In the Middle ... as always.

Prem Sankar Singh, is a performer of the first order. Amazingly articulate, and entrancingly theatrical, he held us rapt, in the grip of his agitation about Kala Pani. He agonized, energetically, about the pains and travails, the Sugar Factory brought to the people of his land, as it spewed its poisonous waste into the water-logged lands around in the Runni Saidpur block.

Prem Sankar Singh, promised a 'jail bharo' agitation in January. The People were at the end of the tether, he said. To this, Ram Sevak Singh piped up "jail bharne se kya hoga ...? pehle bhi kuch nahin hua hai, aur abhi bhi kuch nahin hoga..." meaning what will happen with this? nothing has happened before and nothing will happen now. "Bihariyon ka khoon garm nahin hai...", he disparaged at the helplessness of the people.

Prem Sankar rose fittingly to the occasion. "Hum madhya-wadi hain ...", he continued. The people of this land are moderates, and have always walked the middle path, he defended. Look at Ram. He didn't go off at the deep end. He stood at the shores of the ocean, and tried negotiating with Ravan. Give back my Sita and we will go away, he had said. And Krishna? What did he do? He went to the Kauravas, on behalf of the Pandavas. Give us 5 villages, he said. And we shall not fight. And Buddha was of course from here. He attained his enlightenment at Bodh Gaya.... So how can we fight? It is in our nature to seek compromise.

Hmmm. Had never thought of Bihar to be madhya-wadis ... especially considering the tales one gets to hear of the rule of the gun. But then, one learns new things every day.

Two ancient men and a quirky generator

It was 11.30 in the night. The fog swirled around us, blanketing everything. Visibility (what visibility?) was reduced to probably 10 feet. And Sunil, our most capable driver, was concentrating driving on the narrow, narrow roads, perched high above the ground.

Satyendra kept calling up, trying to find directions. Yes, we were trying to find our way to the Ashram, in a foggy dark night, with directions being given over the mobile phone. We couldn’t see anything in front of us, leave alone make out turnings, little pagdandis, left or right. Satyendra was certain we would find the Ashram, while I was equally certain we wouldn't. Doubts crowded in my head, while John happily gurgled at the back, the edges of his anxiety firmly blunted by a good drink.

And while we were looking around for the lanes and bye-lanes of the given directions, Satyendra carried on with his commentary on the side ... we were crossing Bangaon, he said. Bangaon is a most unusual village. In deep, remote Bihar. Almost all the IAS officers of Bihar and some of the best bureaucrats spread out in India came from this village. Don't ask why. But this village was blessed by Maa Saraswati.

Finally we found the 2 electric poles, standing side-by-side. I mean, where else would you find two poles standing side-by-side ??? We stopped. Totally, hopelessly lost. Stay put, said Rajendra Jha, I will come and get you. And we waited and finally we saw a bobbing, pale torchlight !! Saved !!

We made our way into the Ashram, pretty much dark, a lone small LED lamp battling valiantly against the dark. And Baba came out from inside the depths of some cavernous room. They proposed to put on the generator. They clanked around, under the pale light of the torch, while I sat inside that cavernous room, shivering and trying to keep warm. And finally, after 15-20 mins of energetic clanking, loud discussions, we were told there was no fuel !! So we went to sleep. A very comfortable bed indeed, in their training centre. A mosquito net. Many blankets. And we all slept, warm as bugs.

Morning revealed to us, what, thankfully, the night did not reveal. These two men, the guardians of the Ashram, were ancient !! One at least 70 while the other over 85 !! These two were staying alone in this remote ashram ????

But they were no ordinary men. They were people who had walked side-by-side with Vinoba Bhave during his Bhoodan Movement, had worked alongside Gandhiji during his satyagraha. They regaled us with memories and incidents of the Bhoodan movement and satyagraha. Real, live experiences, no history book chapters were these. And they had done some wonderful work with rain-water harvesting - the megh-jal abhiyan - the rain-water campaign.

And they were so generous, so so wonderfully hospitable. Baba (yes, the 85 year old), was spry and could leap across steps to quickly serve hot rotis before we could even finish the word. Old, did I say ? Think again.

And the generator? It did start, with a good drink of a litre of petrol. We needed it to charge our cameras – modern day, equipment, which gasped their death, at fading batteries. Huh.

The Temple of Ugra Tara

One evening, after we had finished our work for the day, we looked around for chai. Unexpectedly, we were near the temple of Ugra Tara. And, surely, we went in.

