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A Matter of Rats: A Short Biography of Patna
It is not only the past that lies in ruins in Patna, it is also the present. But that is not the only truth about the city that Amitava Kumar explores in this vivid, entertaining account of his hometown. We accompany him through many Patnas, the myriad cities locked within the city—the shabby reality of the present-day capital of Bihar; Pataliputra, the storied city of emperors; the dreamlike embodiment of the city in the minds and hearts of those who have escaped contemporary Patna's confines. Full of fascinating observations and impressions, A Matter of Rats reveals a challenging and enduring city that exerts a lasting pull on all those who drift into its orbit.
Kumar's ruminations on one of the world's oldest cities, the capital of India's poorest province, are also a meditation on how to write about place. His memory is partial. All he has going for him is his attentiveness. He carefully observes everything that surrounds him in rats and poets, artists and politicians, a girl's picture in a historian's study, and a sheet of paper on his mother's desk. The result is this unique book, as cutting as it is honest.
Kumar's ruminations on one of the world's oldest cities, the capital of India's poorest province, are also a meditation on how to write about place. His memory is partial. All he has going for him is his attentiveness. He carefully observes everything that surrounds him in rats and poets, artists and politicians, a girl's picture in a historian's study, and a sheet of paper on his mother's desk. The result is this unique book, as cutting as it is honest.
144 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 2013
23 people are currently reading
631 people want to read
About the author
Amitava Kumar
39 books167 followersAmitava Kumar is a novelist, poet, journalist, and Professor of English at Vassar College. He was born in Bihar, India; he grew up in the town of Patna, famous for its corruption, crushing poverty, and delicious mangoes.
He is the author of Nobody Does the Right Thing; A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb; Husband of a Fanatic: A Personal Journey through India, Pakistan, Love, and Hate, a New York Times “Editors’ Choice” selection; Bombay—London—New York, a New Statesman (UK) “Book of the Year” selection; and Passport Photos. He is the editor of several books, including Away: The Indian Writer as an Expatriate, The Humour and the Pity: Essays on V. S. Naipaul, and World Bank Literature. He is also an editor of the online journal Politics and Culture and the screenwriter and narrator of the prize-winning documentary film Pure Chutney.
Kumar’s writing has appeared in The Nation, Harper’s, Vanity Fair, The American Prospect, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Hindu, and other publications in North America and India.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews
July 23, 2013
Gorgeous cover, mediocre book. Should be re-titled a short, meandering biography of Amitava Kumar and Patna. To be honest, it felt like Amitava Kumar dropped into David Davidar's Aleph office one evening, and David happened to suggest: "Hey Amitava, aren't you from Patna? Everyone keeps dissing Patna, why don't you write about it?" Sure thing, David! And 35,000 words later - A Matter of Rats! Yippee.
July 9, 2013
I've never been ashamed of letting others know about my city of origin - Patna. Technically, I was not born there but spent quite a few years of my childhood there. And my parents and their parents spent a chunk of their lives there. So it would only be obvious that I would be looking forward to a biography of my city, as Kumar calls it. And needless to say, I was not disappointed. Even though this book, like Bombay London New York by the same author, again suffers from some sort of euphoria that tends to disrupt the writing, it is enjoyable nonetheless. Kumar tells the tales of Patna as seen from the eyes of its residents - some very famous and some not so famous and manages to pack the needed punch in this slim volume. Tales of hope, desperation, loss and so much else have been put together neatly. Even though it's my parents and not me who will be literally able to relate to a lot of the material landmarks of the city, I will still say with pride that the city finally got the non-fiction narrative, albeit light-hearted, it deserved.
July 18, 2018
India's iconic cities all have seem to have so many juicy, movie/novel adaptation worthy stories to tell. But what about its grimy, less glamorous cities? Or cities like Patna, almost universally reviled & seen through a lens of disgust and fear?
This short book on Patna, unlike City Adrift : A Short Biography of Bombay (Bombay) and Askew: A Short Biography of Bangalore (Bangalore) from Aleph's city series, tells you quite candidly that the city of Patna has a long history of decline and decay that continues till this very day and that there's not much to actually say about it. There's a brief, passing account of this history, with quotes from British officials that closely mirror our own contemporary opinions of the city.
