Chapter one introduction

CHAPTER THREE (PART ONE)

REGIONALISM AND NOSTALGIA IN

THE BUS STOPPED

This chapter discusses anticoloniality in two of Tabish Khair’s prominent non-fictional works –The Bus Stopped and The Thing About Thugs focusing attention upon the regional spirit, racism, nostalgia, ethnicity and diasporic dynamism with which he himself was suffering in Denmark. He is leading a progressive and better mode of life in profession of English in Aarhus University Denmark. Yet he is not free from the pangs and anguishes which he had experience in the early days of his life in Bihar.

The part one of this chapter deals with the study of his travelogue The Bus Stopped. The title of the book The Bus Stopped indicates his journey from Gaya to Phansa. The book is written in the form of a travelogue as which has got immense popularity in the 21^st century. The Bus Stopped is a kind of narration of the writer which consists of the elements like regional spirit, sense of alienation, identity, search for cultural roots, difficulties and travails of the root nation and tension prevailing in the adopted nation. Although The Thing About Thugs was written by Khair earlier yet his second novel The Bus Stopped was published by picador in 2004.

The Bus Stopped has written in the form of a travelogue. The structure of the novel is very difficult to characterise. Its structure is quite different which deals with more than one narrator. The narrative is divided into two major interesting parts. The first part is a frame story, and the central part consists of multiple journeys, told from inside a bus. The structure of the story has a single narrator, who largely describes the memories on his homes and houses of the past. The journey of the bus is divided into a number of interesting pictures which comes one by one in front of the reader. These stories deal with the alternate between the point of view of the driver of the bus, Mangal Singh, and the interesting and touching stories of the passengers of the bus. In “Remembrance of Homes Past: The narration of memory in Baumgartner’s Bombay, The Bus Stopped and The God of Small Things” Hicks commented about the narrative structure of the novel. He writes,

“They are all on a journey that eventually leads home, either physically or spiritually. The lives of the passengers, viewed in the specific moment of transition they share during the bus ride – are told through other specific moments of their lives. The memories evoked show us stories of lives being lived. Each life is represented through seemingly coincidental images or memories, somehow connected to the journey of the bus. The stories thus also allegorize how the present is only a preliminary stop on the continuous travel of our life, from the past through the fleeting present, into the future” (2012, 19).

The Bus Stopped is a montage of well written master pieces more than a novel. Navtej Sarna commented about the structure of the novel “The Bus Stopped is a collection of nicely written pieces, but an unconvincing novel” ((http://www.navtejsarna.com.january). As the title suggests it deals with the writer’s journey from Gaya to Phansa. In which the bus stopped many times which provides a platform to delineate his experiences during the journey.

The selection of the title is quiet nice. As in the opening pages of the novel the bus was stopped. Author has given a subtle description of the bus such as the colour, a rusted mudguard, tyres, and a cracked windscreen etc., Mangal Singh, driver of the bus came and started it;

“Just before he turns the ignition key, again and again coaxing the old engine to start, he puts the whistle to his mouth and gives a short sharp blow on it. A sound that cuts across the dawn, the field and the houses like a bird in flight” (Khair, 2004, 14).

At the end of the novel bus reached at its destination and bus finally stopped. During the journey from Gaya to Phansa, many times the bus was stopped. And with the every stoppage of the bus there was something new in terms of characters, situations, and the story. The most remarkable event of the bus was quiet dramatic denouement, for all the passengers, that there was a tribal woman travelling in the bus and she actually carrying a dead child. When the other passengers come to know the fact, the bus stopped and the child was buried finally the bus moved on their route. At the end of the novel we saw that the whole narrative woven in relation to the bus and its journey on a particular route. The bus became a metaphoric symbol in terms of need of journey. According to Navtej Sarna, “Khair ultimately succeeds in creating compelling vignettes that, unfortunately, remain only that” (http://www.navtejsarna.com).

Because when the bus reached its final destination, most of the characters also reached their own destinations in their lives. Like the eunuch gets married as a woman, the servant boy ran away from his village but ultimately caught, and the Danish character goes back to Denmark. Instead of these characters, the novel ends with many questions yet to be answered depends upon the choice of the reader such as; the tribal woman gets home? What about the child who was buried by the roadside? What about Chottu? Did he get home with the glittering Banarsi sari, Did he know Mrs. Prasad’s fate? , Can a bus be a home? etc.

The novel is an enjoyable ‘travelogue’ approaches towards anti-colonialism because the whole narrative represents the heart of the author, which has left somewhere in their native land (Khair presently settled in Denmark). He recalls his memories through the journey of his native land. And Khair tried to focus and to highlight the regional spirit of Bihar, the native land of the author. To highlight the regional spirit of a particular region or land is a very important feature of Anti-Colonial Discourse. And it also becomes very popular in the writers of post-modern era. Some writer like; Tabish Khair, Arundhati Roy, M. G. Vassangi, Salman Rushdie, R. K. Narayan, Raja Rao, and Anita Desai are prominently deals with this practice. And of course in this post-modern age Khair becomes a predecessor of this tradition.

