LIVING DEAD
THE RISEN Ramadhar , who died years ago but was resurrected in 2015
rakpur . He was with me for seven days .”
It was a bizarre week . “ I went to the butcher with his clothes and asked him to smear the blood of a slaughtered animal on them . The butcher refused and told me to buy a chicken and do it myself . I could not !” says Lal Bihari . Then the boy missed his mother , so he had to take him to watch films in Azamgarh . “ I had to ensure he was entertained all the time !” But someone advised his mother that filing a case would mean she would declare Lal Bihari alive , so the plan flopped . “ Finally , I had to drop him back home ,” recalls Lal Bihari .
In the 1980s , Jagdambika Pal ( who later attained fame as the three-day CM of UP ) raised a question about Lal Bihari twice in the legislative council , but nothing changed . Lal Bihari once went to the state assembly as a visitor , with pamphlets hidden in his shoe . When he threw them at the well of the house , the marshal detained him for hours and disciplinary proceedings were initiated . But the moment they realised what he was up to , the assembly not only took no action against him but kept his name out of the official records !
It gets curiouser . Once Lal Bihari even applied for widow ’ s pension for his wife , again in vain . He tried to get a response for the denial ; none came . His journey through various courts and government offices gave him all the education the unlettered
Lal Bihari needed about the Kafkaesque nature of the world . Natu rally , he came to absorb a touch of absurdist humour . The records had him as “ Lal Bihari : Mritak ” ( Lal Bihari : Dead ), so he simply changed his name to Lal Bihari Mritak , which is how it reads on all his official documents now , including his Aadhaar card ! He finally won the losing battle of his life in 1994 , after a frustrating 18 years . A lekhpal devised a way to reintroduce his name into the records . Afterwards , he happily transferred his share of land to his cousins . “ It is a coming-of-age story ,” says Bollywood director Satish Kaushik , describing his film on Lal Bihari , which is going through its 19th draft before he finally begins to shoot in September . Kaushik has known Lal Bihari for the past 15 years but his project has been stuck . “ The success of biopics on Pan Singh Tomar , Mary Kom and Milkha Singh shows the audience is finally ready to watch Lal Bihari ’ s story .”
When ‘ dead ’ Lal Bihari disrupted the state assembly , they took no action — keeping his name out of records .
“ I had read of him in a newspaper and kept the clipping for a few years before coming back to it . Since then , Lal Bihari has been like family . His son stayed with me for long periods ,” says Kaushik . “ In 2003 , when he won the Ig Nobel awards , the US denied him a visa to go and accept it .” Lal Bihari confirms this . “ The US government didn ’ t want me there . They may have a lot of similar cases there and didn ’ t want any of them to start staking claims .”
A judgment on Lal Bihari ’ s case is now taught in some law schools , a scholar is writing a PhD thesis on him and , ironically , he featured as a question in the Lekhpal Services exam . Lal Bihari has made it his life ’ s mission to help others who have attained premature death on paper .
Most have to do with land-grabbing . In Mau , 45 km east of Azam garh , Lal Bihari is advising 76-year-old Dhiraji Devi , who was declared dead in 1985 — without her knowing it for a decade . After her husband , a coalfield worker , died in 1974 , Dhiraji went to work in the Samla colliery in Bengal , where she got a job . She would send back money for her children as well as to cultivate her husband ’ s ancestral land in Makhuni village , Azamgarh district . When she returned in 1995 after ret iring , she found herself homeless : her in-laws said she had no share to her name . Her brother-in-law had had her declared
14 OUTLOOK 6 August 2018