Instead, Amitava Kumar focuses on the people that inhabit the city, it's past, present, and future. Although not what you'd expect from a series on cities, this chunk of the book (also its biggest chunk), written like a crisp longform editorial, is where it really shines. He fills you with a greater appreciation for the teeming masses that fill India's less developed urban centers, where the bright neon lights of globalisation have yet to reach. It comes with some insightful passages on the nature of humble ambition and the valuable lesson that poverty and dignity are not mutually exclusive.
A short, light read, this book features quality writing, and a nuanced perspective on human dignity and telling the story of the less fortunate. What it doesn't feature though, is the story of the city itself, something I found disappointing. The people are important, sure, but a city is an entity by itself.
This short book on Patna, unlike City Adrift : A Short Biography of Bombay (Bombay) and Askew: A Short Biography of Bangalore (Bangalore) from Aleph's city series, tells you quite candidly that the city of Patna has a long history of decline and decay that continues till this very day and that there's not much to actually say about it. There's a brief, passing account of this history, with quotes from British officials that closely mirror our own contemporary opinions of the city.
Instead, Amitava Kumar focuses on the people that inhabit the city, it's past, present, and future. Although not what you'd expect from a series on cities, this chunk of the book (also its biggest chunk), written like a crisp longform editorial, is where it really shines. He fills you with a greater appreciation for the teeming masses that fill India's less developed urban centers, where the bright neon lights of globalisation have yet to reach. It comes with some insightful passages on the nature of humble ambition and the valuable lesson that poverty and dignity are not mutually exclusive.
A short, light read, this book features quality writing, and a nuanced perspective on human dignity and telling the story of the less fortunate. What it doesn't feature though, is the story of the city itself, something I found disappointing. The people are important, sure, but a city is an entity by itself.
October 5, 2013
Amitava Kumar has done a great service to lend Patna a space in literary circles. This non fictional account starts with rat eating mushhars, and carries on with other anecdotes of his encounter with filth, struggle, hope and the drabness of modern day Patna. The stories interest you, but very soon you get the feeling that the book is mostly a work of borrowed reportage. He quotes from several authors in contemporary literature who mention Patna in their works. And though some analysis , like the three kind of Patnas seem interesting , the author fails to bring out anything substantive out of it. By the time , this short book is about to end, you get the feeling that the author has been living on borrowed attention, born out of intrigue know about the capital of one of the worst states of modern days. The last chapter seemed a superfluous addition, I guess primarily to add up pages, and of course the book does not conclude, but rather leaves it undone.
I guess , a literature that could capture the essence of modern day decrepit Bihar will have to wait longer, at least until the people who have lived it in flesh and blood could get the ability to pen it, for surely the men who write about it in their holiday trips can't do it. Read it , for there is a dearth of literature that has anything to do with Bihar, but you won't miss much even if you decide to let go .
I guess , a literature that could capture the essence of modern day decrepit Bihar will have to wait longer, at least until the people who have lived it in flesh and blood could get the ability to pen it, for surely the men who write about it in their holiday trips can't do it. Read it , for there is a dearth of literature that has anything to do with Bihar, but you won't miss much even if you decide to let go .
October 25, 2022
From the eyes of someone who left
This is the third book in the series that I read and the only one about a city I do not know at all. Amitava Kumar, however,ales the city come alive. The past and the present. The people who left, the people who stayed and the people who came. There is no truth in non-fiction, only perspectives. This book reinforces that.
This is the third book in the series that I read and the only one about a city I do not know at all. Amitava Kumar, however,ales the city come alive. The past and the present. The people who left, the people who stayed and the people who came. There is no truth in non-fiction, only perspectives. This book reinforces that.
July 30, 2013
If you have lived in Patna, you will instantly fall in love with this book. You will cherish, reflect, introspect, and relate to each and every sentence written in this book. This book takes an un-parallel route to Patna and showcases a city in three dimension - Past, Present, and the unknown future. It tries to depict the mood of the city by building the context of history, politics, people's aspirations.
If you have some connection to Patna....Do read this book!
However if you are not from Patna and have not lived there, I doubt, you would relate much to this book. You can only expect to hate Patna (and Bihar) even more.
If you have some connection to Patna....Do read this book!