The travel writing is always known for the experiences of a writer touring for the fun and pleasure of travelling. The Bus Stopped is a montage of memories of the author travelling on a route (Gaya to Phansa) of his native region Bihar. In his paper Negotiating Identities in Tabish Khair’s The Bus Stopped and MG Vassanji’s The Assassin’s Songn (2012) V.K. Diwedi, writes, “travelling also represents a pathway through memories, deconstructing or elaborating unforgotten emotions” (http://www.interdisciplinary.net).

In the novel with the movement of bus, the location changes, it brings a sense of belongingness as the reader comes in the contact of the local/common people, routine problems, and happenings etc. With the help of the various characters and their interesting stories the author has narrated a masterpiece of wonderful series of stories. V. K. Dwivedi in Negotiating Identities in Tabish khair’s The Bus Stopped and M. G. Vassangi’s The Assassin’s Song further comments about the narrative style of the author. He writes, “The image of the bus as a moving narrative is certainly not original, but the other well-crafted style makes it a proper microcosm of crossing voices and experiences” (2012, 2).

Sometimes travelogues are considered as the maker of national identities. Grewal Inderpal writes in his “Home and Haren: Nation, Gender and Empire, and the cultures of Travel (1966)” has written about the complicity of travel books with reference to the educated Indian class with English colonial education. M. G. Vassanji in his narrative A Place within: Rediscovering India has written about the landscapes of history, culture, memory and identity. Vassanji also writes about remarkable roots of self and family. Sudipta Kaviraj in his essay “The Imaginary Institution of India” Comments upon the nation’s narration. He has written,

“that the narration of nation (of Gora’s kind in this case) is accompanied by the formation of a national collective-self and its entry into some sort of a narrative contract with the history of the nation— narrated as a history of a community” (1992, 16).

In her brilliant travel writing English Travel writing from Pilgrimages to postcolonial explorations (2000), Barbara Korte has written about the travel literatures enlargement in imperialist discourse. The cultural identities make borders. Moreover travel writing deconstructs the territorial boundaries. Therefore with the help of the narration of this journey of his native land Khair becomes able to deconstruct the cultural boundaries of his adopted nation. Here the memories and his experiences over the journey filled his heart with the flavours of his native region. The author finds relief while portraying his experience of the journey of his land of origin. In Border crossing in the African travel narratives of Ibn Batuta, Richard Burton and Paul Theroux Fiona Molla commented upon the different conceptions of travelling,

“The border is seen as a liminal zone which paradoxically separates and joins spaces. Accounts of border crossings in travel writing from different periods suggest the historicity and cultural specificity of conceptions of geographical borders, and the way they index the “boundaries” of the subjects who cross them” (2013, 1).

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are the witness of the changes bought by travel writing in the literature more specifically after second world war. And the contemporary travel writing shows one of the most prominent changes that have been taken place in the social scene. The contemporary travel writing reflects the social- consciousness. It awaked society from traditional consciousness. Hence Colin Thubron rightly said, “One of the most striking characteristics of the contemporary travel writing is an awakened social consciousness” (quoted in Lopez, 2003, 51).

In the late-twentieth century travelogue becomes one of the most promising and innovative technique of writing. Traditionally, travelogues have been involved in socio-political and cultural discourses. According to Maria Louders Lopez, “ Once vehicles for cultural prejudice serving official purposes, contemporary travel accounts have become powerful instruments of cultural critique, displaying a greater subject-orientation” (June 2003. 51).

Jerry Bentley, in “Travel Narratives” has beautifully commented about the structure of the travel writing in the recent time. He has written,

“Recent times have seen unprecedented waves of migration, for example, and numerous migrants have sought to record their experiences and articulate their feelings about life in foreign lands. Recent times have also seen an unprecedented development of ethnic consciousness, and many are the intellectuals and writers in diaspora who have visited the homes of their ancestors to see how much of their forebears’ values and cultural traditions they themselves have inherited” (2004, 3).

Therefore in the recent time diaspora has contributed a lot in the travel writing. Their migration and their frequent visit to their native places bring a great volume of literature in the travel writing. In the present time the travel writers have become subject- oriented. Barbara Korte has also written on the subjective component of travel writing. Actually in a travelogue the writer shows a journey, which begins from one specific place and ends with some specific destination. During this period of journey the reader comes in the contact of a variety of social, political and cultural changes.

