बूढ़ी गंडक के किनारे · पूसा, समस्तीपुर, बिहार

मलीनगर
मेरा गाँव

"जहाँ सुबह बूढ़ी गंडक की धुंध से होती है,
और शाम आम की गाछी में ढलती है।"

Malinagar, a village on the north bank of the Budhi Gandak, is what we still call home. Twenty-two tolas, two old schools, one Sokha Baba, and a river that has watched over every Chhath, every Diwali and every mango season of our lives.

The village temple's two shikharas against the evening sky, seen from the road, with the ghat wall below

साँझ की बेला, गाँव का मंदिर। जहाँ से हर दिवाली का पहला दीया दिखता है।

Hamara gaon

A village we left, that never left us.

Malinagar sits on the north side of the Budhi Gandak, in the basin where the Budhi Gandak and the Bagmati meet the plains of north Bihar. Right across the river, on the south bank, stands Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa. From the ghat you can see its roofs on a clear morning.

Most of us who grew up here now live in Patna, Delhi, Bengaluru, or further away. This page is our way of keeping the village close: its tolas and its schools, its Sokha Baba and its Kali Badi, the mango orchards, and the people who shaped us. It began as a WordPress blog called "Malinagar – Mera Gaon." This is its new home.

"हम अपने ही खेत के अन्न पर जी सकते हैं। गेहूँ, धान, दाल, सरसों, और मौसम की हर सब्ज़ी।" From the original "About Us" post, 2017

22tolas (hamlets) in the villageबाईस टोले, एक गाँव
7–8 kmto Pusa Road railway stationपूसा रोड स्टेशन
20–30 kmto Samastipur, Darbhanga and Muzaffarpurतीन ज़िला शहर
1861birth year of Babu Devaki Nandan Khatri, our village's most famous sonचंद्रकांता के रचयिता

Kaise pahunchein

बूढ़ी गंडक के उस पार से इस पार

The village lies at roughly 25.998° N, 85.684° E, in Kalyanpur block of Samastipur district, Bihar, just across the Budhi Gandak from Pusa. The three district towns, Samastipur, Darbhanga and Muzaffarpur, are all within 20 to 30 kilometres, which is why the village has always felt connected without ever becoming a town.

Satellite map showing Malinagar between Muzaffarpur, Darbhanga and Samastipur, beside Pusa on the Budhi Gandak

By train

Pusa Road station (Khudiram Bose Pusa) is 7–8 km away, on the Samastipur–Muzaffarpur line. Autos and tempos run to the village.

By bus

Buses to Samastipur, Darbhanga, Muzaffarpur and beyond leave from Ramlila Gachhi, the village's bus point.

By air

Darbhanga airport is about 40 km away; Patna airport roughly 100 km. From either, a taxi reaches the village via Pusa.

On the map

Open Malinagar in Google Maps. Look for the river bend opposite the Pusa university campus.

Gaon ka naksha

Twenty-two tolas, five we can point to

Every Malinagar child learns directions by tola, not by compass. Thahra is the middle of everything. Pakka Tola is toward the river. Badgama is where the road goes north. We have never managed to count all twenty-two in one sitting, but these are the ones everyone knows.

उत्तर · NorthBadgama
पश्चिम · WestSimri
बीच · CentreThahra
पूरब · EastDhobgama
दक्षिण · SouthPakka Tola
और उसके पारबूढ़ी गंडक · Budhi Gandak

The full list of twenty-two tolas, with the village in numbers →

Virasat

जिस गाँव में चंद्रकांता का जन्म हुआ

Malinagar is the ancestral village of Babu Devaki Nandan Khatri, the author of Chandrakanta, widely called the first great novel of modern Hindi. Generations of readers learned Hindi just so they could read Chandrakanta. Its author's roots are in these lanes.

The village has also produced a line of scholars and teachers. A few of the names we grew up hearing:

Babu Devaki Nandan Khatri

1861–1913. Novelist. Chandrakanta, Chandrakanta Santati, Bhootnath. Gave Hindi its first mass readership and gave the words tilism and aiyyar to the language.

Born at Pusa, 1861

Dr. Ram Surat Thakur

Ph.D., D.Litt. A scholar whose study was the village's first library for many of us.

Scholar, Malinagar

Dr. Madan Mohan Thakur

Ph.D. in Hindi. Orator and an authority on the Ram Charit Manas; his Manas pravachans drew listeners from across the block.

Scholar and speaker, Malinagar

Sh. Haribhajan Thakur

Principal of Krishna Dev High School. A strict disciplinarian who set the standard for a whole generation. He passed away in November 2019.

Principal, Krishna Dev High School

Kahaniyan

इस मिट्टी की कहानियाँ

A village is never only itself. Malinagar sits at the edge of things that changed India: a novel that taught a nation to read Hindi, a railway station where a nineteen-year-old revolutionary was caught, and a farm across the river whose name is now a road in Delhi.

