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ISSN 2278-9529

Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal

www.galaxyimrj.com

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English

ISSN: 0976-8165

Approaching Quintessence of India: An Analytical Study of Tabish Khairs

The Bus Stopped
Vivek Bharti
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Government College, Hisar, Haryana, India
Abstract:
India is a unique assortment of varied shades of human life. Its long history, rich cultural
heritage and vibrant but constantly changing present adds to its complexity. The past grandeur,
the colonial hangover, the master- servant relationship, the subsistence of life in penury and
paucity of basic facilities, the rising aspirations of middle class families, the gap between village
and town, the peoples concern for individuals grief, the relations between persons of different
communities, the confusion over the use of Hindi- English languages and many more such
intermingled issues are part of Indian life. The wide variations of its life, the unbridgeable gap
between its different sections, its enormous temporal and spatial encompass, its response to the
change and its commitment to keep its separate identity intact make India almost a
phantasmagoria for the foreigners who cannot understand its nature and its resolve to evolve
constantly with the passage of time. The present paper is takes up a fictional work, namely, The
Bus Stopped, which presents a kaleidoscope of Indian life. The author Tabish Khair through the
picaresque mode of presentation creates a collage effect of different facets of Indian life. The
paper brings out how Khair approaches the quintessence of India and its sensibility in the
mentioned work.
Keywords: Bus Journey, India, Rural life, Tabish Khair
India is a complex phenomenon combining mini narratives of constituent sections of its
people. These day-to-day tales are based on different worldviews depending on the contextual
time frame and the diverse spatial location. The long historical continuation of India adds to its
heritage and culture and its people have their own memories and association with the past
happenings. In addition to temporal vastness, Indias vast expanse in space is responsible for the
multifarious cultural practices and life patterns. Indians association to different social classes,
their dwelling in rural or urban areas, and their familial and educational background create a
wide divergence among them. Their living standards and thought patterns represent different
shades of Indian life. The division based on religion, caste, gender, language and some other
social hierarchies further enhances the diversity of Indian life. The simultaneous presence of the
clamour for transition and the resistance to change the old life patterns provide another
paradoxical shade to the life in India. Moreover, the extreme conditions of poverty and
deprivation lead foreigners to look with amazement how India is moving on its journey in time.
Even in the profoundly complex diversified position of Indian life, hopes, aspirations and
ambitions which are generally attached with a nation cannot be ignored. The present paper tries
to analyze some of the images of India with which an Indian associates his/her life and finds
them fundamental to the basic Indian sensibility. The paper analyses Tabish Khairs fictional
work, The Bus Stopped, to point out Indian life and its related past memories, present conditions
and future ambitions.

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Tabish Khair is an Indian English writer who feels deeply associated with his land of
birth, India. He is presently working as Associate Professor in the Department of English in the
University of Aarhus (Denmark). He is a versatile writer writing in different genres including
fiction, poetry, prose writing, drama and travelogue. He is a regular contributor to well known
international and national research journals, news papers and magazines. His writings involve
not only the academic but also the socio-political issues of current relevance. Despite residing in
Denmark for a quite long time, he refuses to leave his concrete links with India and he still holds
Indian passport. He avers in clear terms, If I hang on to my Indian passport, I hang on to my
memories (Verma 26). He is a keen and critical observer of Indian life and writes about it from
a vantage point of distance. He takes up both the positive and negative sides of Indian life and
brazenly accepts, There is much I proud of India, and there is much I am ashamed of (Verma
25). With this love-hate bent of mind, he portrays various images of India in his fictional work,
The Bus Stopped. The novel, written in 2004, captures different scenes of India and presents
multifarious shades of common Indian life.
The Bus Stopped creates a microcosmic picture which is representative of broad contours
of Indian life. No doubt, the picture as portrayed in the novel is of rural and semi urban India but
it approaches the quintessence of India. A few undeniable facts of Indian life are depicted
through the journey of a private passenger bus from Gaya to Phansa. By making use of
picaresque technique, Khair lays bare multiple aspects of Indian life and the working and
thinking of Indian people. On the small scale of the novel, there are a number of characters
playing their role in diverse situations and they become almost a source of a live Indian picture
with numerous shades and hues. The untraditional and intricate framework of the novel is well
observed by Anna Clarke:
The events are episodic, connection between characters arbitrary and contingent, as
several stories and perspectives are orchestrated by multitude of first and third-person
narrators, some omnipresent . . . others specifically limited to the perspective of one
character . . . . Incidentally, the multitude of voices which essentially prohibits a sense of
singular narrative control of entire text . . . (60)
Observing driver, humble conductor, exploitative maalik, proficient khansama, criminal
chhotu, untruthful hizra, failed IAS aspirant, voluptuous maid, peeping tom, complaining
foreigner, corrupt minister, assuming rich lady and members of aristocratic family are some of
the personages who appear on the pages of the novel bringing forth a plethora of images of
Indian life. These images spread in vast temporal and spatial frame encompass the profundity
and diversity of Indian reality. A.N. Dwivedi is right in saying, Khairs time consciousness can
also be read in his depiction of the three stages of life in the growth of an individual - childhood,
middle age, and old age. In The Bus Stopped, readers come across people of differing ages(45).
Further, it is pertinent to mention Dwivedi again, Apart from temporal consciousness, a good
deal of spatial consciousness is witnessed in Khairs The Bus Stopped (46). A simple bus
journey of a few hours is used to present a variegated range of Indian landscape. The past, the
present and the future are portrayed as a part of connected large Indian reality where various
strands meet and provide a coalescing effect. For instance, the past Indian relationships between
members of the aristocratic families and their retainers, the present struggle to earn living and to