In this novel the reader experiences different social groups and social status by means of different characters. And of course because of these characters and their attractive stories reader feels himself more close to a range of cultures, as India is a land of different cultures. The Indian villages are very different from urban cities, and these differences or the qualities of a small rural region are beautifully showed by the author in the novel. The effort of the author is really remarkable and it brings reader to become more familiar to the narrative.

Like one female character in the novel is talking about her experience of partition. There are feelings of two different cultures and socio-political changes of two different countries in the novel; one is India and the other one is Pakistan. Khair attracts our attention towards the difference of the cultures of the passengers in the bus while describing; “He is dressed in torn but clean clothes, shirt and cotton trousers. He wears thick, black-rimmed glasses; He is obese in a watery sort of way, going bald from both sides of the temple, face swollen in an unhealthy manner” (105).

Khair also describes the two different and prominent religion and cultures situated in the Indian society. To quote: “one woman wore purdah, though she had lifted a veil inside the bus. Three of others wore relatively clean but crumpled cotton saris” (69). This novel shows travelling as a psychological change of the characters and also in terms of discourse. As the character of Mangal singh reflects some soft traits during the journey. The narrative emphatically represents the rise and falls of eunuchs, for instance, the curtains/ mirrors and the branches of history, from Mughal period in India. When the eunuchs or hijra was a spectacular figure at court. V. K. Dwivedi defines the multiple qualities of eunuch, “He was a dancer, was an artist- these are the thoughts and memories that attach to another passenger in the bus, who bewails a bygone glorious past” (2012, 3). Being a diasporic author Khair has beautifully written about their homeland. The words like ‘Diaspora’ and ‘Expatriate’ need no introduction in postcolonial literary world. Expatriate writing is one more burning issue in the current time in relation to Anti- Colonial Discourse; as it connects two different nations. Actually Diaspora is like a transnational connection between two cultures; the native land from where it belongs and the land where he is settled. Therefore he has written emphatically about the cultures, traditions, religion, rituals, social values etc. of their native land.

Indian Diaspora today has emerged with the multiplicity of histories, variety of culture, tradition and a deep instinct for survival. Indian Diaspora, though counting more than 25 million members world-wide, survives in between ‘home of origin’ and ‘world of adoption’. On commenting about the tangling situation of a diaspora Chetna Pokhriyal in her article, “The theme of Alienation and Assimilation in the novels of Bharti Mukherjee: A Socio-literary Perspective” has also written about the bonding and linking which a diaspora has to create and maintain between his home of origin and adopted nation.

Basically Diaspora literature involves an idea of homeland. It is a place from where the displacement occurs and narratives of harsh journeys undertaken on account of economic compulsions. Actually Diaspora is a minority community living in exile. The expatriate writing, being born and bred out of an overpowering sense of isolation and alienation. Usually Diaspora carries with them an imprint of immigration and expatriation.

Like Tabish Khair is residing in Denmark but he has written and still writing about minute things of India (or about his native region). The geographical elements and social values of their native land always keep alive in their heart. Certain terms like home, identity, nation and cultural roots becomes very important in the life of a diaspora. For Diaspora home becomes an identity. They are eager to come back their native land. In this particular novel Tabish Khair returned to his native with the help of the narration of the memories over a journey of his native region. V. K. Dwivedi claims, about the need or desire of coming back to home of a Diaspora;

“Returning to one’s ‘desh’ (home country) in the case of partitioned India is to experience a kind of diasporic double consciousness.” One’s “desh” becomes ‘videsh’ (another country)” through a denial “that the homelands of Diasporas are themselves contaminated; they carry racial enclaves, with inassimilable minorities and other discrepant community, and a not pure, unified spaces in the first place” (2012, 3).

Tabish Khair is one of the young, famous and enthusiastic writers of this tradition of expatriate writing. As he born in Gaya, Bihar (India) into a Muslim family but he migrated to Denmark. Still he loves his country and misses every moment of his lovely spend days. Salman Rushdie in his book Imaginary Homelands raises the existential question about Indians who are living outside their native country:

“What does it mean to be an “Indian” outside India? And adds, ‘to forget that there is a world beyond the community to which we belong, to confine ourselves within a narrowly defined cultural frontier would be to go voluntarily into that form of internal exile which in South Africa is called the ‘Homeland’”(1971, 15-17).

Home has been always remain a symbol of identity in the life of a Diaspora. The novel The Bus Stopped describes emphatically the importance of Home and it also distinguished between house and home. The whole narrative is divided on the basis of structure into three sections; the main part titled as ‘Journeys’ and remaining two parts, opens with the title ‘Homes’ and ends with the title of ‘Homes again’ like a complete journey. It opens with the writer’s emphasis upon the word home. To quote:

“Home.

A word that, in English or Danish, is spoken with a final clamping down of the lips, like windows shutting, as if what was contained was nothing but space; there is a movement like that of a possessive child gathering his toys in his arms: home; and that, in Hindi or Urdu, is spoken with a soft expulsion of breath, the lips opening like doors, a moving out from the rasp that catches in the throat to the final roll of the tongue: ghar.

