Day's End Stories: Chronicling nightlife in small towns

Small towns in India have many things to offer, often outside the conventional, as far as night life activities are concerned, says a new book which delves into the nocturnal public cultures and subcultures of these spaces.
Through a series of essays by the likes of Amitava Kumar and Tabish Khair among others, "Day's End Stories: Life After Sundown in Small-Town India" chronicles nightlife in these towns, covering not just dance and drinks, but also night-time activities that fall outside the conventional.
The writers uncover, at dusk, the topography of small-town India, sprinkled with taverns, temples, cafes and cinema halls.

"Activity on the street or in public places varies from none to a steady flow, but the essence of night lies not in the quantum of a town's offerings, but in the texture of the experiences it offers," researcher Subuhi Jiwani, who edited the book published by Westland, told PTI.
According to her, night, as a time capsule, holds many possibilities and means many things in smaller places.
On whether nightlife in small towns has really come to define a rather parochial idea of modernity in India, Jiwani says, "Before jumping to conclusions about the 'backwardness' of small towns, judged using the barometer of its nightlife -- an idea defined by consumption-driven, bourgeois leisure activity -- let us see and hear what these small towns actually have to offer. We might be pleasantly surprised."

Once darkness descends, Kumar visits the forgotten cultural spaces of Patna and Bettiah; Khair talks of Gaya; Sumana Roy journeys with women carriers, past Siliguri, to the Indo-Nepal border; Shiladitya Sarkar takes a midnight rickshaw through the firefly-lit lanes of Puducherry; and Vinod K Jose recollects, with awe and longing, the late-evening film screenings in Mananthavady.
In Kumar's "Bihari Nights", he tells us that light can, in places like Bettiah in Bihar, be an intrusion in the lives of people used to structuring their lives around power outages, to the privacy the cover of night offers.