a skeleton and a house of memories

Muzaffarpur, a teeming, exhausted city in one of India's poorest states, is known for cheap clothes, lacquered bangles and gangsters. Murders and abductions for ransom are common. Many are over plots which rival "land mafias", as they are called here, try to grab or buy cheap using coercion and fear. The streets are filled with dread for unescorted women who say they are stalked and harassed by men with impunity.