Tara is not only an ancient Hindu Goddess but also one of the most important Buddhist Goddesses.

Apparently, the term Tara, from the Sanskrit root 'tri' means deliverer, saviour, to "take across" a river, an ocean, a mountain or any difficult situation. Tara also means 'star'. Hence she is the star of our aspiration, our muse who guides us on the creative path.

Ugra Tara, just after her daily,

ritual "bath"

Ugra Tara, is her aroused, or demonic form. And apparently, she loves liquor, meat and utter devotion. Animal sacrifices, of goats and cows, are common. Goats are sacrificed regularly, while cows are sacrificed during Dasshera.

Yep. The animal sacrifice place. The big one is for

the cows and the small one for goats.

Apparently, Ugratara temples are extremely rare in this part of the country. As far as it is known, there is no other regular temple of Ugratara anywhere in Bihar, although the image of Tara particularly of the Pala period have been found at various places, including Kurkihar in Gaya district. The worship of this rare deity at this inaccessible village excites curiosity.

Ugratara is also known as Maha-Cina-Tara and this later Buddhistic image has been imported to India from Tibet through Nepal. Saharsa district is quite close to Nepal. The frontiers of Saharsa district and the district of Saptari in Nepal adjoin.

Ugratara is an image of Tantric culture.

Bagmati

Bagmati is one of the tributaries of Kosi. Baagh means tiger - or here it would be tigress. Baghmati - the intelligence of a Tiger. And Bagmati is exactly like that. A tigress. People in Raxia, Seetamarhi, who live within her embankments, said she is the tigress. One can hear her roar, her garjana, when she is in flood. And at that time she becomes Vyagramati - the tigress.

Bagmati, is also said to be purer than Ganga, more potent. One attains swarg, heaven, when one bathes in her.

One story, narrated by the people in the village, goes like this ...

A Brahman had four sons. 3 of them were like him, competent and well able to lead a prosperous life. The fourth was a loser, a waster who whiled away his time in meaningless pursuits. During one such pursuit, he landed up with a prostitute. And in the night, he was thirsty and asked her for water. Sleepily she told him it was by his bedside and he had to only reach out for it. The Brahman-youth drank deeply and to his consternation found out that it was madira, alcohol !

Being a Brahman, it was great sin to drink madira. (Don't ask why it was not a sin to visit a prostitute !!) Anyways, deeply distressed, he runs to priest to ask for a means to atone his sin. The priest has no answer.

The youth then goes to many, many people asking for a way to atone his sin. And finally in a village comes across a priest, considered by many to be a prankster. This chap hands him a danda, a walking stick, and tells him, that he has to keep walking, be on pilgrimage, until the stick sprouts, and gets an ankur.

The poor, misguided, youth, walks many miles, many years. But nowhere is he able to find his answer. He reaches a riverbank, and tired, lays his stick down, and goes down to her to drink and bathe. When he returns, he finds, lo and behold, that his stick has sprouted and sports an ankur !

The river, it is said, was Bagmati. So potent, that she could sprout even a walking stick.

And the Brahman? Of course, his sins were washed away ... :)

Mandan Land

Bihar is also, sneeringly, perjoratively, called Laloo-land. After Laloo Prasad Yadav. The ex-chief minister of Bihar. The fodder-scam man. But that is another story.

And in this Laloo-land, one came across Mandan-land. At Mahishi. Around 17-18 kms. from Saharsa, is this ancient village of Mahishi. Archaeological Survey of India's findings dates this village to be 2000 years old. One can quite believe it. It looks rather untouched by the chaos of the so-called outside world. Mahishi is the birth land of the scholar Mandan Mishra, a great philosopher of the eighth century. It is here that Shankaracharya, who came from the South, had a philosophic debate with Mishra and then his wife Bharathi. Legend has it that Shankaracharya aced Mandan Mishra in the debate. His arrogance began showing through. He was however challenged by Bharati, Mandan's wife, who told him that his victory was only on her husband. He however still had to contest her, Mandan's ardhangini, the better-half.

During the debate, Bharati posed questions related to sex and physical relations between man and woman. Shankaracharya, being a Brahmachary, i.e. celibate, did not know the answers. And hence was defeated by her.

Shankaracharya, decided to understand this aspect of life. He left his body in care of his disciples, and entered the dead-still-to-be-cremated-body of a prince. He lived as the prince, with his wife and children for 2-3 years, getting embroiled in the moh and maaya of sansara. Eventually, he returned to his own body, challenged Bharati again. This time he could speak from experience and won the debate.

