bihar: A geopolitical lesson from personal Bihar

It may seem like apples and oranges – or, actually apples and something as wildly different as, say, lorries – but interactions between humans and actions taken may indeed serve as a pointer to finding geopolitical solutions. May we turn your attention to the case of Neeraj and Ruby, husband and wife for over a decade and with four children in Bihar‘s Khagaria district. It turns out that Ruby eloped with another man, Mukesh, last month after getting married to him. Call it an invasion, or crossing the line. But instead of waging war after filing a kidnapping case against Mukesh, Neeraj conducted a realpolitik manoeuvre that international textbooks should now deem as the ‘Neeraj swivel’ – he married the abandoned wife of the eloped Mukesh. A bloodless coup, if there was one.

As in geopolitics, strange things mark this dealing between two couples and four individuals. Both Neeraj’s ex-wife and Mukesh’s ex-wife – or, if one chooses to see it a different way, both men’s current wives – bear the name Ruby. As experts and analysts continue to try and hash out a solution to find peace in the Donbass region of Ukraine and beyond, the two sets of unmarried-to-married people in Bihar show what level-headedness needs to do to find a lasting solution for all parties in a crisis: to cease hostilities, accept both losses and gains, and cross the Ruby con.