An edited version appeared in the Indian Express http://www.indianexpress.com/news/day-discotheques-in-patna/716915/ on November 27, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, November 26, 2010
That year, Ali wanted to change many things about Patna. He wanted the
boys and girls to dance to the music he would mix on the decks in a
restaurant with revolving neon lights, and a dance floor.
He wanted Patna, reeling under the lack of security for women and men,
to experiment with a day discotheque. Colleges shut at around 4 p.m.
The discotheque would close at 4:30 p.m. so girls and boys could come
in and dance and go home before the sun went down.
That was about a decade ago. Ali had spent a few months in Delhi,
Mumbai, Chandigarh, and wore anti-fit jeans and cool sweat shirts and
knew how to party.
He had rehearsed his role, too. He would play the DJ with headphones
plugged in his ears, a glass of beer on the side, and play his own
funky brand of music.
In those days, under the shadow of Lalu’s reign with his goons roaming
around, kidnapping women, raiding shops at will, we never partied at
clubs. In the evenings, we would sit at home and drink tea, or watch
television.
We all wanted some change, a break from the monotony of our routine
lives, from the oppressive fear that kept us indoors. We were young
and we wanted everything that everyone else in other cities had
access, too.
We wanted a discotheque even if it meant dancing under cheap neon
lights during the daylight hours.
Ali even managed to convince a restaurant owner to let him use the space.
He transported his equipment, huge speakers, a mixer, and headphones,
and we all sneaked out of the political science class, changed into
jeans, applied some cheap mascara and giggled at the prospect of going
to a disco.
I remember many students came. But the magic didn’t last. Towards the
afternoon, Ali could sense trouble was coming his way. The restaurant
owner, he told me, was anxious. This was dangerous. He was excited but
this was courting trouble.
The day discotheque shut.
Patna wasn’t ready for such adventures.
Lalu’s men were on the streets. They were indomitable, fearless, and lawless.
Those were the times I grew up in Patna, under the shadow of fear and
kidnapping. If I didn’t reach home by 4 p.m., my mother would start
calling up my friends’ homes, asking if I was ok.
We didn’t have cell phones then.
News was scary, too.
In July 1999, Shilpi Jain, my senior in Patna Women’s College, was
raped and murdered. They later dismissed it as a suicide. But
politicians were involved. On young politician refused to get his DNA
tested, saying he didn’t want to cooperate.
I had seen her at the coaching institute I attended to crack the MBA
examinations that morning. She was young, beautiful, and had been
crowned as Miss St. Joseph’s Convent at the farewell event.
The next day, the papers were full of tales of her grim, ruthless
murder. Her naked body had been dumped on some highway along with
Gautam Singh, her boyfriend. In 2003, the CBI closed the case terming
it as a suicide case.
But the infamous case had done its damage to our lives. We weren’t
allowed to have boyfriends, go out with friends, wear jeans with short
tops. It is better to be invisible in the strange times that we live
in, my mother had said then.
Fifteen years of my growing up years were filled with the fear of
rape, of being spotted, of desperately trying to get out of Bihar.
Those years were filled with longing, too, to do things that others
could with so much ease.
They used to call it “jungle raj”.
It was anarchy everywhere. Lalu engaged us all with his wit and we
laughed. But we also knew we were missing out on so much. There was
too much corruption. Roads were bumpy, shops downed their shutters by
8 p.m., and my father gave up on driving to Patliputra Colony on the
other side of the town for card parties because one night, he was
stopped by a bunch of men who demanded ransom and said he was on the
hit list.
Brain drain peaked in the state. Those who could get out, chose to
pack up and leave. A friend who had a franchise of Mahindra cars
relocated to Pune after men came and picked up cars from the showrooms
saying it was Lalu’s daughter’s wedding and they needed cars.
Caste barriers were enforced. We felt isolated. My family gave up on
the "Sinha" tag. We started using two first names so our caste doesn't
become our identity in a state that was showing the nation how to
divide and rule. My cousins are all a set of two first names. We were
the last of the "Sinha" surname in our family. A lot happened in those
15 years. Fear, and insecurity ruled all decisions.
I moved out in 2001. My mother would give me a list of instructions
before I took from Delhi or Mumbai to Patna, citing examples. There
were too many of those. A woman was drugged and her body was dumped at
one of the stations.
