Missing the Bus

Entering Tabish Khair8217;s womb of stories is like returning to a childhood home. It is a step into a beloved world of the familiar and th...

Entering Tabish Khair8217;s womb of stories is like returning to a childhood home. It is a step into a beloved world of the familiar and the blurred, faintly coloured, deeply conflicting memories of the past. There is curiosity and melancholia. There are stories woven with prose so precise it astonishes, and at moments in their fabricated lives Khair8217;s characters appear to breathe with constancy only a heart of stone could dismiss as unreal. But there is, above all, a wave of familiarity so acute that I do not merely wonder, I know there will be no surprises. And from their entrance to the exit, Khair8217;s servants, masters, mistresses and midwives are quoted down the long road to a tedious deja vu.

The structure of this collection 8212; in which disconnected characters converge for a few hours with curious results 8212; is interesting if not wholly unusual. Through the windows of words, Khair allows the reader access to a cavern of memories that explain the distractions on the minds of several passengers on a bus from Gaya to Phansa. As grimy stops, teashops and sun shrivelled villages pass by, as the black dawn turns into threatening dusk each person comes closer to achieving the resolution that has eluded him or her. In the process, new relationships are conceived and new travels charted out in the yellow bus of life.

Sitting up front in a special enclosure, two apparently ordinary women make their first acquaintance. Parvati8217;s beauty disguises the fact that she is a eunuch, while Mrs Mirchandani, the widow of a wealthy industrialist, loudly despairs of her son8217;s crush on an Anglo Indian teacher. Cue fate, and a delicious solution to each woman8217;s problem readies to offer itself. Sitting beside this unusual pair is a Danish businessman on his way to bribe a government official. Sweat pours down Rasmus Jensen8217;s face as his legs cramp in an attempt to protect his attache of inducements. With every mile his Indian father8217;s fascination for the homeland becomes more difficult to comprehend. Several seats behind, a young servant boy, having dispensed justice to the elderly employer who wished to educate him, is again the master of his own fate. In Chottu8217;s hands the delicate gauze of a Banarasi sari rustles as though desperate to reveal the secret that led to it changing hands, and immediately attracts the attention of the conductor. Shankar and Mangal Singh, brothers on a long drive from nowhere to someplace even less attractive, pad their paltry salary by taking money but not issuing tickets to some passengers. Unlike Singh, Shankar understands the fine line between necessity and greed, and believes that by not crossing it he remains true to his religion.

Khair8217;s primary cast is supported by several equally recognisable elements of rural and middle class India 8212; the khansamah who longs for the colonial days of lavish living, a driver who succumbs to his daily despair by committing an irresponsible act of spite, and a servant whose delectable charms beguile her master and his friends. In conclusion, each piece of this extravagant jigsaw falls perfectly in place leaving no questions to ask, and unfortunately, no memories imprinted.

At the end of a great story it8217;s hard to say goodbye. You turn the last page and wish dearly for another captivating sequence. But this not the case with Khair8217;s collection. For despite bits of beautiful prose and a competent freeze of life in rural India, the weary predictability of Khair8217;s multitude of tales invokes no desire for more. In this collection, familiarity breeds neither comfort nor joy but instead relief that the end was quick to come. And because it is like too many other books I have read and no longer wish to, immediately upon closing The Bus Stopped, I move on.