my Bihari status 
except to be reminded of that in moments of ex-girlfriend(s) crisis. You 
unfeeling uncouth Bihari. Great. 
Thus, in the one upman(child)ships of school, this gang of Sylhetis would 
corner me with incessant banter about Bengali greatness... Tagore, Bose - 
Jagdishchandra and Subhash, Vivekanand, Mithun ... I would mumble Rajendra 
Prasad, and (through their protests) Vidyapati, trying to stand my ground. It 
became an obsession. Worming through books, pestering my father, troubling my 
mother to excavate and resurrect Bihari Heroes.
Any identity which had come into its own, needed objective constructs of 
Great Men (mostly) and women - a pantheon to look up to. But my under - 
duress education in Bihari hagiography would hit its first roadblock, when I 
was made to confront the proletarian nature of Bihari presence in Shillong. 
Shillong's milk trade, Aaloo Moori stalls and Paan kiosks were at that time, 
I'm talking about the eighties, exclusively under Bihari control, Biharis 
from Vaishali, I think. 
I could have been the eldest son of a university professor, but for most of 
my classmates I was a crypto-doodhwaala. I could have escaped such an 
ignominious fate by claiming to be a 'Hindi', a euphemism for a non-Bihari 
Hindi speaker, and dissociating myself from the mucky world of Bihar, as one 
or two of my friends, whom I knew to be true blue-blooded Bihari, would do. 
And under the fake rubric of Hindiwallahs, turn against me with a vengeance. 
These were pre-Laloo Prasad Yadav times. These were also pre-Mandal times. 
These were most definitely pre-Macdonald times. 
In a strange reversal of shame, I became vulgar and arrogant. If being a 
Bihari was rude crude, so be it. If one had no heroes, so much better. I had 
no Tagore ass to kiss. We are like this only. The democracy of such an 
illicit identity should not escape you. 
More than a Bihari, I started being a Shillong Kid. Beer and Beatles. But 
included my Bihariness as a part of my street cred, a style, as chic. In any 
event, my wide-mouth-way of speaking English would have given me away. 
PO-TA-TO instead of patato. One-ly or I mean 'only' extreme colonising of my 
tongue would have rubbed off my origins. Peppering my conversations with 
linguistic and aural references to Bihar and Biharis turned from necessity to 
convenience. An ability which matured into a finely honed performance art in 
Delhi. A Non Resident Bihari from Shillong to A Non Resident Bihari in Delhi.

2.

Delhi University’s North Campus was like sojourning in Bihar. Multiplicity of 
accents, accenting castes and places. No one was a Bihari and everyone was. 
He was a Kayastha, and She a Notredam educated Bhumihaar. And I, a person 
with a Bihari accent, a curious name and claims to have  grown up in Silong 
or Shillong. Most probably a Backward, or why else would I walk around with a 
name like Tarun Bhartiya, flirt with leftish politics and treat General 
Studies as a philosophical state rather than UPSC tool. I was confused, 
mightily confused. 
Here I was, no longer an outsider as in Shillong where for the majority I was 
an agent of the exploitative outsider or a crypto-doodhwaala. I was no longer 
looking for heroes to admire, just styling myself after revolutionaries and 
browsing for women to woo and wed. I soon discovered Bihari girls were out of 
my reach. Not that they were uptight, but the cryptic caste status of my name 
made them wary. They were ready to indulge in torrid affairs with men whom 
they shared surnames with, so that the fathers would have no moral, social 
and political quandary over the fate of the daughters. And why not ?  Who 
wants their daughter wedding some low caste fool. I am sure there were 
exceptions lurking somewhere and the same could be said about Tamils or 
Haryanvis, but what would a Bihari see except a Bihari.
Or else, one could derive courage from the University toppers, IAS officers, 
managers, all the achievements of a modern community. Such a state of things 
had started making Dilliwaalas jealous. How could the mucky state of Bihar 
send forth such successful individuals. Oriyas had their fruits of praise 
too, but they refused to stand out. They loved their silence and DOSA (Delhi 
Oriya Students Association). 
The difficulty for the Delhi Middle class (incidentally either immigrants or 
refugees) was reconciling poverty and a violence stricken space with a 
confident successful community. Biharis were not going to treat themselves as 
guests of Delhi but would take over the urbanity of the place as its 
primordial residents.
But this segregation could break down, as it did during the Mandir and Anti - 
Mandal Madness, especially the latter. The prim and proper Delhi Middle class 
could be seen exchanging political notes with upper-caste uncouth Biharis. 
They shared their just-beneath- the-surface caste chauvinisms on Kranti Chowk 
(Revolution Square), a chowk of Brown-shirted counter-revolutionaries. 
And I got  beaten up by my brethren. Just one incident on their road to 
Kranti Chowk. It was again my name and my refusal to tow their political 
line. But with hindsight, it was my name which aroused their wrath. More than 
the physical pain, it was my middle class pride which got hurt. Those uncouth 
people, how dare they touch me. Me, the English speaking hipster from 
Shillong. Then my snobbish self-indulgence was sobered by the arrival of 
caste segregation at the mess tables in these posh environs of the campus 
college hostels. 
As the leftish cosmopolitan conglomerate, we were used to sitting together 
away from the lunacies of Begusarai, Patna, Ranchi, and Darbhanga, but 
suddenly we were forced to conjoin our mealtimes with outcastes and backwards 
from Begusarai, Patna, Ranchi, and Darbhanga. If you were Manoj Yadav you no 
longer partook your aaloo-paratha with that school friend Bhuso or Bhaskar 
Sinha from Begusarai. And if you were also Manoj Yadav who flirted with 
leftism, it was better that you left Delhi for Begusarai for the period of 
the Agitation.
It was not the Bihar for which I had tried to memorise  Rajendra Prasad, 
Jaiprakash Narain and all the other heroes. It was no longer My Bihariness 
against the Sylheti Bengaliness, but Bihari against Bihari. I finally admired 
my childhood Bengali demons. 