However if you are not from Patna and have not lived there, I doubt, you would relate much to this book. You can only expect to hate Patna (and Bihar) even more.
April 26, 2014
The title, the cover and initial few pages excited me a lot. I thought this book will take me back to Patna and let me see everything again through the lens of a creative writer. Looks like Amitava doesn't know much about Patna and hasn't truly experienced it. Anyone who will visit Patna for 2 weeks can write this type of book. The writer just encountered with some Patna people but only a few of them depict true Patna. Rather than meeting some more he wrote this book talking about them only.
March 11, 2016
A Matter of Rats - Amitava Kumar
Cities are thinking, living beings. They never remain constant, especially the more excited ones– the metropolises. People can give you a phrase or a word, “electric” or “edgy” and you can spend all your evenings and days in company of that city not knowing why was that the right word used to describe the space.
But what do you do with cities that have fallen– not ‘fallen’ in the sense defeated but declined, with time? Cities that once were the darlings of the rich, famous and the shining, the courtesans that once captured the heart of many a traveller but are no longer quite their former selves. The tides of time have swept them out of the circles of power and wealth. They lie on the periphery. What do you do with them? You write their biographies: short, pithy ones titled A Matter of Rats.
Of course, the title suggests many other realities as well. The enterprising, infesting ways of rats, the habits of hidden plundering, and above all, always surviving.
It is a biography of Patna.
The book is a memory exercise. Memory that interacts with the present, memory that interacts with other memories; an emigrant’s interaction with the ‘left-over Patna’. The author, Amitava Kumar, had left the city decades ago and, as he acknowledges, he now only visits the city to meet his parents. But while he was elsewhere, he was always looking for the city that was once his own. He looked for it in articles in ‘Granta’, in the acerbic writings of Shiva Naipaul (the lesser-known brother of V.S. Naipaul), in the brief mention of the city made somewhere by William Dalrymple, and in the fresh blood that a new author has drawn on to write his debut novel. All these glimpses of his city, as seen by others, are included in the book. It’s as if the author is trying these many lenses, not sure whether he should just follow his own. Is this merely the academic’s search for the views from inside and out, or is he looking for validation in other voices that his city is somehow still relevant?
Amitava Kumar is an academic and a journalist. He wants to be objective. He narrates incidents off the highway of the new Bihar, the hunting of rats by Musahars, a bureaucrat’s most imaginative device to socially engineer the Musahars’ integration into Bihar’s horribly casteist society. He even tries to keep an even keel while observing a love story that has gone sour, as intellectual life is draining out of the city and a new consumerism is coming in.
In that sense, the book is a reflection on many other north Indian cities, like Lucknow and Allahabad, that were once centres of urban relevance, havens for artists, artistes and literary figures. What Kumar observes of Patna’s failings is sadly also true of these other cities. Their present day realities look like messier and uglier copies of a Delhi or Mumbai. Delhi’s malls are nothing to take pride in, but at least they seem to honestly belong there. The middle class and its aspirations across India makes the presence of a ‘P&M’ Mall in Patna something of a baroque display. “Me too.”
Nowhere in Patna can one see any awe-inspiring relic from its 2000 years of continuous history. And centred in this loss, is the author’s struggle to not reject his own identity, “I told stories about Patna because they were a part of my shame at having come from nowhere… It took me time to learn that what I thought as honesty, the honesty required of a writer, was also a rejection of who I was.” It is a rejection, which is very familiar to many Biharis.
This biography is not objective. It matters that the person writing it is a Bihari in exile, someone who lives in New York – that centre of modern urban celebration and decadence, a city which every city in the global south mulls over, aspiring to be yet unable to leave behind a history gone irrelevant in a globalized world.
Bihar is feudal, abjectly casteist. It lives in that history even today. For many communities, if they are to evoke pride in a collective identity, it is in their own communities; the Yadavs for the Yadavs and the Rajputs for the Rajputs. There is no overarching icon that transcends these barriers and no one single Bihari whom all classes and castes love. Cities usually become melting pots –spaces where one can give up these different identities and take up something new. But that is not the story of Patna and that is not the story that could be told.
