My Bihar days

Although I had never a hesitation in working elsewhere, neither did I have a definite intention of working somewhere. The job situation in those days was not to our choice either. Looking back, this is a bad policy for it amounts to no policy at all. However as destiny would have it I spent six of my prime years in Bihar one of the most backward states in India.

Bihar is backward in all those parameters where Kerala my homestate is forward although this need not be construed as ethnocentrism of any sort. It ranks last in education, women's literacy, child mortality, sex ratio; in general in all the quality of life indices. Kerala on the other hand does not depict the kind of abject poverty, although the prevalence of abject poverty cannot be ruled out in Kerala as news sometimes indicate.

What I mean is, the public front in the state clearly is pathetic as opposed to more visible aspects of modernity in Kerala. As I mentioned in one of my earlier blogs it is only when one is outside Kerala, one comes across how blessed we are here. This was also shared to me by a couple from Patna who were religiously inclined on return from a retreat in Kerala.

Kerala is a string of small towns, Bihar is a vastness characterised by semi rural or abject rural scenes. The vastness of Bihar is disturbing to me as the thick coconut groves of Kerala is to the Bihari. I say this because a colleague of mine actually asked me how can people live in thick coconut groves. This may be considered to be a special case of claustrophhobia or its opposite or some such but nevertheless one cannot mistake the contrast in this regard.

To the average north Indian anyone from the south is a Madrasi although Kerlala is vastly different. They come upto Madras, present day Chennai, and go back thinking they have seen the entire south India.

Once my dhobi looked at a poster of Gabriella Sabatini on my wall and asked me "saab ye kaun hei"? (sir, who is this ?) . I replied in earnest 'sabatini' almost absent mindedly and immediately he asked me 'sabitri' ? I contained my laughter since it was the name of a Hindu goddess, the only innocent exposure that he had to perhaps being the verbalised puranas. The next question perplexed me " Madrasi hei kyaa" ? ( Is she a Madrasi"?)

A similar world view was expounded by the gardener, who asked me "What is beyond the Himalayas" ? And his favourite TV show was Hanuman. Such innocence coupled with poverty is the kind of dangerous thing that India is legendary.

I have always felt that the poor man or the average man in Kerala does indeed have a kind of hope on his face that tells "if not me, at least my children would be better off". Such hope was rare to come by in the poorest of them that I came across.