By Suveen K. Sinha
Sanjeev Gupta, after he has imbibed some of his favourite drink, Royal Stag, begins to have a hazy dream involving home-cooked food and two Boleros. When he wakes up, he rushes to join the taxi lane at New Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport. The cab he drives, a battered, yellow-and-black Maruti Omni, earns him enough to buy at least a bottle of Royal Stag a week. But ever so often, at times even at the wheel,
Gupta is besieged by visions of his family home in Gopalganj, near Bhagalpur, in Bihar. And two Boleros.
In his early thirties now, Gupta came to Delhi 12 year ago - one among tens of thousands regurgitated every month by overflowing trains from Bihar, fleeing unmitigated chaos and seeking livelihood. Now all he wants to do is take the train back.
Sanjeev Gupta, after he has imbibed some of his favourite drink, Royal Stag, begins to have a hazy dream involving home-cooked food and two Boleros. When he wakes up, he rushes to join the taxi lane at New Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport. The cab he drives, a battered, yellow-and-black Maruti Omni, earns him enough to buy at least a bottle of Royal Stag a week. But ever so often, at times even at the wheel,
Gupta is besieged by visions of his family home in Gopalganj, near Bhagalpur, in Bihar. And two Boleros.
In his early thirties now, Gupta came to Delhi 12 year ago - one among tens of thousands regurgitated every month by overflowing trains from Bihar, fleeing unmitigated chaos and seeking livelihood. Now all he wants to do is take the train back.
"Once I have saved enough to buy two second-hand Boleros from Punjab, I will go back," he says. The rugged Mahindra vehicles will give him a healthy income. "Once money comes, I will find avenues to invest. There is enough to do in Bihar now. This is Nitish Kumar's rule."
Since that rule started on October 25, 2005, it has exceeded all expectations. Kumar became chief minister at a time when Bihar, battered by a decade and a half of governments led in one way or the other by Lalu Prasad, had been given up for dead.
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