We never took the Rajdhani train to Delhi. It was packed with party
people, who clanked glasses, got drunk and created mayhem.
At the university, too many strikes became the order of the day. There
were strange men roaming the campus, saying they could do anything. I
went to a convent college, and was relatively safe. But my friends
faced issues. They dressed in plain clothes, tied their hair, anything
to avoid getting noticed.
On August 3, 2001, Pandora's Box, a discotheque, opened its doors.
This was yet another attempt to defy the system. It wasn’t Ali this
time but a young graduate named Aayush Sahay. But this was a day
discotheque. Nobody could risk late night brawls, etc.
But this too shut down. A local journalist told me gunshots were heard
inside the discotheque and it closed down a few months after it dared
to change the status quo.
Patna remained in its cocoon.
When I went home in 2008, after I moved back from the United States,
something had changed. Maybe just a little but it felt a lot easier
just going to the Patna Market on my own.
Then the floating restaurant opened and I went on it with my mother. I
saw many young girls and boys having a good time in the evenings. A
few malls had opened up. A lot more restaurants had opened up. They
looked fresh, full of life unlike the ones that had their waiters wait
it out for hours before people walked in. The fear was gone.
Someone asked me if I feel empowered with this spectacular win. I
don’t know if I feel empowered but I definitely feel safe and at ease
now.
Maybe Ali should come back and play his music now.
Maybe he is on to a banking career now, or maybe something else, like
all of us who just left when our moment came.
We had lost too much. Those 15 years, we felt imprisoned in our own house.
Maybe now is the time to return and reclaim our lost years in our home state.
More from memory ...
Not that everything is perfect in Bihar. But of course roads are
better, and the drive is no longer bumpy. I remember we drove to Ara
to my grandmother's place on weekends. It was a distance of perhaps
just 60 kms but on the potholed roads, it took us 2.5 hours. We
avoided leaving late from Ara and used to leave in the sweltering
afternoons during summers. Now, I hear those roads are nice and wide
and it takes only an hour. In those days, we only Maruti 800s and
Ambassadors, those bulky, heavy vehicles. Now, I see all sorts of
cars. People are not afraid to park more than one car in their
driveways. In those days, you'd be afraid to attarct too much
attention lest you got on the "hit list."
Doctors got kidnapped, young girls were picked up from Dusshera melas.
After a point, we ceased to go out and enjoy the melas through the
night. It became too tight for us to move around. It was like living
in some bubble. You knew your limits.
My mother still complains of the long power cuts in Patna. And people
complain of the power cuts at the crematoriums where half-burnt bodies
languishing in the furnace till the power comes back on, make a
mockery of the state and its upward swing on the development curve.
But I tell her that it is in the little details that we see the
change. In those days, there was only Lee Cooper. Now, we have all
brands. Now jewelry shops don't have an army of security men posted
outside the shop. Now, we go to the movies, the multiplexes and buy
popcorn and watch films without the fear. We had dared to go watch
Fire once at Ashok cinema. It was mad rush, and then they pushed us,
tried to grope us. We had to shout for help.
Once we went to watch DDLJ in a crumbling theatre in Ara. They told
the men to take the other side of the hall, and moved the women to the
other part. It was for security, they said.
In a theatre, in our boxes, once a man came and demanded my friend
accept his proposal. Then he went after her, and created a scene
outside her aprtment. He said he had political connections, and he
could get her picked up. My friend was married off in the next few
months. The family couldn't have dealt with the kidnapping stigma and
the shame.
Such were the times we lived in. We had dreams, too. But those 15
years of that fearful regime crushed those.
So I tell my mother she needs to see the change in little things, in
my smile, in my coffee dates with friends. Change is coming. It may be
slow but it will.
Then, we won't have to migrate, and we won't have to deal with the
hatred spewed upon us by the likes of MNS. Then, we will have our own
opportunities in our own state and the trains won't be so packed with
Biharis, the poor migrants, the rustic fellows, the unwanted,
invisible people, trying to leave a ravaged state to find livelihood
elsewhere.
Give him sometime to undo the damage done in the 15 years, I tell her.
From a sick state with so much to deal with, we are now a state on the
right track with young entrepreneurs willing to come back and invest.
We are going to be fine, I assure her.
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