Ghar is also house” (195).

The novel strongly raises the idea of notion of home and it also gives a dominant feeling of diasporic dynamism. The notion of home is concerns with the identity and memory. The migrant people who have left their homes, their native lands, they recall the memories of their native land. This shows that how a person is deeply rooted in the affection of their native country/ land. Khair is residing in Denmark, but he is talking about his native land amazingly. Through this journey he recalls his memories of his lovely spend days in his native land.

The novel actually renders the process and experience of remembering. Kristin Nord Hicks has commented about this phenomenon of the novel. He writes,

“The gap between different places and different times is repeatedly a source to loss for the novels’ characters, but as we will see in the following, memory is pivotal in bridging the gap. Memory is the key to any understanding of the self, because it is the tool by which the self can create links between its present and its history. The narrative renderings of these links are therefore curious mixtures of all kinds of memories, and can tell us a lot more about the one remembering than is known to himself. This is because memory is not only operating from the conscious, but also from the unconscious” (2012, 13).
The migration towards Denmark is a very important step of his life. Therefore being a migrant writer he very well defines the meaning of ‘roots’ and ‘routes’. Both the words are from different geographies of diaspora, which are combined through different geographies of home. The roots are related with their actual homeland, from where the person is migrated. The affection for their homeland shows that how he is deeply rooted and the term ‘routes’ depicts the idea of transcultural geographies of home. The home and identity of a person are particular and have some definite boundary and of course the routes suggested mobility. In this novel Khair beautifully incorporates these words. Because he accepts the importance of ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ in the life of an immigrant writer. Hence Alison Blunt writes about the Diasporic writer’s desire of home coming. To quote:

“The concept of diaspora offers a critique of discourses of fixed origins while taking account of a homing desire, as distinct from a desire for a ‘‘homeland’’. This distinction is important, not least because not all diasporas sustain an ideology of ‘‘return’’ (2005, 10).

The Bus Stopped describes the Importance of home and the desire of coming back to their homes with the help of a range of characters. The journey started with home and when it completed they reached their destinations. Being a diaspora writer khair can very well understand and define the meaning and the value of home/homeland. The novel is a wonderful example of defining the notion of home. The home not merely a shelter but it is a roof under which the dreams, hopes and relations born and grows. It always has been a symbol of mixed memories of a migrant writer. Hence O. P. Diwedi further claims about the novel,

“the pleasure of homecoming is actually a gaze a ribours, the intricate mix of nostalgic longing and western snobbism that expatriates sometimes employ to question their own meaning of home, after the impact of diaspora” (2012, 3).

Actually the public transports are ideal for a base level cultural constitutes and it represents a contemporary cultural landscape symbolically. The book gives two different types of feelings; one is the “feeling of belongingness” along with the “feeling of alienation”. The sense of belonging comes when it shows that author is residing outside their homeland and still writing about their native land amazingly. Even he is describing very little and minute things. The language is simple but full of emotions which makes novel easy to understand and gives a feel of much closer to the common Indian villages.

This sense of belongingness comes along with a sense of alienation as it reflects the person is alienated from their home/homeland. There are the Conceptions of the self, where one is perpetually travelling in the borderland. Along with that the distinction between being at home and being away from home also collapses. The novel also marked with a strong emotional tie and distinction between house and home. It defines,

“We have all returned home, or at least, to houses. I have the home of my memories. It is through the windows of those helter-skelter rooms that I first saw the world those rooms that are all jumbled up. As if in a house added to and demolished over the years, as if in one of those mental states (like dreaming or remembering or meditating) when there is seamlessness in the way things flow backwards and forwards. My homes – fragile, confusing, monstrous – have not been contained by [the physical houses of my past], even though I have always borne their burden” (195, 96).
The novel is a portrayal of the partial memories of Tabish Khair’s journey on a particular route of his native land. The novel carries a semi-autobiographical element. As it starts with first person narrative and later on the writer talked about a variety of characters one by one. In the some of the chapters of the novel author talks about himself as a character travelling by bus and in some of the chapters he has introduced a range of characters along with changing situations during the journey. The author recalls his memories along with defining a range of attractive and touching stories of characters. In the opening pages of the novel he is talking about two houses build by his masters. He writes “built by their masters: built not only with the material available but also with their dreams, hopes and eccentricities (3).” One of which was his Ammi’s house. He has also written about that house. He writes, “Ammi’s house, the white one, was built by my grandfather. It was built during the second world war when the cement was strictly rationed (5)”.

