Nitish Kumar with mother Parmeshwari Devi at their Nalanda residence. Picture by Nagendra Kumar Singh

This power family is seldom seen, if ever heard.

Almost a month into the elections and five phases later, the family members of chief minister Nitish Kumar are going about their daily routine, unfazed by the hype surrounding their most famous relative.

Satish Kumar, the elder brother of Nitish, is looking after their ailing and ageing mother, Parmeshwari Devi, and busy doing other chores, not even remotely related to politics.

“This house (the chief minister’s official bungalow) is like a jail to me. But our mother is ill and it is our duty to look after her. She is in her nineties and needs constant attention. That is why I am stuck here for the last one year or so,” says Satish (63), the “original” bara bha (elder brother) of Nitish, who addresses chief political rival Lalu Prasad in similar fashion.

Though a “vaidya (Ayurved healer)” who loves mingling with the people and treating those ailing at his home in Bakhtiarpur, 60km from Patna, Satish, clad in simple kurta-pyjama, hasn’t allowed the trappings of power to get the better of him.

Nitish’s three sisters — Usha Devi, Prabha Devi, Indu Kumari and their children — often drop in to meet their mother. But unlike Lalu Prasad, Ram Vilas Paswan and a plethora of politicians, the chief minister has kept his family out of politics. This is a far cry from the RJD regime when Lalu Prasad’s brothers-in-law Sadhu and Subhash Yadav wielded their influence for their gains.

Talking to The Telegraph, Satish reminisced about Munna — as Nitish is called by family members — growing up on the streets of Bakhtiarpur and Kalyanbigha, the family’s ancestral village in neighbouring Nalanda district in the early 50s and 60s.

“Munna was good at studies. He studied at Government Middle School, Bakhtiarpur, where he always stood first in his class,” says Satish. “He was good at sports and other extra curricular studies too. But the remarkable thing about him was he never picked a quarrel with the boys he studied and played with.”

Satish also revealed the political talent that Nitish showed in early days. “He (Nitish) was fond of maintaining a pocket diary. He was an avid reader of political stories published in Dharmyug, Ravivar and other journals and jotted down whatever he found interesting in the magazines and newspapers.”

Nitish’s father, Ramlakhan Singh, a freedom fighter who stayed behind the bars for participating in the 1942 Quit India movement and was also a vaidya, would pay his Munna “four anna (25 paise) as pocket money. Munna spent it eating kachauri, chana and two pieces of balushahi (a local sweet delicacy) at Bakhtiarpur’s street eateries. Nitish carries his love for chana (gram) preparations and balushahis even today. Chana preparations and balushahi are found in abundance at the feasts that Nitish lays out for his party workers and other guests.

“Munna was an affable boy who discussed politics with his friends. He was influenced by the ideals of socialist leaders Ram Manohar Lohia, Jaiprakash Narayan and Karpoori Thakur even during his school and college days,” says Satish.

It is not that Nitish was born in a politically naive family. A freedom fighter, his father had also contested the Assembly elections from Bakhtiarpur on a ticket from C. Rajgopalachari’s Swatantrata Party in 1957. A famous vaidya, Ram Lakhan Singh, offered ayurvedic medicine to then chief minister K.B. Sahay who admired the man.

Ram Lakhan Singh and the family were quite popular in their Kalyanbigha village where it still has 17 bighas of land. Nitish has donated a part of the land to the ITI institute that he has got opened in the village. The rest of the land is on “batai (share-cropping)”. It is fertile soil which yields vegetables, wheat and paddy.

But none of the family members have ever interfered in Nitish’s life in politics. His party’s MPs and MLAs are sore with him for not promoting their wards in the party. Nitish though has kept the family totally out of politics unlike Lalu Prasad and Paswan who are in the limelight for promoting their sons, Tejaswi and Chirag, in politics. Nitish’s son, Nishant, a graduate from BIT, Mesra, has no interest in politics.

Nitish’s eldest sister, Usha Devi, is a widow who has her three sons in jobs and business. Prabha Devi is married to Rajmurari Singh, a middle class person. Their three sons are in job and business. The third sister, Indu Kumari, is a Block Education Extension Officer (BEEO) and her husband, Anil Kumar Singh, is a demonstrator at A. N College, Patna.

Satish has two sons — Mritunjay, a doctor, and Dhananjay, a railways official, both of who are based in Delhi.