Unlike Delhi, Patna can have strangers come up to you and go on about shared life histories

On a recent visit to Patna, my daughter had an epiphanic episode. While having butter chicken momos at a Bollywood-Korean pop-themed cafe, surrounded by family members and friends, she asked, 'Does everyone know everyone in Patna?'

This was because all through her visit, even when she met strangers, she would notice that after a while they would drop 3-4 names that were familiar to her. Now, that never happened to her in Gurgaon, which has been her home for more than half her life.

I tried to explain to her that while we were newcomers to Gurgaon, in Patna our kinship trajectories spanned centuries. Also, her uncles and aunts, both on her mother's and my side, were far more gregarious and socially active entities than I ever could be.

As an only child, she listens to my tales of growing up in a joint family home with envy. 'It must be so cool to grow up surrounded by cousins and uncles and aunts,' she said. 'Yes and no,' I told her. While growing up in the family home in Kadam Kuan, Patna, there were few dull moments. But one also longed for the repose of anonymity.

In Patna, I always felt an invisible neighbourhood watch at my back. While there were security and privilege in that identity, I longed to throw off the leash.

Patna also has a long memory - partly the reason that it produces storytellers with such regularity. From Phanishwar Nath Renu to Rajkamal Chowdhury to Hrishikesh Sulabh to Amitava Kumar, Patna is so 'sahityik' a place that even outsiders have done their bit to keep it forever sparkling on the Indian literary map.

Patna rarely ever suffers from amnesia, or shies away from telling you your family secrets - or its own. I have had strangers come up to me and let slip after an initial introduction, 'Your grandfather caught my uncle cheating in his 2nd year exam at Patna College in 1955. He had to migrate to Calcutta University. Loss of two years.' A full no-holds-barred discourse on family calamities would soon ensue.

Growing up, Patna was a goldmine for a fiction writer like me. But it could also get oppressive. Like the time when some 'jagruk' neighbours informed my brother that I was seen outside Kalidas Rangalaya with a lit bidi in my hand. It was a fact. I was then smitten with a young lady who acted in the repertory.

It was only after I came to Delhi at 17 for my graduation that I could enjoy the anonymity I craved. I could wear my Tweety-Pie Bermudas with a shotgun-infused vest and drink banta from an olive green kancha bottle. Nobody would bat an eyelid.

'Baba, you were such a spoiled kid growing up.' My daughter, who has a history of turning the tables on me, pipes up in delight. I agree with her. But I also tell her that by 17, I already knew that if I were ever to achieve my ambition of becoming a novelist and write about Patna with authenticity, I first had to move out of it.

I was so naive then that I didn't want the taint of privilege on my fiction. Also, Delhi was where Indo-Anglian literature was published. I remember taking a bus from North Campus to Nehru Place in the mid-1990s and standing for an hour outside the Penguin India office, looking up at the building from where David Davidar published Vikram Seth, Dom Moraes, RK Narayan, and Kiran Nagarkar. I wanted to be on that list.

But even in the Delhi literary world, I was not cut off from the long reach of Patna privilege. Unbeknownst to me, I was connected to three of the finest writers of Indo-Anglian writing of my generation. My father and Tabish Khair's father were in Patna Medical College. Amitava Kumar and my elder brother were batchmates in St Michael's High School. Pankaj Mishra and I shared a local guardian in Vasant Kunj.

'Oh my god, Baba, you were such a nepo-kid.' My daughter, as usual, has the last word.


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