He has remembered even minute things about the house. It reflects how he is attached with the house. Ghar or home is also places which raises the question of cultural belonging and inter communicative languages. Only a migrant or exiled person can understand the importance of home. The author personified the house. He remembers his house as a being with personality and life. “The walls are still thin. They stretch like the membranes of your ear, fragile and more felt than seen. Here the walls are membranes through whose tight secrecy permeates much that may only be heard, not seen” (30).

The home is actually a place where the parallel lines meet. After full day tiredness everyone needs a shelter to relax, this shelter is known as home. It is a place where the emotions, feelings, ideas and relationships born and grown. Khair claims about the importance of home. To quote: “It is a space of many shades of skin, many dialects and languages spoken by the servants and other family members; a space of people, memories and practices that see no need to be called by another name”(5).

The novel is based upon the portrayal of different characters and their touching stories and their experiences. When the characters talk with each-other, there is a split between past and presence. As one old woman who was travelling in the bus was talking about her experience of partition. She was a refugee. To quote:

“The old woman took a pause from narrating her story of the partition. The way she looked at the scene, you would have through it filled her with some unspoken terror. Perhaps it contained everything that she wished her son and his children would never know, all those memories and fears of deprivation that made her avoid travelling by taxi or buying a car even in her prosperous old age” (124).

In fact if the author cleverly manages to wrestle free from the grip of the past. As it remains deep in him and returns, if at no other time, in his sleep. As the novel reflects,

“It is a sleep full of sounds. Your father’s voice across a decade and three states, the sounds of your past and present, your reality and imagination, all mixed up with creaking beds, footsteps, dog howls, truck sounds, and the drip-drip-drip of the tap” (94).

Actually the bus becomes a symbol of metaphor for the self, as it expresses a feeling of need of travel along with a desire of coming back to their homes. Home is represented as an identity of a person who is away from his home, like a diaspora living outside their native land.

Sidhartha Deb in his article “Memory on Wheels” has commented about the Khair’s perception about the mobility, nature and the qualities of the novel. He has written,

“Proust certainly serves to remind us that everyday details can be rendered transcendent through art and memory. This slender novel, so different from the voluminous excavations of Proust, does not strive for the transcendent. What it does believe, and often illustrates with great skill and empathy, is that it is possible to reach into everyday details and seemingly commonplace stories and construct a work greater than the sum of its parts. On the surface a book about a bus journey, The Bus Stopped is a novel that reflects deeply into the nature and circumstances of human mobility in our modern, unforgiving world”. (www.Outlook India.Com. January 27, 2015)

There are really two wonderful stories run together in the book, either you go on a journey or a stranger comes to town. Because with different characters and their stories, together travelling in the bus, there is also an Indo-Danish young man who comes to visit there in the city. The place was quiet strange for him a passing knowledge of Hindi language.

This is an enjoyable book. Khair is a talented writer and a master painter of words. He manages to carry of his tale. The novel is full of twists and turns and the end of the novel is hilarious. Every stoppage brings something new for the reader. The selection of the characters is very clever. It is a musical journey which moves through small- town India. Khair moves with effortless ease into his story telling. The Hindu, commented about the novel printed on back page of the book.

“His tale is quintessentially a tale of transition, and he tells it very well- in short, crisp telegraphic sentences for most part of the time, with an endearing simplicity and candour. His observations are sharp and to the point, capturing the essence of what is happening; it is part story-telling, part-psychology, part- sociology” (January25, 2013).

When the novel opens we quickly come in the contact of variety of characters. Writer introduces many stories with the help of various characters. But novel did not have any central character. But the character of Mangal Singh can be considered the leading or central character of the novel. Khair introduces a range of characters; Mangal Singh is the driver of the bus leading character introduces as an angry bus driver, a man abandoned by his wife and full of resentment against the owner, his second cousin’s husband. The character of Mangal Singh described by the author as;

“He is a man who notices such things, he is a man who only notices such things; it seems to him, if he had noticed other things he would have been another man and not a bus driver plying one of the buses of his second cousin’s husband” (12).

The novel moves though journey along the way, we know some more characters Farhana Begum aka Parvati, who has described to get out of the stultifying confines of her gharana; Zeenat, is an average height but supple, firm build. A young man Irfan reflects the shades of author himself. Wazir Mian the Khansamah (chef) of the Irfan household is a throwback to the days when life lived at a more sedate, yet regal style, you get also a peep into the household of Sharmaji.

Mr Sharma is a government employee of some obscure department. His wife all-time looks harried. They have three daughters, and their middle class angsts and aspirations. Actually the reason behind it their eldest one daughter has failed all her three attempts to get into the civil services, it is the younger one’s turn now. Khair surprisingly portrayed their needs compulsions, their hopes, their aspirations, when it comes to laying bare their existence.

