Dateline Bihar: Monsoon and the Metropolis

The monsoons have finally broken over parched Patna, and here we are again - soaked, sodden, saturated, and showered – on an intermittent basis. In this city of clogged drains, rotting refuse, and shallow civic sense, every rainy day is quite literally, a washout. The mercury may have slid down a few millimetres, but the sludge, filth and stink factor has definitely reached a new high in Biharipolis. The putrid vapours steaming up from the decomposing garbage dumps of Patliputra, Pani Tanki, A N College, and Boring Road that savagely penetrate your nostrils may nauseate the timid tourist, but the intrepid inhabitants of Bihar’s capital saunter brazenly along, unmindful of the stench, the slime, and the floating muck.

Biharipolis does have its fair share of structural steel, glass and chrome, thanks to the sudden spurt of ‘building pride’ and the availability of cheap, illegally mined stone chips and cheaper half-starved labour; and on a muggy monsoon night, these air-conditioned beacons of plastic, pelf, and pleasure wink out over the dark, mouldy, murky, messy, maggoty, mosquito-infested patches of squalor and helplessness where the walking classes dwell. These brightly lit, multi-storied, mis-creations are emblems of the ‘new’ dispensation, representative of Biharipolis in a frantic bid for a toehold on the footboards of the bullet train to Development City.

The operative lexicon for Biharipolis in a hurry is the shortcut, the short-term, the short-sight, and the short-changed. Animal Farm replaces Jungle Book. The sty must be spruced up, Napolean decided, and Dalits being the least among equals, would henceforth be called ‘Great’, given a radio to listen to the latest Hindi hip-hop and suitably distracted from serious thought. From the bones of battered, backward, bifurcated, botched-up Bihar, would emerge a higgs boson of growth, at the speed of cola-lite.

The Jungle is cut down by the brand new SUVs on the ‘Su-shasan’ Super-highway. The traffic lights don’t work. There are no  red lights to stop the Rhinoceros Charge of the Building Brigade.

 And so, the metropolis erupts, boil-like, on the city and suburbia, across cottage, cowshed and cultivated patch, over slum and shanty.

Behold, Biharipolis, the city of a million, coming soon! Its tall towers will suck up a billion litres of groundwater a day, mostly to be flushed down water-guzzling toilets. Its Multiplexes and malls will provide fun for all in High definition 3D and stereoscopic seven channel sound, and the slumdogs that can’t afford a café coffee moment may thrill to free rides up and down the escalators, if they be non-smoking and neatly dressed.

In the meanwhile, the rain pours, the sewage overflows, the street dogs whine, the road outside the floods, and the electricity trips, and tomorrow lurks, silent and sullen.

-Frank Krishner