When the carts, cages, animals and crew of Apollo Circus came and camped on the outskirts of Saharsa, they woke it up like nothing else had done before. The sleepy little town in the north-eastern part of Bihar, where I spent a part of my childhood, is somewhere between R K Narayan’s Malgudi and Khushwant Singh’s Mano Majra. It was the same even then, some two decades ago when the circus came.

Saharsa was given a commissioner a long time ago, out of turn, only because it happened to be the constituency of Lalit Narayan Mishra, who used to be a powerful minister in Indira Gandhi’s Cabinet until he was killed in a bomb blast. But the arrival of bureaucrats failed to change the place. The power supply continues to be about 12 hours every day (serious, still!), the signs of urbanisation are restricted to the one pucca road that runs through the town, and the market is a patch of shops on either side on a small segment of this road.

This road ends about 400 metres behind our house, marking the end of Saharsa’s municipal boundary. Where the road ends, there is a large graveyard with roughly equal number of trees and graves. Some distance beyond this graveyard, Apollo Circus camped, and shook and stirred Saharsa.

I had just entered my teens and was on summer vacation from my boarding school. I had already been in boarding a few years and by this time had begun to imbibe some of the traits of bigger cities, including the unfortunate loss of child-like wonder that the people of Saharsa had. So I used to smile when I noticed that the only road of the town became a one-way street in the evening as nearly the entire population made its way towards the circus grounds, with little bubbles of dust rising from their chappals. There were a few motorised vehicles, too, of the handful of VIPs who were given passes by the circus company. Of the masses, some bought tickets and went in to watch the performances, while a large section just hung around the camps, watching the animals, and of course (a feeling I had only recently become aware of) the girls. For the month or so that Apollo Circus was there, Saharsa was transformed; it had an unfamiliar electricity running through its lanes.

I attributed it to the small-town mindset. The people, I thought, latched on to the one thing that broke their routine and added a new dimension to their life, which otherwise was the same round the year.

I was wrong. Saharsa is not alone in being excited by a circus, it is the same everywhere. The whole world loves a spectacle.

In October 2005, I was at the New Delhi airport, waiting to catch a flight to Patna, where I was going to cover the Assembly elections. The flight was delayed by three hours. Having quickly consumed all the newspapers and magazines on offer, I sat before the television, which (perhaps under some tie-up) was only showing a particular news channel. Very soon, many more people gathered around the television. The news anchor was breathlessly talking of a fortune teller in a mofussil town in Madhya Pradesh who had forecast that he would die that day at four in the evening. The live telecast showed a crowd at this fellow’s house, mostly of news television crew. A special puja was being conducted to save him. Anyway, the fellow turned out to be a bad fortune teller and did not die at the appointed hour. The news anchor looked furious with him for remaining alive and the crowds quickly disappeared. It was like a circus show had been called off midway.

Surely, this is no longer new or unique. A few weeks ago I caught the live telecast on another news channel of a python that had somehow managed to climb an electricity pole and got entangled with the wires. The anchor looked ready to explode with excitement, analyzing the consequences if either the snake got an electric shock or fell 30 feet to the ground.

These news channels are among the most watched, indicating our love for a spectacle. Unfortunately, this predilection is not limited to such relatively harmless spectacles – a fact that unsavoury but smart men have been quick to grasp and exploit.

That is why Shiv Sena attacked South Indians in Mumbai in the 1960s and in the 1990s attacked dating couples at Wimpy’s in New Delhi’s Connaught Place. This is what Praveen Togadia used to briefly make himself and his trishool national figures. And that is why Sri Ram Sene and Pramod Muthalik are up to their little tricks. They know our love of the circus.

If we do not want it, the solution is simple. If no one pays attention to the circus, it will stop. (The real circus is already on the run from television and Bollywood.) But Saharsa lives within all of us, making Muthalik/Togadia a compelling watch.

There is, however cause for optimism. Many would struggle to remember Togadia. And Apollo was gone from Saharsa in five weeks.