Shankar is the conductor of the bus he carries slightly artificial shades in his character. Shankar always at loggerheads with Mangal Singh over keeping a part of the days takes away from the owner. Rasmus, is one more interesting character, half-Indian, half-Danish executive. He carries a briefcase, full of cash, which was a gift for Masterji. Hari is the driver of Rasmus, who drives his employer to exasperation (a metaphor for timeless India vs. western notions of time) and an opinionated Hindu Matriarch. By an argument the tension between Mangal Singh. And Shankar detached (the two are complicit in a scam to argument their paltry wages) about a tribal woman. The tragic moment surprises when we come to know that the baby carried by tribal woman is dead. The woman did not easily persuade of this. Khair portrays all the characters in a simple but attractive manner.

For Rasmus, the episode is an excellent subcontinent experience. When journey ends he thought, “Where else but in India”. With the help of variety of characters Khair beautifully created kaleidoscopic impressions of India. “In the Arthur Hailey tradition, Khair assembles a seemingly random cast although each member carries an emblematic burden”. (Kirkus Review. 2013.)

The narrative is very well crafted; as all the character becomes alive. Novel unveils the stories of characters in a managed and impressive way. The incidents look naturally woven. Like the character of eunuch gives a different way of guess. Author has written about the rise and fall of this character from Mugal Indian period;

“And that is what I am now. There was a time when I could have been the keeper of the harem keys, a guard of the holiest of holy shrines in the Middle East, a dancer, a soldier, a spy, a scholar, and a general in Delhi. I am not any of these today. But then I am something that is even harder to achieve for so many. I am the perfect wife. I am not Farhana Begum or Parvati anymore. I am Mrs Mirchandani. I will not be buried by the strangers by the roadside. My fate will not be another story no, not that one” (191).
Khair in the novel gives a feeling of multiculturism, with the help of variety of characters belongs to different social orders and cultures. He is a cosmopolitan who does not hesitate while dealing with the characters of different racial groups. All the characters are very well portrayed so that they attract the common people travelling or using public transport. The situations look natural. Language is simple prosaic but effective and condensed. The range of different characters like, Mr. Sharma belongs to middle class, eunuchs shows a different community especially of Indian society, One tribal woman carrying a child, a female refugee witness of India-Pakistan partition, Rasmus a Danish tourist etc. collectively gives the feeling of cultural diversity.

The glimpses of Indian landscapes, back stories of characters, different shades of Indian culture, colours, textures and counters all these wonderfully narrated. Navtej Sarna further commented about the novel’s approach as a travelogue. To quote:

“I read something rather clever the other day the other that I am going to borrow: John Gardener, noted American writer and American writing teacher , once said that there are really only two stories: either you go a journey or a stranger comes to town. That needs thinking through-that’s why it’s clever –but if, for the moment, one takes Gardner at face value, then Tabish Khair’s book contains both stories. Not one but several people go on a journey in a private bus from Gaya to Phansa through several villages, pushing and shoving, stopping at chai shops, past fields and ponds and all the rest of the familiar landscape. And at least one stranger comes to town in the rather convincing form of a young man of Indo- Danish parentage, who except for a passing knowledge of Hindu, looks acts and thinks firangi” (2013).

There is also mingling of certain emotions in the novel such as love, betrayal, memory, wit, and seriousness. And Khair portrayed every emotion in an interesting and balanced way. Shiv K. Kumar also commented about the style and tone of the writer, how the author’s narrative style is marked by simple and sober way. He writes,

“Khair manages to carry of his tale, or rather tales, with something close to aplomb. In the hands of a less gifted or less sensitive writer, the device [of connecting a number of stories though a bus ride] can easily look contrived, and fail to work. But Khair makes it work; he manages to be funny and irreverent, serious and compassionate turn,” (The Hindu. January 25. 2013)

Khair manages his tale which is no doubt a tale of a Bihar in tradition. He presents his novel in a beautiful and simple manner. The language is simple prosaic but attractive, which over flows with the essence of the region. He uses short and crisp telegraphic sentences. Somewhere in the writing of the author Khair, there is a poetic effect in the language. As novel begins with the sentence “I grew up in, their scratched geography, their shadowed histories, their many voices of noon and curtaintude, evening and smokeliness” (3). Ravi Shankar Etteth in India Today has commented about the narrative style of the writer,

“Khair writes prose like a poet. Perhaps because he is one. And he constructs his book with the detailed, deceptively abstruse skills of a versemeister, the chapters winding and unwinding like sonnets, as if prose has been wrestled into a sly iambic discipline” (April 1. 2015).

There is also a poetic description of Mangal Singh, Driver of the bus; “A sound that cuts across the dawn, the field and the houses like a bird in flight” (14).