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survive in the conditions of poverty and the ambitions for a better future by doing hard work all
are presented as a part of same story of Indians who are always on their journey on the way
forward.
The novel graphically presents images of Indian rural life whose veracity one cannot
deny. The rural life is portrayed through the observation of the driver of the private bus on the
route of Gaya to Phansa. The driver, Mangal Singh has a sensibility of noticing incidents and
characters to their finest details. The narrator puts it in these words:
He sees life in still small images, almost frozen, and does not really know what image
momentous and incidental would etch a particular moment or day or trip into his
memory . . . one from each trip of his life, thousands of them now, all meticulously
remembered, just those single images, a colour, a scene, a face, an act italicized on the
page of the memory. Not that he chooses the images consciously; that is simply his mind
orders the seamless and yet unraveling days of his life. (12)
Khair makes use of his characters to present images of Indian rustic life with the least aesthetic
interference. Some of the key images of this life as captured in the novel are the following: Men
wrapped in dark chaddars (19) ; eating from pattals or chipped plates (19); sipping tea from
squat, thick glasses (19-20) ; rusted Phalgu bridge (24); dhobis and dhobins carrying bundled
clothes (25); a flock of doves (29); plotted fields, mostly squares and rectangles, covered with
thin green shoots and sprayed yellow flowers (41); a mud track on which a man in shirt and dhoti
pushing his cycle (41); advertisements of Baidyanathy, Puja Ganji aur Baniyan and Ujala
Toothpowder on walls of low houses in roadside villages (44); white heap of makhana with its
black spots (55); shop Manohar Sweets in English and below it, in smaller Hindi yahan shudh
ghee ki swadisht mithaiyan milti hain (57); different sweet specialties of different villages/
towns as khirmohan in Dhoda, khaja in Silao, tilkut in Gaya (58); a black Rajdoot motorcycle
(61); wife adjusting pallu on her head (61); blue marble tabletop in some roadside restaurant
wiped by some serving boy with a dirty rag (61); a number of hunched huts made of bricks and
mud (66); ispayshull chai (68); bus with its cheap plastic covered seats (117); the petty farmers
and the landless labourers leaving the mufassil in search of job (118); a crush of ill-clothed men
with stinking of sweat and dung fire (118); a bus cleaner to be called as re or abbe (138);
cheating with maalik by driver and conductor to cover up their meager salary (140); October
crop of ganna (143); small birds, sparrows, pigeons, a pair of crested hudhuds, mynahs (143);
waddle of teetar (151); tribal woman carrying a dead child (157); terrycot-bell-bottomsbrylcreemed townsman (158); burial of dead child by the help of bus passenger (168); a long line
of peasants who believed in not telling policemen anything(185); clear sight of stars in the sky as
at night the villages light no lamp beyond the waking hours(192). Through these images, a reader
can conjure up a broad picture of rural life in India. It is sure that the people in rural areas are
leading a limited and inclusive life and they are more concerned about their livelihood. Despite
the conditions of poverty and squalor, they are more humane in their help to the grief-stricken
persons. They seem to be better graduated in lessons of life and they know how to keep on
moving and that too with all their brethren. Khairs art lies in the fact that despite depicting such
a wide variety of rural scenes, he does fall in to the trap of commenting manifestly about the
portrayed life situations. All characters of his novel have their own good and bad points and have

