The Illogical India: A Date With Bihar

“One thing you must notice Pinaki, Bihari people always have a logic, whatever they speak.”

After a safe landing at Patna Airport, we preferred to take a train to reach Begusarai to attend my roommate’s wedding. My first ever trip to Bihar and it was the horny April and the sun was biting every possible exposed body-parts of mine. Due to wedding season, there is no car available for rent and surprisingly in Patna, a State Capital City doesn’t have a proper car-rental services. No Ola Cabs, no Taxi for Sure or not even a Prasad or Babua Taxi services! The city seems like, under-construction or by modern terms you can call it Developing City. The last one kilometre towards Rail-station had a broader road properly divided to make it a two-ways and one side was completely clear, while our rickshaw puller was struggling to move an inch!

Our three other friends were also travelling from Delhi. Kallol, Krishna and Ritesh. We all five in total. Karishna and Ritesh are from Bokaro city, Anshuman from Ranchi and left two, Kallol and me from West Bengal. I am just mentioning the state’s name, because I am not sure, when I will publish the blog, the names of our town can change. Whatever, Kallol, Krishna and Ritesh were supposed to catch us or we were supposed to catch them in Patna! Thanks to Indian Railway, that was pretty impossible, so Anshuman and I decided to reach the destination as soon as possible, as we can take rest for at-least two hours at the hotel.

We left Patna for the first time. Co-passengers are talkative and curious. We managed to have a red-hot semi-upper wooden seats. The typical Bihari tone is awesome! You can never realize if they are rebuking you or requesting you. “Babuji, tanik payr hathailio.” (Sir, please remove your legs)

Initially I thought, he was threatening me, “If you don’t remove your legs, I will cut it into pieces”.

We got a co-passenger who was also travelling to Begusarai, carrying a note book. His hair was completely white, tough his physique was so young! I tried to find the reason of this discrepancy in his half-open notebook. It was a class twelve standard maths problem solved by two different approach. It was initially a shock and then I realized, I am in Bihar. Where people stop struggling to get into IIT for a graduation till they die. A Bihari dictionary starts with the word, IIT, the second word is obviously Government Job then comes Dowry, Bill Gates, Contractors, Litti-Chokha, Sattu, Burbak, Sex, Hot Girls and so on. The half-aged JEE Aspirant is still struggling to prove Left hand side equals to write hand side of a class twelve standard problem.

It was 22^nd April and the harvesting period was over. The world on two sides of the railway track was deadly dry and naked. The sun was working extra-time and the train was trying our patience. My expectation about Begusarai was decreasing at a faster speed than the train had.

The hotel was previously booked. We reached and ordered beer. The body was badly heated, chilled beer was working like a medicine. It was tough for the second group, who joined us two hours later, to wake us up. An Indian marriage normally made in heaven and in Bihar, marriage is made by family-persons and seniors. The senior of a Bihari family is a tougher subject than Sanskrit. For an event like marriage, they will claim all the credits without contributing to anything. For themselves, their presence is the most valuable. As expected, the total marriage ceremony was a mirage and complete disaster. Miss-Management, lack of basic planning, we started feeling like, “Is this something we travelled that much for?”

One more ill-logical thing about the marriage ceremony was, the groom and his father had least value in the crowed. The car drivers seemed to be the head of the event, the Band-Bazza team was the most important persons like, when everybody was trying to concentrate to food, we were requesting them, “Sir, please go for a happy-tuned music”. Ugly sadist music, less number of tracks. Luckily we were drunk enough to ignore all these. We left the venue early. Hotel was the only comfort-zone but to reach there, we were supposed to travel another seventy kilometre! Bhang and Weed trees everywhere was a cool reminder for us that we are actually in Bihar.  Where police means sponsored parties, Government means Lalu Prasad Yadav and everything else is virtual.

Next morning, it was time to comeback. All the drivers of reserved cars for the marriage were drunk enough not to wake up at 10 AM. Not a single train available that can help us to reach Patna by 6 PM! So we went for a bus. At the ticket counter, we were double assured that we will reach Patna by 4 PM! We were on a national highway and there was not enough space for two heavy vehicles. Patna contractors ate all the budgets! The route took us across poorest villages, damaged roads and un-expected bus-stops. A bus that travels a 200 Kilometre route every day was providing door-to-door services for the passengers. We were definitely getting late. The driver informed, it will be at least 6 PM to reach Patna. We had a reservation on 6.15 PM at Patna! Before coming here, we heard a lot about Gandhi Setu, which is another disaster for the entire state. Normally any construction is made to enrich the human life. Gandhi Bridge is the most harmful name after Lalu Prasad Yadav for Bihar. After construction, it got damaged so many times and the major construction works are still on. A ten kilometre long bridge, un-expectedly narrow. It took minimum one hour for any vehicle to cross the bridge and maximum is – you people are smart enough to imagine. It’s like asking Michael Schumacher to sit on an Old BSA cycle and ask him, Go, win the F1 race. Ask a thirsty person to pull the water from a half-filled glass of water via a ten meter long straw. A bridge, connecting half of the state to the capital city is this tiny!

I would like to interview the engineers who planned the bridge.

“Mr. Engineer, What was the difference between the budgeted cost and actual cost?”

“Mr. Engineer, How you matched right hand side with the left hand side?”

The bus, we were travelling, was three hours late and we were late by about an hour to reach the Railway station! Believe me, the train itself was 4 hours late to reach Patna station and 10 hours late to reach New Delhi!

How Govt. forgot those people? How they are lagging behind so much! Even thousand Bill Bhaiya needed for a massive change here.

I am sorry Anshuman! I can’t find any logic here..