He is a wonderful observer of the things happening around him; as he captures the flavour in an impressive manner. Khair uses some tools to represent his experience or observation like story- telling, part-sociology and part-psychology etc. For example

“ His observation on a young villager at a Bus stop: he had never eaten meat to the partridge, for the increasing prosperity, his parents were slowly turning vegetarian, moving up the caste hierarchy like most Yadav and Kurmi families in the region”. (Kirkus review. January 25. 2013.5)

Gillian Dooley in “Every Reader is a stranger: The Novels of Tabish Khair” has written about the excellent narrative technique used by Khair in the novel. She writes,

“he follows the lead of such great classic novels not by imitating them but by crafting the structure of his narrative very carefully, providing a variety of points of view and expecting the reader to share the character’s I tellectual journey through the landscape of the novel” (2013.1).

The writer brings together those disparate into a bus journey one by one. Their lives intersected during the journey. The book presents the portrayal of a complete bus journey as how people come and ride together. Once the journey is over they will go their own ways. The merging of the stories to create a novel, nicely done by the author. Every story is different and interesting. Fiona Hook also claims about the tone of the novel; “There much to enjoy here. The twist at the end is hilarious. Khair’s talent is miniaturist.” (The Times, January 19, 2015.)

During the journey we get a gentle glimpse of the character of Mangal Singh driver of the bus. Otherwise Khair presented him as an angry driver. Which makes us surprise: such as a kindly compassionate one as the bus moves on; but then again it halts, before proceeding. At the end of the novel there is no denouement really to speak of; Khair lefts the judgement on the choice of the reader.

Mangal Singh is a great observer of surroundings. He has a bunch of memories on his driving. Some of them are pleasant and some of them are not; “He is a man who notices such things, he is a man who only notices such things” (12). The character of Mangal Singh is beautifully described by Khair,

“some people collect stamps or bottles or coins; he collects images. Some people collect stamps or bottles or coins; he collects images, you have to collect something as worthless as images, don’t you, no market value to them, and he has to collect them, nothing but them, images! images!, 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 pages of memory. Not that he chooses the images consciously; that is simply the way his mind orders the seamless and yet unravelling days of his life” (12).

Somewhere in the novel the author tried to portray ‘himself’ with the help of the portrayal of the character of Mangal Singh. Parallel to these stories is the quest of the bus driver, who is searching for the perfect memory. Khair further writes about the character of mangal Singh; “this is a ritual with Mangal Singh, this slow sweep of the faces of his passengers for the mind to store, to italicize, to recall this trip by” (117).

The way of narration of the author is adventurous and lucid which brings many surprises for the reader either in terms of changing situations, or in terms of changes in the shades of characters. These surprises hold the reader up-to the end of the novel.

India is land of diversity in terms of culture, language, religion, rituals and geography etc. This diversity is because of followers of different religions, and the people living in different states and they speak different languages. But English becomes the most understanding and speaking language in the country. Hindi is the mother tongue of India. Sometimes English blended with some regional languages like Punjabi and Hindi. Nowadays, mingle of Hindi and English languages are known as Hinglish. The trend becomes very popular at the time.

The term is a hybrid of English and South-Asian languages. But the name Hinglish is basically based upon the Hindi language. The term does not refer especially Hindi but it is used in India with the blend of English.

Karan Kumawat was a writer who used Hinglish language in her works. Even before the term Hinglish was not very well known in the literature. Devyani Chaubal became first writer who uses the trend of Hinglish in her English works. The trend was followed by Shobhaa De, in the columns of Indian magazine ‘Stardust’. Some diaspora writers are also used this tradition in their literary works like; Salman Rushdie, Upamanyu Chatterjee and Tabish Khair. Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children is a wonderful example of the use of Hinglish.

Over the years the use of Hinglish in Indian advertising slogans becomes very popular like Pepsi brand uses in 1998 the slogans; ‘yeh dil maange more’, ‘yeh hai Youngistan’, ‘yehi hai right choice baby’. In 2003 Hinglish becomes more popular also in the music Industry especially in English pop songs. And in the year 2005 Baljinder Kaur Mahal has written a book especially related to Hinglish named The Queen’s Hinglish: How to Speak Pukka. Actually Hinglish is a popular and interesting way of understanding for English for Hindi speaking people. Hence the trend becomes very popular between the contemporary writers and it is also very popular in the readers and viewers of the age.

In his novel The Bus Stopped Tabish Khair frankly uses the words of Hindi and Urdu languages which make his language more touching and close to common reader of India. And through this he highlights the regional spirit of Bihar like. He has taken some of his words from regional language. The words like dehaati, gehun, lungi, ek cup chai, bararchi, lehsun, Chai ki dukaan, malik, bajao etc., Frequently used by the author even he uses long sentences of Hindi as: Sab Baghwan ki leela hai, yahan sudh ghee ki swadist mithaiyan milti hain, sab lekhni ka khel hai, pura nashta kar key chalenge: yeh koi firangistan todhe hi hai, etc. This is an interesting feature of the language of the author. One more beautiful example is given here; “a pair of crested hudhuds, mynahs, squabbling over whatever was still left between the stalks and on the ground. Further on, a few patches of field were being readied for the planting of gehun” (143).