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their own sensibility of perceiving the reality and maintaining relationships with others.
Adalinda Gasparini rightly observes:
Khair does not offer lessons drawn from a thousand-year-old culture or from the history
of a people for many years subject to European colonisation. He offers a gift that can be
accepted or rejected; he invites the reader to emphathise with human common problems
and sorrows. (52)
Khair also presents a few pictures from the rural life to enable the readers to compare and
contrast different shades of Indian life to find out the points of similarities and dissimilarities.
The urban life presented in the novel pertains to middle class people leading their limited
life in apartments. They are slightly better than their rural counterparts but again they are tied to
their routine. The novel depicts the meager living of the families of Mr Sharma and Ms Prasad in
Patna. The narrator presents Patna as an urban area which falls in the category situated in
between the town of Gaya or Phansa and the city of Delhi or Bombay: This is not a city that has
made up its mind about what to reveal and what to hide, what to enclose and what to expose. But
neither it is Gaya or Phansa. It knows apartments and flats and walls in between; it knows urban
rituals of privacy (80). Khair subtly hints at the point of differentiation of the sensibility and life
patterns of the rural/town life on one hand and the city life on the other. The daily affairs of Mr
Sharma and his family members are well captured and remind any middle class Indian of his/her
own life. The worry about the marriage prospects of his three daughters, the carrying of a bag of
wilting vegetables and fruits, bought after long haggling, the quarreling sounds of the daughters
and quarterly ritual of Mr. Sharmas angina attacks (31-33) are telling of the life of such families.
Another typical Indian craze for IAS examination is well presented through the daughters of Mr.
Sharma:
This is the youngest daughter of the Sharmas, the one preparing for the first of the three
ritual dips in the holy river of civil service exams. The eldest daughter has completed her
three dips, twice getting beyond the preliminaries but no further, and has fallen into a
morose silence that will, if Mrs. Sharma is to be believed, soon be broken by the gaudy
music of her marriage to a boy in gavernmint serbice. (32)
This is a very graphic description of the aims, ambitions, mental working of such family and the
consequent frustration in failing to achieve the set goals. Another family of Mrs. Prasad tells
another story of Indian middle class families where children are settled in the big cities and
abroad and the elderly persons are alone with all plush amenities of life but with no solace (42).
As is portrayed in the novel, such elderly persons become an easy target for the servants or other
anti social elements. Besides the life in these two families, a few more indicative instances are
portrayed to provide feel of city life to readers. The listening of sexually suggestive pop songs
(89); delivering lecture on education and responsibility and on character and background (90);
barking of dogs (92); and power cuts and the consequent noise of generators (92-3) are some
examples which obviously have a close association with the reality of Indian urban life.
Khairs pen not only draws sketches of the present reality but also enriches them with
memories of the past. The deep indelible link between the present and the past and the

