Patna is the least fashionable of all state capitals. There are no “cool” places in which to hang out. No nightlife worth mentioning. The streets are deserted as soon as it turns dark. Good hotels are in short supply — the last big one was built more than 30 years ago. There is some colonial architecture in the city, but it is in a state of neglect. Extreme poverty spills onto the city’s roads and footpaths. Modernity, it seems, simply forgot to keep its date with the city. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, in the first year or so of his rule, tried to get private investment into the state, which perhaps could have infused some vitality into the state capital, but seems to have given up now (nobody invested, of course). Eight years after coming to power, his primary focus is the 2015 elections to the state Assembly; everything else has to wait. Hope is running thin.
Patna was not always like this. In the seventies, the game of golf was popular in the city, its convent schools were well known and respected, the Anglo-Indians were yet to leave en masse, theatre was alive and kicking, and cinema halls would play Bergman and Kurosawa films. When I picked up A Matter of Rats: A Short Biography of Patna, by Amitava Kumar, I was expecting insights into the city’s descent into gloom and hopelessness. When did it happen? Who caused it? Lalu Prasad? Is the average resident of Patna happy? How desperate are the young and restless to escape the city for a better life? What kind of people choose to stay back? But this is not what Mr Kumar sets out to explore in his book. Even then, I found the book lucid and interesting. Patna may be unglamorous, but it doesn’t lack character. A native’s empathy often creeps into the text, but that doesn’t slow the tempo.
The book is called A Matter of Rats because you can sees rats, big and small, all over the city, cropping up in places where you least expect them. The people of Patna have made their peace with rats; their presence no longer exercises them. Rats have a second connotation too. In the villages of Bihar lives the community of Musahars — the rat eaters. They are, of course, at the bottom of the cast-in-iron social pyramid. Mr Kumar, on a visit to the village of his ancestors, went on a rat hunt with three Musahar men, one of whom was called Chaprasi (Hindi for peon). More than the adventure, the name stayed with me. What kind of parents would select such a name for their son, I wondered. By naming him thus, it seems his parents had condemned him to a life of servitude. But then becoming a chaprasi in real life, in a government office, could well mean a significant elevation in his social status. This, in a sense, is the story of these poor people of Bihar. After this brief tryst with rats, and rat eaters, Mr Kumar turns to riveting stories: his search for Patna in travelogues, Marlon Brando’s brief stay here, and tales of successful as well as ordinary people.
According to Mr Kumar, there are three Patnas. The first comprises people who were born here but moved out in order to improve their lot. There are so many of them. Mr Kumar has chosen to tell the story through Subodh Gupta, the artist. People like Mr Gupta, immensely successful in their chosen fields, have added to the mystique of Patna — a poor and unclean city where geniuses are born. Much like successful non-resident Indians who have added to India’s prestige in the last two decades, Mr Gupta and others have given an intellectual dimension to Patna. Mr Gupta’s work, especially his experiments with stainless steel pots and pans, is greatly inspired by his childhood near Patna. The story goes that his sister had enrolled in a scheme in which if you sold three stainless steel utensils, you would get the fourth free; the family collected a large number of stainless steel thalis. Brass in the kitchen got replaced by stainless steel. The memory of lustrous metal flooded Mr Gupta later in life when he was looking for inspiration.
The second Patna is made up of people who were born there and who have chosen to live there. Here, Mr Kumar takes us to Anand Kumar, the man who trains, free of cost, students from very poor families for the entrance examination to the Indian Institute of Technology. And the third Patna is made up of people who come here on work — treatment at one of the hospitals, court cases, or simply in search of work. There are students who come to study in the colleges or prepare for the civil services. A sizeable chunk of the city’s economy runs on these young men. It also shows the state of underdevelopment elsewhere in Bihar. Or they could be activists who are seeking to build a career in politics. These accounts are interesting, but leave you yearning for more — stories of success, heartbreak and despair.
But then, this is a “short” biography of Patna.
A MATTER OF RATS
A Short Biography of Patna
Amitava Kumar
Aleph Book Company
Rs 295; 144 pages