In that sense, it is a biography of that which is relevant for much of the educated elite that has left Patna, that which many of them perhaps feel on reflection, once they have left the city. But the book does try and engage with other Patnas as well. It addresses the Patna of those who have stayed back and are trying to put together a new Patna and the Patna of those who can’t run away to Delhi or Mumbai and must fall back on this lesser city to help them survive.
The book is not about Patna’s 2000 years of history; it hardly could be in 150 pages. It is about memories, and the scanty history – culled from the last 100-150 years of the city’s past – that the author pulled in to give relevance to the memories he relates. Nonetheless, it is relevant. It made me happy, nostalgic, reflective and sad.
It also presented me with many what ifs. What if the author was not an exile but someone living in Patna, someone who had the objectivity to look at the nooks and crannies of the city and its feudal past and present without losing sight of its relevance in current times? What if the memories recounted in the book was of the author and his city having lived their biographies together? Would that biography have been different? Would it have been more broadly relevant?
http://kindlemag.in/a-matter-of-rats-...
Cities are thinking, living beings. They never remain constant, especially the more excited ones– the metropolises. People can give you a phrase or a word, “electric” or “edgy” and you can spend all your evenings and days in company of that city not knowing why was that the right word used to describe the space.
But what do you do with cities that have fallen– not ‘fallen’ in the sense defeated but declined, with time? Cities that once were the darlings of the rich, famous and the shining, the courtesans that once captured the heart of many a traveller but are no longer quite their former selves. The tides of time have swept them out of the circles of power and wealth. They lie on the periphery. What do you do with them? You write their biographies: short, pithy ones titled A Matter of Rats.
Of course, the title suggests many other realities as well. The enterprising, infesting ways of rats, the habits of hidden plundering, and above all, always surviving.
It is a biography of Patna.
The book is a memory exercise. Memory that interacts with the present, memory that interacts with other memories; an emigrant’s interaction with the ‘left-over Patna’. The author, Amitava Kumar, had left the city decades ago and, as he acknowledges, he now only visits the city to meet his parents. But while he was elsewhere, he was always looking for the city that was once his own. He looked for it in articles in ‘Granta’, in the acerbic writings of Shiva Naipaul (the lesser-known brother of V.S. Naipaul), in the brief mention of the city made somewhere by William Dalrymple, and in the fresh blood that a new author has drawn on to write his debut novel. All these glimpses of his city, as seen by others, are included in the book. It’s as if the author is trying these many lenses, not sure whether he should just follow his own. Is this merely the academic’s search for the views from inside and out, or is he looking for validation in other voices that his city is somehow still relevant?
Amitava Kumar is an academic and a journalist. He wants to be objective. He narrates incidents off the highway of the new Bihar, the hunting of rats by Musahars, a bureaucrat’s most imaginative device to socially engineer the Musahars’ integration into Bihar’s horribly casteist society. He even tries to keep an even keel while observing a love story that has gone sour, as intellectual life is draining out of the city and a new consumerism is coming in.
In that sense, the book is a reflection on many other north Indian cities, like Lucknow and Allahabad, that were once centres of urban relevance, havens for artists, artistes and literary figures. What Kumar observes of Patna’s failings is sadly also true of these other cities. Their present day realities look like messier and uglier copies of a Delhi or Mumbai. Delhi’s malls are nothing to take pride in, but at least they seem to honestly belong there. The middle class and its aspirations across India makes the presence of a ‘P&M’ Mall in Patna something of a baroque display. “Me too.”
Nowhere in Patna can one see any awe-inspiring relic from its 2000 years of continuous history. And centred in this loss, is the author’s struggle to not reject his own identity, “I told stories about Patna because they were a part of my shame at having come from nowhere… It took me time to learn that what I thought as honesty, the honesty required of a writer, was also a rejection of who I was.” It is a rejection, which is very familiar to many Biharis.
This biography is not objective. It matters that the person writing it is a Bihari in exile, someone who lives in New York – that centre of modern urban celebration and decadence, a city which every city in the global south mulls over, aspiring to be yet unable to leave behind a history gone irrelevant in a globalized world.
Bihar is feudal, abjectly casteist. It lives in that history even today. For many communities, if they are to evoke pride in a collective identity, it is in their own communities; the Yadavs for the Yadavs and the Rajputs for the Rajputs. There is no overarching icon that transcends these barriers and no one single Bihari whom all classes and castes love. Cities usually become melting pots –spaces where one can give up these different identities and take up something new. But that is not the story of Patna and that is not the story that could be told.
