The Bus (Poem)
By Arun Kolatkar
Arun Kolatkar’s The Bus is the first poem from his collection Jejuri, a thirty-one poem takedown
of religious hypocrisy in modern India for which he won the Commonwealth Prize for Poetry in
1976. Despite its mundane subject matter – the titular bus is one of a fleet of state transport
buses whisking people from one place to another across Maharashtra, one of India’s most
populous provinces and Kolatkar’s home city of Mumbai – The Bus is a poem bursting with
dramatic imagery, tension, and ambiguity. Supposedly ferrying a group of tourists and pilgrims
to Jejuri, site of a sacred Hindu temple, as the bus speeds through the night we start to wonder
where it’s really going, and whether one particular passenger will find what he needs when The
Bus finally arrives.
The journey to Jejuri is long and not particularly comfortable. The bus is old; in place of windows,
plastic or cloth sheets (tarpaulin flaps) have been buttoned down to keep out the cold wind,
which makes the bus seem quite old-fashioned and even anachronistic (out of time). Repeated
three times in the poem to accentuate the bus’s age, the tarpaulin flutters in the strong wind,
slapping at the passenger’s elbow, perfectly encapsulating the make-do-and-mend experience of
long-distance road travel. There’re holes (eyelets) in the tarpaulin flaps so the little light inside
spills out carelessly, as if the bus is an imperfect vessel.
"At the Bus Station" is framed as a set of instructions for boarding a bus amid a jostling,
rambunctious crowd. In careful detail, the poem tells passengers how to avoid choking on their
own neckwear, losing buttons from their clothing, or losing that clothing itself. Most unsettlingly,
the speaker claims that, during the scramble, "human sounds" are to be ignored and "words [will]
lose meaning." Despite its comic undertones, then, the poem depicts normal rules of human
behavior falling by the wayside during a mundane event. In the process, it illustrates how fragile
those rules are in the first place, suggesting that even in sophisticated urban societies, violence
lurks just below the surface of everyday life.
The poem instructs the reader to prepare for a seemingly trivial activity—boarding a bus—as if it
were a serious "battle." For example, the speaker instructs the reader on how to avoid
"strangulation" during the "fight," using terms that imply a potential life-or-death struggle. The
speaker even warns that the "scrambling / at the door" can get so intense that fellow passengers
might "haul[]" you into the air and pull your clothes off.
As the chaos unfolds, the poem suggests that ordinary rules of human behavior, and even the
ordinary "meaning[s]" of "words," no longer apply. The speaker instructs the reader how "to
avoid being undressed" in the melee, conjuring up a kind of mob scene where no one's safe and
anything goes. The instruction to "hold tight to someone / until you are in the bus" suggests that,
even in this every-man-for-himself atmosphere, people are still dependent on each other. But it
also involves grabbing a random stranger and violating their personal space, so it's not exactly
reassuring! Finally, the speaker tells the reader to "pay no attention to human sounds" and claims
that "words" themselves "lose meaning / until you are inside the bus." Ominously, this wording
suggests that you can ignore anyone (even if they're in pain) or say anything (even if it's hurtful)
during the "battle."
Even allowing for comic hyperbole, the poem suggests that, at an ordinary moment in an ordinary
city, compassion and civility can vanish. The reader/citizen may be at risk of losing necktie,
glasses, jacket, shoes, and/or clothing itself—articles associated with sophistication, or just
ordinary civilization.
Especially in the context of poetry (which places high value on the meaning of words), the idea
that words can suddenly "lose meaning" is unnerving. It suggests that poetry, language, and
human culture itself are fragile—that these markers of humanity can disappear even in minor
conflicts (i.e., it doesn't even take a war or disaster). To put it another way, even minor human
conflicts can quickly escalate into "battle[s]" without rules or boundaries.
Although the poem never explains where this bus has stopped or where it's headed, the
passengers are willing to fight fiercely to board it. It seems to be a vehicle for their desires or
aspirations, representing some opportunity they want to "gain entry / to" and avoid missing out
on.
It's worth noting that buses are often used by commuters (and the "you" in the poem is wearing
professional attire: jacket, tie, etc.). Some of these passengers may be scrambling to get to work
on time, so that they don't risk losing money, professional opportunities, etc. Symbolically, then,
the bus is linked with the daily rat race—and the battle to board it seems to illustrate how the
rat race can make people's behavior less "human" (line 27).
Therefore, when the bus reaches the end of its bumpy ride it feels like the central character’s
journey isn’t over. The temple is nowhere in sight, probably because it was never the real reason
to get onboard in the first place. The poem refuses to grant any sense of conclusion (which makes
sense when you know it was the first in a thirty-one poem cycle). The traveller remains unsure of
his next steps; his final action is, in fact, an inaction: you don’t step inside the old man’s head.
This last ambiguous metaphor suggests he doesn’t follow the old man to the temple and rejects
any sense of community or guidance he’s implicitly offered. Instead, he’s going to strike out on
his own. This is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, the old man, like the anachronistic bus,
belongs to a past-India, a country whose problems and solutions might be very different to the
India of today. Perhaps it’s better not to follow in the footsteps of the older, more traditional
generation who seek answers from temple deities. This ‘community’ of castes and religions is not
necessarily the one the traveller needs to join. By choosing to go it alone, even if he’s unsure of
the direction he should take, Kolatkar implies his journey into the future is untrodden, the road
from here unpaved.