In India every state is different in terms of culture, language, food, textures, flavours, customs and geographical elements etc. Bihar is the native region of Tabish Khair. And he is in deep affection of his land. Hence in the novel he emphatically focuses on regional sprit of Bihar particularly the region of Gaya: The beauty of the land, landscapes, road-side views, fields full of crops, language, behaviour, dressing etc. has beautifully presented.

“The fields in fronth of the youth, across thr potholed road, were stubbled with what remained of October’s crop of ganna, thin yellow stalks jutting out of the powdery brown soil, small birds, sparrows pigeons, a pair of crested hudhuds, mynahs, squabbling over whatever was still left between the stalks and on the ground. Further on, a few patches of field were being readied for the planting of gehun. From beyond those patches of ploughed-up ground bearing the healing wounds of human intention, from one of the trees beyond the last thin, divisive aari visible to him, came sound of a koel thinking aloud” (143).

The novel is dabbled with the description of the beauty and flavours of Bihar region. There are also many examples, showing the beauty of region of Bihar like; “Makhana is the popcorn of Bihar, he thinks. Except that it is tastier and crisper. They say it is grown in Darbhanga, Purnia, Saharsa and Madhubani districts of North Bihar” (55).

Here is one more beautiful example which describes the natural beauty of the region;

“A pond or a trough from which the monsoon water would not evaporate most years. On its banks, three ragged banana bushes and behind them a number of hunched huts made of bricks and mud, the walls facing the road unplastred but chalked white. Beyond it all biggest, tallest Sita Ashok tree he has ever seen. He notices this tree on every trip. It is said that if you drank the water in which its delicate, perfumed flowers had been washed, you would be cured of grief (66).

Even he amazingly describes the traditional flavours of Bihar;

“The many strands that go into the making of tilkut, the twisting and turning, the grunting and wrenching, the merging and separating, all that would be invisible in the finished and cooked tilkut of narration”(187).

There are some other writers like Tabish Khair who has focused on the different regions of India such as, M. G. Vassanji is a writer who has written wonderfully about the beauty of Kerala region; the southern backwaters of Kerala, Himalayan hill station of Dharamsala and many places in between. He claims, “India spoke to me”. Raja Rao in his The Serpent and the Rope beautifully describes the beauty of Banaras. He represents Banaras as a land of religion, land of holy river Ganga, land of temples and beautiful crowded Ghats of Ganga. The opening pages of the novel The Serpent and the Rope represents the picture of temples; it is the reflection of religious belief strongly situated in the eastern countries (especially talking about India).

As we know in the 20^th century there are a number of migrations noted especially from third world countries to the western countries. But in this age of globalisation the boundaries have no meaning. The people of different countries can connect with each other and they can understand the cultural differences of both the countries. “The last two decades are witness to the fact that with the globalisation the world is learning to celebrate diversity and popularism. It is also the “logical result of different groups living, interacting, socialising and even accepting material bonding between diverse groups” (V. K. Dwivedi. 2012.1). Martin Heidegger also claims about the classic perception of the boundaries, “A boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing” (1971,152) .

Actually boundaries do not merely refers to the geographical limits but also divides the religions, cultures, languages, ethnicity, race etc. A person living outside their native country writing about the local life, customs, rituals traditions, language, race, ethnicity, it denotes how the person is deeply rooted in the affection of their native country. The travel writing deconstructs the man -made boundaries.

The writers of postmodernism believe that nationalism is a major cause of war; so that there should be no boundaries. The writers like Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie, Vikaram Seth, Shashi Tharoor, Upamanyu Chatterjee and Tabish Khair talks in favour of globalisation. Khair is a cosmopolitan, who has cleverly taken his characters from different religion and regions of India. He beautifully discuss some elements of anti-colonial discourse in the book like he certainly highlighted regional spirit of Bihar, sense of alienation, enigma of Home/homeland, affection towards his root nation, and Diasporic Dynamism and his experiences which comes across the adoption of a new nation.

Hence it can be foremly mentioned that the novel is a well-balanced travelogue, where a number of stories are woven to create a masterpiece. The stories are essentially the portrayal of memories of a migrant writer. The setting of The Bus Stopped is so fixed on the past that re-living memory comes to replace living experience. And it turns results in petrification and obsession with the past. The writer has essentially used two strong metaphors in the novel, “The Home” and “The Journeys”. Here he used the Home as a signifier of identity and memories of a diasporic writer. And the Journeys are described the movement and the diasporic dynamism. The novel is a Journey of emotions and experiences along with fun. A one short sentence is sufficient to describe the effort of the author and the zest of the novel, ‘the memory on wheels’.