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simultaneous drifting from the past life patterns are juxtaposed in his work. The present cannot
bear the burden of the past but undoubtedly, it cannot severe completely its association with the
past. The novel begins with a reminder of grandeur of Indian past and shows how the well-to-do
families led a royal life and maintained Indian tradition of giving due respect to the guests and
helping the poor and needy ones. A large number of retainers are dependant on such families for
their livelihood and these servants follow a particular decorum vis--vis their lords. In first few
lines of the novel, the narrator conveys a sense of past, More than the sahabs, bibis and babus, it
was the servants who knew the lay of the two houses I grew up in, their scratched geography,
their shadowed histories, their many voices of noon and curtaintude, evening and
smokeliness(3). The narrator further mentions the tradition of her Ammis home, it was usual
to have at least ten guests eating at each mealtime. Breakfast, lunch or dinner. Invited guests,
unannounced visitors, passing relatives, poor relations being educated by my grandfather,
travellers from the ancestral village (6). Wazir Mian, the khansamah or the head cook with his
culinary skills (21) is a character from Indian past laying bare the relations between the
aristocratic family and its retainers. While presenting the past Khair throws light on such realities
which adds to uniqueness and diversity of India. One such facet is the social role assigned to
eunuchs during Indian past. These eunuchs are now derogatorily called hijra. Khair depicts
respect attached to them in the past through the words of Farhana Begum, There was a time I
could have been the keeper of the harem keys, a general, an adviser, a guard in the holiest of holy
shrines . . . Those days eunuchs had a certain place in society, a role to play (15). In addition to
this, the novel contains many oblique and passing references of Indian myths to indicate cultural
richness of India. For instance, one such reference is depicted of the curse to Phalgu River
becoming barren for not giving passage to pregnant Sita. In the potpourri of The Bus Stopped,
these references of past certainly provide a flavour to the unique Indian reality.
The novel, in its portrayal of India, does not leave behind the issue related to the use of
English language in India. The language, one of the colonial legacies of India, has become the
part and parcel of Indian life. It has become a touchstone of ones educational progress and even
the rustics try to speak some of its words as a matter of social prestige, though most of the words
are pronounced wrongly. The language has been considered as a means to move upward in ones
career. However, English, at times, is not able to convey the meaning and sense of the translated
words. All these connections with English, including, its craze, its mispronunciation, its inability
to convey the exact sense of vernacular words and its benefit in daily life are shown in the novel.
Khair writes about the limitation of translating Indian words in English, As jalebis are not just
sweetmeats and rotis and paranthas are never just unleavened bread, an asura cannot be just a
demon (5). Another instance portrayed in the novel though with a humorous streak is when
Wazir Mian who considers himself khansamah instead of bawarchi objects to be referred to
as cook, No cook, sir chieff (46). The narrator gives another meaning to the mispronounced
word chef as chief as it suits the status of Wazir Mian in the kitchen. The narrator also depicts
another humourous instance of the spoken English again related to Wazir Mian:
An entire army of secondary and high school teachers had to ringe some of his English
words out of our mouths. Words like ishtake (steak), eesstoo (stew), chickun allah kaatey
(chicken a la carte) , tamater boss cat (tomato basket), karma puteen (caramel pudding),
and they only managed to force my brother and me to abandon Wazir Mians English in
public. (45)

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The use of English by Indians even at the cost of becoming a subject of ridicule is well presented
here. However, the knowledge of English is also helping some in their endeavour of earning
livelihood. Hari as the taxi driver has a special importance as he is one of the two or three
drivers in Gaya who could understand English (76).
Khair not only depicts the present and the past but also indicates the changes which are taking
place or are in the wait of taking place in India. Again many hints about the forces of transition
in India are dropped in the form of the emphasis on having education, the transition from old
retainer system to work paid system, the better awareness among people about the daily issues,
the non existence of reverend status for eunuchs like Farhana, the emerging political voices of
socialism, the talk of Maruti in place of Ambassador. Life is fast moving upward but still bittersweet memories of the past create a connectivity between the past, the present and the future.
While referring to another deep rooted Indian reality of the partition turmoil in the story of Mrs
Mirchandani, the novel hints at the necessity of tactfulness and hard work to change the dismal
conditions of life and to move towards the better pastures.
Khair in his attempt to capture the quintessence of India does not ignore another Indian
reality that many persons of its origin are settled abroad and they have a love-hate kind of
relationship with it. He tries to see India from the point of view of diaspora through the character
of Rasmus, a Danish with Indian links. He is in India for business purposes and feels stuck in the
slowly moving Indian system. He is also instrumental in showing how money runs the
governmental system. He is critical of obstinacy and myopic vision of the drivers and lack of
traffic rules on the Indian roads (82). Rasmus also mentions the dwindling relationship of his
father with his Indian roots. His father who was very enthusiastic about ghazals, Rabindra
Sangeet, Indian food, Indian monuments (97-8) becomes critical of Indian ways the moment he
landed in India:
The crowds, the dishonesty of Indians, the heat, the dust, the pollution, the system, the
corrupt politicians- these became increasingly his new complaints. It was as if his fathers
India had been stolen by members of lesser culture. The people on the streets, the heat,
the news- all were considered by his father to be vicious and premeditated attack on
Indian food and Indian monuments. (98)
Thus this is another eye to see the spirit of India as these people have their share of memories
connected with their Indian past. Khair also, in an essay, comments upon his difference in his
association with India these memories are not the sort that one hears canted in popular ghazals
about paper ships and the shade of trees in the ancestral village. My memories are of difference,
of alternatives. Not necessarily their celebration, but their existence (Verma 26). This is
certainly a unique way to approach India finding its essence.
Besides all these, many other smaller stories are intertwined in the complex web of the
novel. The maid Zeenat with a compelling smell and the sheepish advances of the narrator lend
another angle to the novel. It tells about many untold and undisguised narratives in the society
which occur routinely. In another story of Farhana Begum turning into Mrs. Mirchandani as a
perfect wife (191) is indicating that in respectable social circles there are many secrets and