Even today, there exists the site where the debate was held, so say the people of Mahishi.

The Crossing

We were to move to the next village, Kodra. A village that resided in between the embankments of the Kosi. And for this we had to cross one of the rivulets (some rivulet!) of the river.

The bank was steep. The water ran fast and swirled in eddies far below. This river was different. Her speed and power, even during the off-monsoon time, was not to be taken lightly. We waited patiently for the boat to come in from the other side.

No engines. No oars. How did it work, I wondered.

Two stumps, one on each bank. A strong, plastic rope tied around them, across the river. (ignore the people on the forefront ...)

Another piece of rope hung from this, something to hang on to?

And anybody could just pull themselves, on the boat, across.

Simple? Simple.

Married & Unmarried rivers !

We were listening in rapt attention to D.K.Mishraji, to his analyses of the impacts of the Kosi embankments. D.K.Mishra, is the grand old man who has devoted his life to researching, writing and activism on Kosi, against her embankments. He is a story-teller, a teacher who can hold forth in complete authority on the subject. He is an IIT graduate, a structural engineer who does understand the intricacies of the impacts of building mega-structures like the Kosi embankments. His talk is peppered with stories he has heard from the people of the land. One such story was of the Rivers.

People, from time immemorial, know how to live with floods. Note: they do not control floods or even manage floods. They live with them. Unlike our foolish technologists who tried to conquer the temperamental Kosi. But not that now ... I will talk about that in another piece. For now, I am recounting the story of the Rivers. So, as I was saying, people lived with the floods. Monsoons came. The rivers swelled up. The waters spread out - clearing garbage and trash, filling ponds and wells, rejuvenating the tired land with fresh soil from the Himalayas. The water rose up to 4-5 feet. And the people built machaans, platforms of bamboo, where up went everything. Their grain stock, their precious assets, their kids and cattle and also sometimes a stray snake which found its shelter from the raging waters. But that was the principle during the floods. Everybody helped everybody. Enemities, even between the species were forgotten. People waited the floods out. Eventually, in a few days, the waters would recede. And life returned to normalcy.

Once in way, the rivers threw their tantrums, refusing to withdraw to their course. The women, then, held poojas, lit lamps and prayed to the river to go back. And if the river still refused, the women threw sindoor, the red powder which married women in India wear on their forehead. They threatened the rivers with marriage !

These Himalayan rivers, were apparently unmarried. They were young, they were full of life, and they came tumbling and skipping down the slopes. They were immature and juvenile. And thus they were unmarried. Ganga, on the other hand, is married - at least in Bihar. She has run a long course, seen the world, runs sedate and peaceful, and nurtures her people. Marriage apparently has tamed her. Made her more responsible.

The Kosi and her playmates, Bagmati (the tigress), Kamala, Gandak etc. were as yet unmarried. They changed their course ever so often. Got distracted. But were powerful.

The threat of marriage, the women say, works. For the rivers retreat in a hurry when sindoor is thrown at them.

Looks like even the rivers know a good thing, huh?

Jugaad, again !

We are in this Musahar village. The Musahari community is one of the most marginalised community. A neglected, backward and really really poor lot. No education. No specific skill-sets. Totally dependent on the mai-baap landlord. And most probably a bonded-labour to boot, though one would not reveal it, even in whispers.

It is evening. Dusk is falling fast. The fires glow bright warming up the chilling air. Smoke billows around. And there... out there was a teensy-weensy, bright, LED light, lighting up this guy's little shop. And we all stand around and admire the handywork of this proud father's son, making suitable noises. Until he unwittingly reveals that it was done by his 10-year old son, who probably hasn't gone to school !

Jugaad !

Jugaad !

Jugaad is such a lovely word ... it means improvisation, innovation, finding solutions in most unexpected ways ... a "un"-scientific, out-of-the-box, ingenious solution to problems that may otherwise seem difficult to solve.

And this one was one such totally unexpected Jugaad !

The fire was out and the embers were burning low. The customers were early but hungry. A quick solution to getting the fire up and burning is needed. Out comes a beat-up, old, rickety fan. The two wires are stuck into the socket. The fan shoved near the opening of the choolah. A whirr. And the embers burst into flames. The rotis come rolling out and the subzi gets done in a jiffy. The customers are served.

Everyone is happy.