The Patliputra Chronicles (Part-1)

10 things you cant miss when you are in Bihar

1. People spit. A lot. Sometimes you feel the place wont require monsoons to get flooded.
2. Public transport is perhaps the best in the world. A good part of the population lives on bicycles. Auto-rickshaws work in lieu of the busses…and are usually always as crowded too. Indian Railways provides personalized services here. Every coach in the train has a lever (emergency brakes) which the people are supposed to pull to stop the train wherever they want to get down...at least they think its meant for that!!
3. The universal “road rights” (the ones that say that the pedestrians have more right on the road than a guy on a bike, who in turn has a more right than the one driving a truck) do not apply. Auto-rickshaws are the kings of this jungle and sit right at the apex of this food chain!
4. Shops don’t sell eggs and bread after 10 in the morning. On a more personal note, do not go out asking for eggs or bread at any store after 10 AM…there is a good possibility that everyone around you would seem shocked at the sacrilege that you have committed. You might also get giggled at!
5. Remember that FEVICOL advertisement which shows a bus fully loaded with people?...yeah, exactly.
6. Apart from a few big towns in the state (few), people everywhere like to do things sitting by the roads- eating, drinking, pissing, shitting, smoking, bathing, even something that seems like random sun bathing! This road can be any kind of road- a local lane by the house, a proper road, a state or a national highway. Thankfully, the runaways on the airport are protected (apart from the airport in this place called “Bhagalpur”). Interestingly, folks also seem to be quite fond of using the national highways for another very very important economic activity…drying corn! (They almost end up using half of the driving area of the highway…traffic can obviously wait)
7. People are hardworking. Very hardworking. Sometime back there was a problem with the water supply in one of the residential buildings here in Patna. One would imagine a havoc to occur…but it didn’t. for weeks people started walking down to the ground floor (some from the 7^th floor) every morning to get drinking water (I don’t know what they did for water for other “necessities”). Very hardworking…just that nobody suggested (or even thought) of getting the water supplied corrected.
8. You are not supposed to crib if you get power supply for more than 12 hours in a day. An AC room in a hotel usually means about 3-4 hours of guaranteed air conditioning at night.
9. You have a right to remain silent. Anything said to anyone in public can be used as evidence against you in a “well audienced” fist-fight!
10. Only rice is understood as proper food. Everything else is breakfast/snacks.

The Sharp-shooters...?

Long time, indeed. No muse knocked on the doors of my consciousness to drag me out of my slumber to pen another one of those notes I used to till about a year or two ago. But finally it did come knocking, and when it did, it did so with a thunder. Ever wondered how many co-incidences happen all the time in the world around us? On second thoughts, its funny how everything that happens happens not because it is intentionally made to happen, but certain other happening that happen to happen unconsciously make it happen…lets put it simply. Had that man (perhaps in his 50s) not stopped to check his pockets while walking to his car, realizing that he had forgotten his vehicle keys in the house, gone back and returned talking on the phone, lazily strolling towards the thing all engrossed in the talk, perhaps he would have escaped, by a few seconds, the bird shitting on him right in the middle of his head. Coincidence isn’t it? Its not over yet. The bird wasn’t really stationed where he had to be to aim on the man’s head…the poor thing was chewing on something in his little corner when, just before the man was to reach the auspicious point, another one of its clan flew it off hoping to grab the grub. It fluttered its wings and moved to where he was meant to be. Everything fell in its right place for the bird to shoot right at the moment when the man strolled by. Boom!!! Thunder followed when the man chose to ignore that the bird, even if it tried, wouldn’t understand the abuses it was being honored with.

The simple incident took me a few months back. Ah, indeed there is fate. And indeed there is destiny. Was it the man’s fate to be bird-shitted upon this morning? Was it bound to happen? Was it already written somewhere out there? Or was it just an interaction of variables, unrelated but interactive? How free is a man from what he is destined to be? Does he choose? Can he choose? Is this choice real? Does this choice make any difference in what happens later? How much, if at all it does? Did that second bird jump on our shooter bird because he had to, for the man’s destiny to happen? Or did the sky pour shit on the man’s head because the bird was attacked? Did he forget the keys, and then got that phone call because only then what was destined to happen could happen? Or did he just forget it, independent of the birds fighting in the air, independent of destiny…he just did!

Yes, if there is one thing that is not as deceptive as the rest, it is the coincidences! Its amazing how easily I have been priding myself of all sorts of things, without realizing that it wouldn’t have been on the man’s head if the birds weren’t fighting!

If the shit fell spot in the middle of the man’s head, does it make the bird a sharp shooter? I feel humbled…