Being Bihari

There is no Bihari but then again there is no Sardar either. That means there is no way to write about being a Bihari because the Bihari who represents us all does not exist. There are only people and people are unique, they are so unlike each other that you can make a movie on each one of them. So, you watched a movie lately? Everyone is poor and cheap and boring.  Or they are rich and cheap and boring (yeah we all are cheap and we are proud of it, not of boring part of course). The unboring ones are unborn and they don’t exist anymore. They are imaginary as M part of Mtv or they became nocturnal and twitter celebrity. You start stereotyping people and the fun begins then the ‘hungama’. But ‘hungamas’ are third best known Bihari’s pastime. First two being politics and ‘litti-choka’. If you didn’t know the first two, I know you are not a Bihari. I’m a Bihari. I know that. I don’t know about you. You’re from over there, and over there is not over here. Problem? ‘Burbak kahin ka’ Unlike Punjabi, Haryanvi, Bengali, etc. Bihari is not a language. So next time I meet you don’t ask me to talk in Bihari. And yeah all Bihari don’t speak Bhojpuri either, it’s confined to certain regions of Bihar. We do say ‘hum’ to represent our self in place of ‘main’, that’s just because being from the land of greatest kings and scientists of medieval India we used to treat ourselves with respect and it just came to our accent. Laloo Yadav is a Bihari but all Bihari are not Laloo Yadav. Indeed he’s a great politician and has attended tons of management colleges in India and abroad as a guest lecturer, But he alone doesn’t symbolize whole of Bihar. So after hearing Bihari don’t make a personal sketch of a person in your mind who acts, talk and dress like him, and if someone doesn’t matches any of your descriptions say, “yaar tu Bihari lagta nahi hai!” What’s that supposed to mean? It really pisses one off. Even a normal looking (handsome banda/ cool bandi) with normal or no accent and dressing sense can be a Bihari. If you are still reading this, you are either a Bihari or you know some real Bihari. Let’s change the common mindset of people about Bihar and Bihari. Soch Badlo, Desh Badlo. [inspired by the article “Being Indian” in Mtv’s magazine Noise’s 1^st edition.]