The farmer had never seen a smartphone. He pointed at my phone. “Yeh kyun band hai?” (Why is it off?) I said: “Because I want to see your Begusarai, not the news’s Begusarai.”
Begusarai. The name itself comes with baggage in “begusarai news”. Politics. Crime. Industrial pollution. Land disputes.
I read the headlines for a month before going. I expected a battlefield.
Then I switched off my phone. For 7 days, no “begusarai news”. No alerts. No scrolling. Just the village. The fields. The people.
The farmer who doesn't know Begusarai's reputation
His name was Mahendra. He had been farming for 40 years.
I asked: “Do you know what news says about Begusarai?”
He said: “I don't know. I don't have TV. I don't have phone. I have my field.”
“But news says Begusarai is violent, corrupt, polluted…”
He laughed. “Look around. This is my Begusarai. Fields. Cows. Children. My wife is cooking. My son is in school. Where is violence?”
What the news says vs what Mahendra showed me
“Begusarai news” headlines from that week:
“Political rivalry turns violent, one injured”
“Industry waste pollutes river, villagers protest”
“Land dispute escalates, police deployed”
“Power cuts leave residents frustrated”
Mahendra showed me:
His field of maize. Tall. Green. Healthy.
The village well. Clean water. Women chatting while filling pots.
The temple where everyone gathers on Sundays. No politics. Just prasad.
The school where his son learns. One teacher for 30 kids. She works hard.
The market where he sells his crops. Fair prices. No disputes.
“This is Begusarai,” he said. “The other Begusarai – the news one – happens in one street, one factory, one politician's house. Not in my village.”
The one time news came to his village
I asked: “Has any journalist ever come here?”
He nodded. “Once. 10 years ago. A politician came to inaugurate a road. News crew came. They filmed the politician. They filmed the road. They left.”
“The road is still broken. The politician never came back. The news never came back. But I am still here. Still farming.”
“The news doesn't care about my road. It cares about the politician's face.”
What I saw in 7 days without news
No violence. No pollution that I could see. No land disputes. No power cuts that lasted more than an hour.
What I saw:
A woman who runs a small poultry farm. 200 chickens. She sells eggs to 3 villages.
A young man who learned welding in the city. Now he repairs farm equipment for everyone.
A grandmother who tells stories to children every evening. No news. Just myths and morals.
A temple priest who has been there for 50 years. He doesn't read news. He reads the Gita.