Across the border: Growing irrelevance, and desperation

Abhishek Asthana

In the 1990s, my father — a middle manager in an Indian company — was posted in a city in Bihar named after a revenue officer named Muzaffar Khan in the 1800s. It was a town with open drains and non-communal corruption, which kept people of all religions equally poor. Khan was long dead, his revenue collections long spent, but his sewage system stayed the same. The city had great litchis, though.

It was a winter day, and when my school-term exams ended at noon, I stood outside the gates, clutching my exam-notepad. My father picked me up on his Rajdoot, and after a short ride, we were at his office. An old building in an old part of the town, with large iron gates, it was a 4-BHK set-up. The building-owner lived a floor above. Mr Ansari took pride in playing landlord to a large Indian corporation — it did ensure uninterrupted rental cash-flow and community pride.

That day, upon seeing a kid sitting on his father’s Rajdoot, he came downstairs. After some small talk, he figured I was waiting out my father’s shift and generously invited me upstairs. A bowl of sevaiyya (sweet vermicelli) was summoned,........

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