3.

However, there was yet another Bihar which was stalking the streets of Delhi. 
A Bihar which was not producing IAS and IPS officers but sweat in sweat 
shops. A Bihar which got abused as 'Biharis' in the overcrowded Blue/Redline 
buses. A Bihar which was graduates forced to guard prison-like colonies with 
nothing to guard them except a comical Lathis. A Bihar which had nothing to 
do with the Bihar of Delhi University (though I am sure with the same fault 
lines), but was forced by the grime of Delhi slums to labour under the 
abusive naming convention- 'Bihari'.
These were the faces which finally entered the nasal cavities of Delhi's 
chattering classes. The university crowd could be bought to hide their 
origins, but this Bihar was everywhere. Cycling kilometers from a slum to an 
equally hazardous factory. Driving Autos, guarding the houses and speaking 
up. 
Sitting in the bucolic urbanity of Shillong- I read of the (now defunct) 
Additional Solicitor General of India Mr. Rawal playing up his liberal 
credentials in court by asserting that the government cannot allow Delhi to 
suffer from the 'Bihar Syndrome'. I am not devastated. I don't reach for the 
nearest analyst. 
As a Bihari maid servant, working at a friends house in east Delhi, told me, 
"they want to turn Delhi into Paris and they don't want us in this Paris." 
For her Paris was an American city and with such general knowledge she was 
completely unfit for the UPSC. Nevertheless her social analysis was dead 
certain. It is opinions like these that the chatterati cannot take. Silence 
is a virtue which this Bihar hasn't heard of. If you take a tourist trip into 
the industrial areas of Delhi and decide to meet the Union leaders you would 
be surprised at the number of Biharis you find. 
In their quest for a global city, Delhi elites want subservient labouring 
classes ready to trudge miles to tend their gardens and feed their dogs. But 
these Biharis refuse to fit the stereotype which is being erected for them. 
They shall defecate in your vicinity till their demands for Public toilets 
are fulfilled. In the Rawalesque obsession with the 'Bihar Syndrome', one is 
tempted to read this conflict of silence vs. speech almost as a class 
conflict. 

4. 

When I started to reflect on my loneliness as a long distance Bihari, I 
thought I would make obvious angry noises, take the Mickey out of Mr. Rawal 
and his gang and arrive into a glowing definition of the self. But being a 
Bihari is more of an idea in the making, than an idea already made like our 
family sitting room. In the loud mouthed way we speak, our sitting rooms have 
all the accruements for this voice to echo and resonate shamelessly. If you 
are a non-Bihari and have visited the houses of Biharis who can afford to 
have sitting rooms, you can be assured of embarrassment at the sheer shabby 
openness these spaces conjure. Children troop in and out, Daadi offers her 
comment, host sits cross-legged on the sofa. The pride in being a Bihari may 
be computed to being inversely  proportional to drawing room grandeur and 
prissiness. If this is the mathematical equation of my identity- I am all for 
it - the Bihariness. 
If it means, being skeptical of the ruling classes, take my contribution for 
the construction of that Bihari edifice. It is always nice to sit between 
people for whom rulers exist to be unmasked and railed against.
If it means working out your resistance in all its political concreteness, By 
god ki kasam, this country has to be forced to embrace the Bihar Syndrome.
And for a North East boy, if Bihari intends not to be Xenophobic, I shall 
lapse into a major celebration. But is this all there is to it, being a 
Bihari?    
In the final days of my college career, one of my juniors entered my hostel 
room and demanded ten rupees for organising the Chitragupta Puja. I was 
offended but sweetly explained to him that-
1. I was not a progeny of Chitragupta, who, for non-Biharis, is the mythical 
ancestor of Kayasthas, a forward caste and, 
2.  I had leftish beliefs. 
Unfazed, he tells me," A Sinha has informed me that you belong to us, not the 
Backwards, we know your father's name..." I was defeated. I had to physically 
evict him from my room so as not to part with my ten rupees and leftish 
beliefs.
I was unmasked. Now I was a Bihari. A Bihari with a caste. That too a forward 
caste. But this story has a sadder ending still. That very A. Sinha, a 
student of Sanskrit, was caught as a ‘fence’ for stolen goods. We were all 
astonished. The astonishment was not at his thievery, but at the subsequent 
revelation that this great organiser of the Chitragupta celebrations had used 
a highcaste Sinha surname by obliterating his rightful Backward one. 
A spectre haunts - the Bihar syndrome.							
________________________________________________________________________Tarun 
Bhartiya teaches video in a Shillong college and makes videos under the name 
of splitENDS.