I have lived in Bangalore for the past two years. Before Bangalore, I
was in Delhi for ten years. I was born in Bihar, and I lived there
for around sixteen years. When someone asks me, "Which place do you
belong to?", I usually answer "Bihar". But it is hard for me to
consider Bihar a home now. I have not been there for around ten years
now. I think I will call Bangalore my home hence forth. I think it
is one city which has rewarded me the most. It is one city that has
not discriminated against me for being a Bihari (all North Indians are
treated equally badly here ).
I was born in Bhagalpur, a small town in Bihar. If you have ever been
to Delhi, you might have noticed that calling someone (or something)
Bihari (i.e. someone from Bihar) is a popular form of dismissing him
or her as mostly illiterate or gaudy or irrelevant. Atanu Dey has a
blog entry that sums up pretty much why Bihar has been left out and
why I have not been to my home for around 10 years now.
Sitting on in the de-briefing meetings, a picture of gradual and
steady decline began forming in my mind. The signs were
apparent. The power failed intermittently. Bihar produces no
electrical power of its own. Somnath informed me that Bihar gets
about 1000 MW of power from outside the state, 700 MW of which is
unaccounted for. Patna consumes 300 MW, a good bit of which appears
to have been used by the Rabri Devi household. It is reported that
when she vacated her official Chief Minister's residence, they had
to remove 53 air conditioners.
Heh. I remember the days when we used to go without power for at least
a week (stealing power cables and selling the copper used to be good
source of income for some people). Enough reminiscing - those days
are behind me now.
).