In that sense, it is a biography of that which is relevant for much of the educated elite that has left Patna, that which many of them perhaps feel on reflection, once they have left the city. But the book does try and engage with other Patnas as well. It addresses the Patna of those who have stayed back and are trying to put together a new Patna and the Patna of those who can’t run away to Delhi or Mumbai and must fall back on this lesser city to help them survive.
The book is not about Patna’s 2000 years of history; it hardly could be in 150 pages. It is about memories, and the scanty history – culled from the last 100-150 years of the city’s past – that the author pulled in to give relevance to the memories he relates. Nonetheless, it is relevant. It made me happy, nostalgic, reflective and sad.
It also presented me with many what ifs. What if the author was not an exile but someone living in Patna, someone who had the objectivity to look at the nooks and crannies of the city and its feudal past and present without losing sight of its relevance in current times? What if the memories recounted in the book was of the author and his city having lived their biographies together? Would that biography have been different? Would it have been more broadly relevant?
http://kindlemag.in/a-matter-of-rats-...
December 6, 2013
I received this book free through Goodreads First Reads. Many thanks - please send more!
I have an admiring fascination with all things Indian and was hoping to learn something about the city of Patna (and perhaps its rats) from this curiously handsome little volume. I was somewhat disappointed.
Apparently there is an inferiority complex of sorts inherent in being associated with Patna, the capital of Bihar, India's poorest state. Residents and former residents seem to divide their time between debasing the place and defending it.
While the book is evocative of the sights, sounds and even the smells I imagine for India, this self-described "short biography" of the city seems geared more toward those who already have a personal connection to Patna.
I think readers will learn more about author Amitava Kumar than his home town.
I have an admiring fascination with all things Indian and was hoping to learn something about the city of Patna (and perhaps its rats) from this curiously handsome little volume. I was somewhat disappointed.
Apparently there is an inferiority complex of sorts inherent in being associated with Patna, the capital of Bihar, India's poorest state. Residents and former residents seem to divide their time between debasing the place and defending it.
While the book is evocative of the sights, sounds and even the smells I imagine for India, this self-described "short biography" of the city seems geared more toward those who already have a personal connection to Patna.
I think readers will learn more about author Amitava Kumar than his home town.
December 22, 2013
A group of real life incidents and stories bunched together in an attempt to form a picture of the life and perspective of people who have lived in Patna. The book starts losing its track towards the end and starts becoming a rather personal tale. I enjoyed the first half quite well. A hundred and forty pages are not much and you'll definately get something out of the book if you've ever lived in Patna.
October 8, 2013
Good short read. Starts with a nice historical background of Patna but eventually ends up with some boring story about a messed up marriage. Those thinking to get a true insight into the Patna life should go for some other book. The newbies from Patna will not find it too much connecting.
May 15, 2014
A lovely little book. I can see why the author had wanted to call it "The Place of Place" at one point, but the title as it is works much better. Kumar's many perspectives and observations about his birthplace are entertaining, poignant, and thought-provoking.
September 7, 2013
An unbiased narration of scenes of city, covering each and every aspect of it. A book that touches the reader's soul.
November 21, 2013
A truthful account of a city where, in between the despair and decay, people clinch to the slightest of hope and happiness and convert it from a city of rats to a city of humans.
November 20, 2016
Insightful and interesting read about Patna and its people.
December 12, 2020
In 300 BC, when the Greek ambassador Megasthenes arrived in India, he called Patna the "..greatest city in the world. To walk through Patna is like making one's way through the Indian version of ancient Rome." Later, towards the end of the 4th century, Chinese traveller Fa-Hien wrote that "..the Sanskrit name meant 'The city of flowers'; It is the Indian Florence". In 21st century, people from other states ask me, in contrast and knowing that I hail from this city, "Has Patna improved?", and I ask them, "What is the reference point?"