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silences which can only be noticed but cannot be displayed in public. Mangal Singhs infatuation
for Sunita and the memories of their past is another example of many latent and disclosed facets
of human relationships. The novel also contains many other mysteries which remain unanswered.
The happenings with Mrs. Prasad are mentioned without the clear cut answers about the
perpetrators and the behaviour of Chottu. In society like India with huge disparities, there are
always gaps to clearly understand the realities but these very gaps are creating spaces to analyze
and find out many new elements of its reality.
In the novel, Khair through the zigzag structure, the confusing abundance of characters,
the puzzling range of the images and the combination of different narrative styles tries to portray
India more in absence than in presence. He is just providing a clue to different narratives which
for the readers to imagine and find out. The narrator, eunuchs Farhana, Mangal Singh, Shankar,
maalik, Wazir Mian, Zeenat, Sunita, Mr. Sharma and his family members, Mrs. Prasad, Chottu,
Chaand, Hari, Rasmus, tribal woman, Mrs. Mirchandani, Vijay, Cleaner boy and many more
characters are the source of innumerable narratives about their life and different situations of
India. Their behaviour, their reaction, their survival strategies, their link with meta narrative of
India are to be read from the gaps and the unsaid realities of Indian sensibilities. On the small
scale of The Bus Stopped, the author has plotted the complexity and diversity of Indian life. The
simple surface of the novel contains deep chasm from where legions of stories can be mined and
this is the beauty of Indian life whose profundity is incomprehensible. Elisabetta Marino rightly
opines, The peculiar structure of the novel seems to encourage readers to contemplate reality
from a variety of perspectives, thus undermining the rigidity of stereotypical perceptions and
their exclusiveness (68). Adalinda Gasparini put the complexity of the framework of the novel
in these words:
If this novel is a labyrinth, a bhoolbhoolaiya, Khair is Dedalus, the architect who, having
built it, is the only one who knows its structure. As in a unicursal labyrinth, one must
walk every path, follow every character, paying attention to the moment in which each of
them boards the bus, to the exchange of a word or a look between passengers, to the
images that make an impression on the driver punctuating the tale of all. . . . He (Khair)
offers a space, of reasonable complexity, where these various characters may find
hospitality and shelter enough to allow their stories the opportunity to be seen or
glimpsed, guessed at or heard. (61)
Moreover, the success of the novel lies in the fact that Indians can find one or other facet which
appeal to them and find its association in the deep recesses of their subconscious and
unconscious mind. Khairs portrayal of a mosaic of Indian life in The Bus Stopped is, indeed, an
attempt to approach the quintessence of India.

Works Cited:
Clarke, Anna. Seeking Sights of Destinations: Novelistic Discourse, Identity and Politics in
Tabish Khairs The Bus stopped. Tabish Khair: A Critical Companion. Ed. Om Prakash
Dwivedi. London: Roman Books, 2013. 58-65. Print.
Dwivedi, A.N. Temporal and Spatial Consciousness in Tabish Khairs The Bus Stopped.

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Tabish Khair: Critical Perspectives. Ed. Critina M. Gamez-Fernandez & Om Prakash

Dwivedi. Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Newcastle, 2014. 43-50. Print.
Gasparini, Adalinda. Bhoolbhoolaiya, A Moving Labyrinth: The Bus Stopped by Tabish Khair.
Tabish Khair: Critical Perspectives. Ed. Critina M. Gamez-Fernandez & Om Prakash
Dwivedi. Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Newcastle, 2014. 51-70. Print.
Khair, Tabish. The Bus Stopped. London: Picador, 2004. Print.
Marino, Elisabetta. Overcoming the Mainstream Postcolonial Discourse in Tabish Khairs The
Bus stopped. Tabish Khair: A Critical Companion. Ed. Om Prakash Dwivedi. London:
Roman Books, 2013. 66-73. Print.
Verma, Renu Kaul, ed. Muslim Modernities: Essays on Moderation and Mayhem 2001-2007.
New Delhi: Vitasta, 2008. Print.

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