Hmm…yeah its been again quite a long time since I wrote..and for a good reason. Loads have happened in the past 2 and a half months and mostly it has been good for me. When I last wrote I was on my way to join Sesa Goa, now I am an employee of NTPC and am presently at Kahalgaon, Bihar. Yeah it was a hell of a journey!
But the journey that enraptured me with emotions(all the wrong kinds of them) was the one that I made yesterday : to Bhagalpur! What started off as a trip to the (in)famous city turned out to be quite a treat for all the people who love BADDD journeys! We were six people off into the blue. Our errands were different but destination the same. It was the first time that I travelled for more than a hour in an auto-rickshaw and man it was like hell. The roads initially were like you could find some amount of metaled road in a group of several potholes, but steadily the conditions became better to the extent that now all we could see on the roads were herds of buffaloes! Well I’ve to say one thing it was the very first time that I saw trained buffaloes…I mean they were all moving in a line behind their masters..an extraordinary feat really!
Then came the famous Bhagalpur Engineering College (BEC) from where one of my housemates, Shashikant (better known as Konchi @ Danda!!) has completed his Engineering. It was great to see an institution that churns out the electrical and mechanical engineers plunged in darkness…afterall people do good things only when they are forced by the circumstances, in this case the darkness or perhaps there is a rule there to go to bed by 6.30 in the evening (that explains Danda’s habits!)
Jokes apart, I was really saddened by the rampant unemployment and hence the immense poverty that’s spread all through Bihar. I could see beautiful farmlands for stretches as far as my naked eyes could see, and yet the very farmer who is toiling day and night to make the farm the way it is, lives in stark poverty as the money made out of the crops doesn’t manage to trickle down to them. Moreover each family was having a bunch of kids, all half-naked, roaming around in the streets, some helping their fathers in herding the cattle while some just loitering away: In short no signs of schools. Whatever the politicians might be saying, this is the ground reality of Bihar. Yes the situation has tremendously improved from what I had earlier seen in the rule of Lalu Prasad Yadav and the criminals that were the MLA’s back then but still loads of works remains to be done. At this juncture it is quite laughable that LPY is tempting the Bihar public with the offer of a motorbike for every Bihari…what the hell…when will these people learn? All I can hope is that the Bihari junta has come to its senses, risen out of the rampant caste prejudices and will vote the correct people onto power and not the one’s who go promising Bikes to people..