Amitava Kumar, a scholar and an author from Patna, who now lives in the USA, writes a short biography of Patna, and what an intelligent choice of word - 'Biography' and not 'History' - for in this small, moving novel, he tells the story not of the city as a city but the city as a character that has grown and grown and declined and thrives. When I started the book, I expected a history of the city, but instead I was exposed to its people, the story of a city through its people, people who have left Patna but carry it with them, people who stay in Patna and live it, and people who arrive in Patna and make it what it is.
It would be a lie to say that Patna is a likable city. It is not, not at least for an outsider who arrives in the city with a prejudiced mind to criticize it. The cultural character is thin, there are no bookstores (as one of the characters points out and I wholeheartedly share his disappointment), there is no public space (a major exception being the recent and a kick-ass addition of an aesthetically pleasing Bihar Museum, the modernist architecture of which reminds me of Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum, only grander), and you find clutter, dirt, thelas, electric wires, coaching institutes' hoardings, and rickshaws, disoriented since ages, everywhere. But in its disorderliness, in its increased Entropy, is the natural progression. I can go on and on on why this city, despite its flaws, despite me having stayed in it (through unexpected turn of events) for only two years at stretch, always is endearing, where coming back to parents also means returning to the cradle of memories, not all of which were lived in actuality by me.
Through his conversations with and musings on a host of characters, including Super 30's Anand Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav to migrant laborers, poets and Naxals, Amitava paints the portrait of city, where rats, in addition to their literal meaning, thrive in their metaphorical sense of flaws. However, his portrayal is not perfect. The writing gets dull at times, and often the author becomes a wee-bit more indulgent in telling his own story than that of the city; while many episodes (like the one involving a couple friend of his) seemed unnecessary, many others (about the decline of literary and cultural landscape) needed more details.
The idea of describing a city through its people has a great potential but Amitava falls short of seeing it through. However, I will still recommend this to people who want to know about Patna, or more importantly, who need to know about Patna more than the stereotypical imagery of a city which is crime-intensive and uncouth, perpetrated by the metropolitan-centric media houses.
Amitava Kumar, a scholar and an author from Patna, who now lives in the USA, writes a short biography of Patna, and what an intelligent choice of word - 'Biography' and not 'History' - for in this small, moving novel, he tells the story not of the city as a city but the city as a character that has grown and grown and declined and thrives. When I started the book, I expected a history of the city, but instead I was exposed to its people, the story of a city through its people, people who have left Patna but carry it with them, people who stay in Patna and live it, and people who arrive in Patna and make it what it is.
It would be a lie to say that Patna is a likable city. It is not, not at least for an outsider who arrives in the city with a prejudiced mind to criticize it. The cultural character is thin, there are no bookstores (as one of the characters points out and I wholeheartedly share his disappointment), there is no public space (a major exception being the recent and a kick-ass addition of an aesthetically pleasing Bihar Museum, the modernist architecture of which reminds me of Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum, only grander), and you find clutter, dirt, thelas, electric wires, coaching institutes' hoardings, and rickshaws, disoriented since ages, everywhere. But in its disorderliness, in its increased Entropy, is the natural progression. I can go on and on on why this city, despite its flaws, despite me having stayed in it (through unexpected turn of events) for only two years at stretch, always is endearing, where coming back to parents also means returning to the cradle of memories, not all of which were lived in actuality by me.
Through his conversations with and musings on a host of characters, including Super 30's Anand Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav to migrant laborers, poets and Naxals, Amitava paints the portrait of city, where rats, in addition to their literal meaning, thrive in their metaphorical sense of flaws. However, his portrayal is not perfect. The writing gets dull at times, and often the author becomes a wee-bit more indulgent in telling his own story than that of the city; while many episodes (like the one involving a couple friend of his) seemed unnecessary, many others (about the decline of literary and cultural landscape) needed more details.
The idea of describing a city through its people has a great potential but Amitava falls short of seeing it through. However, I will still recommend this to people who want to know about Patna, or more importantly, who need to know about Patna more than the stereotypical imagery of a city which is crime-intensive and uncouth, perpetrated by the metropolitan-centric media houses.
October 6, 2025
Another book in the "City Series by Aleph Book Company", this one reflects the vignettes of daily life, historical anecdotes, and personal reflections on Patna, Bihar. Continuing the tradition of treating city as the central character; the author includes rat-catchers of Patna, students aspiring to escape to Delhi, those rare few who choose to stay and ordinary citizens who embody both frustration and hope. Together they help in assimilating the essence of the city across the chapters.