1861Jeth

The boy who gave Hindi its first bestseller

Devaki Nandan Khatri was born at Pusa on 18 June 1861, in these same river lands, to a Punjabi Khatri family that had settled in Banaras. He read Urdu and Persian first and Hindi only later. When Chandrakanta came out in 1888, something happened that had never happened before: people who could not read Devanagari learned it just to find out what became of Chandrakanta and Virendra Singh and the tilism of Chunar. He later founded the Lahari Press in Banaras and ran the monthly Sudarshan. In Malinagar we have always claimed him as our own, and the elders say his family's roots are in our lanes.

1904Pusa

The farm across the river

The estate on the south bank was bought by the East India Company in the late 1700s to breed horses, then turned into a tobacco farm. In 1904 the British made it the headquarters of imperial agriculture in India: the Agricultural Research Institute, Pusa. Rust-resistant wheat was bred within sight of our fields. Then came the great Bihar earthquake of January 1934. The institute's buildings cracked, and most of its work moved to a new campus in Delhi, which took the old name with it. That is why Delhi has a Pusa Road and a Pusa Institute: both are named after the ground across our river. What stayed behind became Rajendra Agricultural University in 1970, now Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University.

19081 May

Khudiram Bose at our railway station

On the night of 30 April 1908, two young Bengali revolutionaries threw a bomb at a carriage in Muzaffarpur, believing it carried the magistrate Kingsford. The next morning, Khudiram Bose, eighteen years old, walked 25 miles and reached Waini station, the small station we now call Pusa Road, where he asked for a glass of water. Two constables recognised him and he was arrested on the platform. He was hanged in August that year and became one of the youngest martyrs of the freedom struggle. The station was renamed Khudiram Bose Pusa in his memory. Every Malinagar child who has caught a train from there has stood where he stood.

हर सालSawan

The river that gives and takes

Budhi Gandak means "the old Gandak": it is the river's abandoned, older course, winding slowly through Muzaffarpur and Samastipur before meeting the Ganga at Khagaria. In Sawan it swells. Some years it stays in its banks and the kharif is good; some years it walks into the fields and the tolas near the bank move their cattle to higher ground. The silt it leaves behind is why the blog could say, without exaggeration, that the village can live on its own produce.

2018Chaitra

The month the whole village came home

For the Mahachandi Yagya in March 2018, a bamboo pandal went up with rows of havan kunds, Naga sadhus came and sat by their dhunis, a murti exhibition showed Sheshshayi Vishnu and the Ram Darbar, and a mela sold hot jalebis every evening. People came back from Delhi and Mumbai for it the way they come for Chhath. The photos in the gallery below are from those days.

Shiksha

The two schools on the Pusa–Kalyanpur road

Before our schools existed, Pusa High School was the only one in the area. Then Malinagar built its own, and for decades children from a dozen surrounding villages walked here every morning.

Gate of Rajkiyakrit Krishna Dev +2 Vidyalaya, Malinagar, under tall trees

Krishna Dev High School

Today the Rajkiyakrit Krishna Dev +2 Vidyalaya. One of the oldest high schools in the area, with a playground large enough for the whole block's tournaments. Teachers we still remember: Sh. Saranagat Jha, Sh. Ram Ashish Thakur, Sh. Satya Narayan Jha, Sh. Rama Kant Sharma and Sh. Bibhuti.

Pusa–Kalyanpur Road, Malinagar

Yellow and purple gate of Rajkiya Adarsh Madhya Vidyalaya, Malinagar

Middle School, Malinagar

Rajkiya Adarsh Madhya Vidyalaya. Right next to the high school, counted as one of the model schools of the neighbourhood. Most of us learned our tables, our first English words and our first Bhojpuri geet here.

Pusa–Kalyanpur Road, Malinagar

All the schools of Malinagar, with records, photos and the teachers we remember →

Parv aur pooja

सोखा बाबा से शुरू, छठ घाट पर पूरा

See the whole year of festivals, month by month →

Every celebration in Malinagar begins at the same place. On Diwali night the first diya is lit at Sokha Baba, the village's household deity, then at Kali Badi, and only then at home, in the fields, at the cattle shed, by the well, and in the gachhi.

Kheti-baari

We can live on our own harvest

Every crop, season by season, with how it is grown →

The soil between two rivers is kind. Malinagar grows wheat, rice, pulses and mustard, and vegetables in every season. The orchards give mango, litchi, banana, jackfruit, watermelon, lemon and grapefruit. A good year means nothing has to be bought except salt and oil.

Rabi · Nov–Apr

Wheat, mustard in yellow bloom, masoor and chana. Winter cauliflower and peas.

Garmi · Apr–Jun

Mango and litchi season. Watermelon on the river sand. The gachhi is where everyone sleeps.

Kharif · Jun–Oct

Rice planting with the first rains. Banana and jackfruit. The Budhi Gandak rises and sometimes visits the fields.

Saal bhar

Lemon, grapefruit, dairy from the cattle sheds, and seasonal sabzi from every backyard.

Judiye

यह पन्ना हम सब का है

आप भी मलीनगर से हैं? अपनी यादें, तस्वीरें, और अपने टोले का नाम भेजिए।
एक गाँव, बाईस टोले, और दुनिया भर में फैले हम।

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