A predictable journey

Tabish Khair wears many hats. If I am not mistaken he started as a journalist, published some good poetry, went on to become an academic in Denmark.

The Bus Stopped, which defies traditional generic classification, is his latest book. Literally, it is about a bus journey from Patna to Phansa, but of course there is much more to it. It is a journey on many levels for the passengers in the bus and the book brings you their individual stories and strings them together loosely.

It starts with the narrator's story, the story of his growing up along with the transition from the joint family where Wazir Mian who objects to being called a cook ("No cook, sir, chieff" [sic]), where elaborate dinners are prepared only once in a while.

One suspects this is sifted from the author's memories of his own adolescence. As Wazir Mian's son comes to tell the author's parents that his father would not be working with them any more, his behaviour and appearance suggest an upward mobility.

The Patna-Phansa bus, driven by Mangal Singh, is usually full. The passengers are a diverse lot. Mrs Mirchandani, the rich Sindhi lady, who is outwitted by a eunuch passing off as a woman, a tribal woman who has been carrying a dead child without knowing it, Chottu (why not Chhotu?) who is escaping after killing his employer Mrs Prasad, Rasmus the Dane who has an appointment with a minister, and others.

The Bus Stopped is a readable book but the use of expletives could have been cut down. I have nothing against them, if imaginatively used, they garnish the narrative. In this case, they don't.

Another thing that leaves one wondering is the shortness of some chapters. Chapter 13 for example is just a brief description of advertisements on walls of houses in villages on the route of the bus. Probably this is meant to convey the ambience of the region, but somehow it leaves the reader dissatisfied.

Most of the characters in the book are recognisable. One has met them or heard about persons like them. For example every other day newspapers report murders of the elderly living alone by their servants or others known to them.

So Chottu is a familiar figure. So is Mrs Mirchandani. The way she and her son are fooled by the eunuch who reinvents herself as Parvati, adds a touch of humour to the book.

However, at the end of it all, the reader is glad that the bus has reached is destination and the book has come to an end. Why? One reason could be that the fragmented accounts are strung together but they do not hold, neither are they substantial enough to stand on their own.

Life in rural and semi-rural India is described well but it is so predictable and has been taken up by so many writers before Khair! One feels this book is written with an eye on the Western reader and puts in a bit of what he or she would expect to read about India.

Tabish Khair handles his prose well, blending the descriptive with the matter of fact. To quote,

"Plotted fields, mostly squares and rectangles, covered with green shoots and sprayed yellow flowers, fields of lehsun that look an Impressionist canvas from a distance. No...he would not know what an Impressionist was but....he would inform you, there are books on art in Hindi...."

THE BUS STOPPED

Tabish Khair
Picador
Price: Rs 495
Page: 198