I like the tone of the book - neither sympathetic nor critical; yet affectionate.
However, I could not understand the context of a few characters in the chapters, which at times made the reading experience less smooth.
I like the tone of the book - neither sympathetic nor critical; yet affectionate.
However, I could not understand the context of a few characters in the chapters, which at times made the reading experience less smooth.
August 1, 2021
I get it that the extremely personal essays which the author has assembled for this book are intentional. But the book still leaves lot of room in terms of presentation and development of the central idea of the work. It would have been better if the author had come back to the the idea of contrasting the relationship between Patna and its rats vis a vis that between the city and the people who associate with it. This book should be a quick read for most readers but it does promise a gripping reading experience.
Spoiler Alert: Please don't expect a proper biography of Patna. The author is not a historian and doesn't approach history of the city through events.
Spoiler Alert: Please don't expect a proper biography of Patna. The author is not a historian and doesn't approach history of the city through events.
January 19, 2019
Disorganized and confusing. This book is a rambling walk through modern day Patna where the author seems to haphazardly talk with people and sometimes go into such depth that it doesn't seem relevant for a book about Patna. But at the same time, talking with people in a city and getting a sense of their aspirations, life, and community does seem an insightful way to paint a picture of a city. I wonder whether people discussed here are representative. I'm left with a sense that Patna is a very sad place left behind with no hope.
March 2, 2020
53. A Matter of rats: a short biography of Patna by Amitava Kumar
Kumar gives a history of the city of Patna and talks about what it has become which is a ruin of rats and memories although it is currently inhabited. Kumar’s home town is the capital of the poorest province in India. It is a dusty mess with the invading rats in the summer and the monsoons bring invasions of green frogs into houses. Kumar has escaped and he looks at the lives of those who stayed, and those who have come to seek their fortune. The rats under the city mirror what is happening on the surface.
Kumar gives a history of the city of Patna and talks about what it has become which is a ruin of rats and memories although it is currently inhabited. Kumar’s home town is the capital of the poorest province in India. It is a dusty mess with the invading rats in the summer and the monsoons bring invasions of green frogs into houses. Kumar has escaped and he looks at the lives of those who stayed, and those who have come to seek their fortune. The rats under the city mirror what is happening on the surface.
April 7, 2025
Nostalgic for anyone with Patna connection but somewhat underwhelming, especially the latter half when the book leaves rats behind. Subsequently, it become, well, just another ordinary book about the city, discussing people who may not appear different or out-of-ordinary. That said, there are hidden gems that might delight the reader every one in a while, like the one about artist Subhodh Gupta's, who is a Patna-boy.
June 15, 2021
A short history of a long forgotten city told in the narratives of different characters who live in Patna or who moved out but patna didn’t leave them or ones who moved there in hope. Author tries to remember and rediscover his own city as some of us does after moving out. A good read that also gives references of other relevant literary works
July 30, 2017
Starts off well. But too much of personal account make the story more about him than the city. Neither he focuses more on glorious past nor of decadence of present. No reasoning is given for why things are the way they are.
March 9, 2019
The book is in good taste and at times you seldom agree to the views of Kumar. However, it had to be said for this book - a good one! Patna is an important city in the country and the author has good and interesting points to make in his book.
November 18, 2017
Amitava Kumar's book is part nostalgia and part memoir. Patna being center of the book, somewhere I wished there was more of the city. I enjoyed the book nevertheless.
November 28, 2017
The book is more like a memoir and personal experience, but perhaps I should not have expected more. In any case, it is a welcome addition as a book about Patna and Bihar.
January 31, 2018
A grilling account of a legend that is Patna.
January 28, 2019
Beautifully written, brief anecdotes that combine to give a full-round emotional picture of the author's hometown, the poorest big city in the poorest state in India.
September 12, 2019
Captures perfectly the complex love and disdain you can have for a home that is deeply flawed. Too many gross descriptions to recommend to most of my friends.
May 16, 2020
not entirely an honest review of the present-day Patna, full of pessimistic tone, but still the parts about the ancient Patna is fascinating. And the anecdotal style of narration is also appealing.
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