Sunday Editorial
You want someone better than Nitish? Three tales from the ground!
By Ratnakar Tripathy
I
Bihar: cutting through the mist!
I hate writing on politics as practiced and articulated by politicians but I love it when ordinary people share their political wisdom with me, at times even imposing it when I am not in the mood.
Recently when I was in my village, I received a long patronizing lecture on Bihar politics from my host. He felt he owed the long sermon to someone educated who ought to know better.
Being a Brahmin, he began with a rant against Nitish, who is from the Kurmi caste, then went on to our local Mukhiya, who is a Yadav. He drew a picture of Brahmins as the most ruthlessly victimized, oppressed, and tormented community. This upended sociology was very eye-opening, indeed. His anti-Nitish tirade carried on till he was frothing at his mouth and had the unfocused look of a man lecturing the masses at Gandhi Maidan, rather than addressing me. He then moved on to the Bhumihar community in the neighbourhood, complaining about how they had failed to protect the upper caste interests. Normally a soft-spoken man, he was on a rampage, an ordinary poor Brahmin in a ‘Durvasa’ state of mind. I found his language objectionable, filled as it was with caste-based abuses, which make me see red.
I gulped down my rising rage and stopped him.
‘So who do you want as the CM of Bihar?’ I asked.
The man went quiet suddenly like someone struck by lightening.
‘Nitish, of course’, the man mumbled.
‘Why’, I asked him.
‘You don’t understand. I can walk back to the village at 12 in the night from the railway station these days. This is something we have not been able to do for the past 40 years’, the man admitted.
‘okre ke gariyaeb, a okre ke voto dehab’[ I will curse him but I will also vote for him].
This gave me some idea of why many among the upper castes are very much with Nitish. You may come to your own conclusions but I think what he meant is – I like the guy since he leaves me free to curse him.
II
Just the other day, I met a young professional who was disturbed by what he said amounted to a wave of crime in Patna. His general unhappiness I think was enhanced by the heat wave in Bihar which is driving the sanest of us bonkers. The only person inspired by it seems to be our great Bihari cartoonist Pawan, the rest of us being dulled into a stupor that makes us point fingers at the man next door for the blistering heat and blame the government for the ever-present prickly sensation around the neck.
‘I want Narendra Modi to take over Bihar’, he said wiping his sweat as I offered him a glass of chilled water.
‘Why?’, I asked him.
‘No current, robbery in the bank, corruption in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, piles of dirt on the roads, traffic jams all the way. I had to clamber over a dozing bullock to reach your house’.
‘So how will the great Gujarati help? Get the bullock out of the way for you?’, I asked.
‘No’, he answered, ignoring the sarcasm. ‘If he comes here, I mean if he comes to Delhi, all the business houses will start coming to Bihar to start their industries’.
I was a worried man, alternately staring at the young man in front of me and the blank wall behind him, as if it showed to me the future Bihar.
‘We need creative destruction’, he continued. ‘Anything is better than Manmohan Singh. Anyone else is better than Nitish Kumar. What if Modi got Muslims killed? They deserve it. Have you heard the news about the terrorist modules in Darbhanga?’
The young man suddenly looked at me with some focus and concern, acknowledging the agony he caused.
He switched the topic and began to tell me how much he loves Sufi music, and how as a Kayastha, Urdu and Persian are part of his family tradition. He even admitted that his grandfather was never really able to write in the Devnagari script and had to use the Urdu script when in a hurry.
There was a sense of mutual distance and sadness when he left. I felt scared of his views. He felt that instead of acknowledging and appreciating his spontaneity and frankness, I had held his specific views against him, which according to him was a breach of friendly trust and tolerance.
III
Way back a very nice, simple, but average looking and average performing classmate of mine, also an introvert to boot, managed to wangle a date with the most popular and prettiest woman in the college.
For the first time in life he ordered beer asking for a large peg. The girl laughed and asked the stricken waiter for a bottle of it with two glasses. Things soon warmed up and my friend soon saw the possibility of going steady with the prize girl within his reach.
He ordered a second bottle, not a peg thankfully and both of them got more voluble and confiding. At some point, the girl felt comfortable enough to mention to my friend that her family was considering a number of NRI boys as possible match for her.
As my friend narrated to me later, the first time beer made him feel good and better and better. But he wanted to feel ‘even more better’ as he put it in his own kind of English. He ordered a third and then a fourth beer.
And then as the poor girl drew out photos of the likely bridegrooms from her bag in the midst of a giggly fit, my friend went through the photos one after the other.
Feeling on top of the world with a serious amount of beer swirling inside him, he told his to be friend ‘if you parents are fine with all these monkeys, what’s wrong with me’, letting out a huge belly laugh, fully under the influence, despite being the introvert he was.
He was instantly hit by a heeled shoe under the table before the girl got up and left. It took him two full years to win her friendship back and marry her.
‘I almost lost her, you know why?’, he later confided in me.
‘Why?’, I asked.
‘Because I was fine, everything was fine, she was fine, but instead of just enjoying the fine, I wanted to feel even better and I nearly lost it’.
‘The moral of the story is’, he continued ‘when you are doing fine, be contented and quiet. Don’t start wanting to feel even more finer’.
My version is – better is fine, since the word betterer doesn’t exist!
That is the moral of all the three stories for me. You draw yours.