"The Bihari" - Straight from the Heart!

Its hard not to fall in love with a place that you spent 18 very good years of your life in. If you felt that living in Bihar was hell, I would beg to differ. Biharis stand for being non-conventional, generally in a funny way. A majority of us are not the gun toting freaks like the Taliban who are on the look out to either kidnap or murder you and neither are we like a few of our distinguished public faces with political affiliations who don't exactly paint a very rosy picture of the state on the national scene.

"Hum aapko batana chahte hain ki hum bihari hain aur hamara naam suress, rajess, mahess ya binod nahi hai. Arre Bihari sunte hi kaahe albala rahe hain aap? Kaa hua? Hum bhoot nahi Bihari keh rahe hain. Dariye mat".

Purists might cringe at this contamination of hindi language by intrusion of words like dandanaake (with extreme alacrity), buta do(switch off) or associating everything with the masculine gender, but over the years Bihari has developed into almost a language making its presence felt across India besides the sizable chunk of Indian populace living in Bihar. It might not be pure hindi but it sure is sweet and funny. Slangs used here are also quite different from what is generally used in the northern parts of India. Bhootni ke, labad-dhondho, baklol being a few amongst them. We do not mix the crude Punjabi tadka style slangs in our daily life as much as it is used in some other parts of India.

I have spent 4 years in Kanpur studying there and I can tell you from experience that what is chalta hai in Kanpur or for that matter in Delhi can prove detrimental to your survival if you are in Bihar. I had come to Patna during vacations once and had a slight verbal duel with a ricksaw puller. I made a war cry using a normal and benign looking expletive that i used in my day to day life at hostel. That was it! He was not so much peeved at being yelled at than he was at the expletive I used. For God's sake I just used it for addressing rather than to convey anything deeper in meaning. He threatened to wipe me off my existence and then wiped the beads of sweat off his forehead to figuratively suggest to me the ease with which he would do it. I learnt my lesson - Fight or argue but try not to dig into the refined words' dictionary when dealing with people in Bihar.

I generally talk with my Bihari friends in the bihari lingo, the Hum hain na stuff and switch over to Main hoon na mode while talking with non-bihari folks with consummate ease and that is maybe because my bihari blood has become adulterated after staying away from the place for a few years now and also because I had always made a conscious effort to speak grammatically correct Hindi with Maa being a bit strict on how we fared in our Hindi examinations at school. But the instances when a biharism meets Hindi results in a deadly khichdi that could make Sacchidanand Hiranand Vatsyayan 'Agyey' feel as if all his contributions to hindi literature had gone to the drains. For example: Hum tumse kahe thhey na(bihari) + Maine tumse kaha tha na(hindi) = Hum tumse kaha tha na(the khichdi)

Kanpur has been almost a second home to me and how can I sign off without giving you a taste of how Kanpuriya hindi sounds:

Set up: Mumbai railway station ka platform number 12
Time: 12 in the night
Characters: A - From Bihar..Desparate to get back home. Has bought a railway ticket first time ever(you don't buy tickets while travelling within Bihar, its free!) and wants to ensure that he does not miss this train.
B - From Kanpur..Robbed of all his belongings by a fellow traveller a couple of hours back while waiting for his train. Frustrated and waiting to explode.
C - From Mumbai..Raat ko baarah baje din nikalta hai, subeh ko 6 baje raat hoti hai type tapori.

A: Bhaiya ee Babban Rao Ambegaonkar express isi platform se jayega?
B[frowns]: Abe Bhaiya dikhte hain kaa be? Thakur khandaan se hain, ijjat hai hamari...Bhaiya bolta hai

A:Oo ta thik hai lekin tarainwa(train) ke baare mein to bataiye
B: Na batayein to kaa kalloge(kar loge)?

A[mocking]: Pata hoga tabbe(tab hi) na bataiyega
B: Dekho hum gaali nahi dena chaheete(chahte) hain. Is liye sharafat se bolley(bol rahe) hain ki tameej se pess(pesh) aao.

A: Ago(ek) sawaal pooche to jawab mein ladaai suru(shuru) kar diye apne se aur humko tameej sikhayenge
B: Dekho aukaat mein raho kahee(keh) de rahe hain.
C[intervening]: Kya re dono halkat..raada karne ka dono ko yehich jageh milella tha? Chal ab maandwali kar aur kalti ho le, nahi to 'Mumbai for Mumbaikars' ka naara lagake apun 100-50 logon ko ikattha karega aur dono ko without ticket UP-Bihar bhej dega.

..Hmm..I guess it would have made more sense had I talked about the diversity in the way Hindi is spoken all over India. Maybe some other time!