Short Summary of “The Bus” by Arun Kolatkar

‘The Bus’ introduces all the themes of the poem. Imperviousness is the idea that isimplied by the phrase, ‘ you don’t step inside the old man’s head’ , i.e., the visitor is blatantly non-involved and impervious to the sense of devotion, which generally bringsthousands of pilgrims throughout the year to visit Jejuri. This reveals the objectivity anddistance with which the poet looks at religion.

The poet in spite of being an Indian comes across as an alien, someone foreign. This detachment reinforces the theme of alienation of a modern pilgrim from an ignorant stated of ‘ heightened religious sensibility’ [Ezekielin Enterprise].The significance of light through camera feature is very fascinating. Coming from the advertising and photography field, strong visual imageries are not a surprise. But interesting is the integration of the idea of camera as an instrument of giving‘progression’ to the poem and developing images. These images are recurrent in Jejuri.

The Bus introduces with the strong imageries marked by the visual eye of Kolatkar oneof the major techniques used in Jejuri. The Bus is a symbol of a camera;camera which its roots in the Latin words,camera obscura means a dark chamber. The bus is acamera because of the tarpaulin buttoned down creates an image of a dark chamber. The‘eyelet’ of the tarpaulin serves as the opening aperture of the camera and the old man’sglasses and the bus’s rear end mirrors as the lenses. The two lenses could refer to myopic[short-sightedness] and hyperopic [Larger domain, therefore, more open to different perspectives].He chooses not to use the myopic lenses [ you don’t step in the old man’shead ] and here, Kolatkar’s camera eye begins to roll.The camera eye is very significant to Jejuri. 

Camera captures moments which becomes a part of out memory. This aspect of memory has a thematic significance in Jejuri, which ischaracteristic of Kolatkar’s style of ‘surrealism’. Surrealism was meant to be always influctuation. Hence, there is a lot of movement in the poem. (The cold wind keepswhipping and slapping, the bus journey, move continually forward etc.).Here, it is crucialto mention that there are lot of movements, but the movements are found only in nature.The use of surrealistic devices like odd juxtapositions of objects, free, floating forms,automatic writing, and Freud’s influence of the unconscious and vivid images which aresymbolic in nature like dreams supports the argument. These juxtapositions also functionas dichotomies which are: old man and the urban young traveller, the old man ‘welldefined by the caste-mark’ and the traveller’ ‘beyond the caste-mark’, mongrel bitch andidol of Maruti, god and stone, stone and flowers, grapes and stones etc.The impersonal approach is progressively reinforced by the used of phrases like ‘youlook down”, “your own divided face”, “your elbow”, “you get off the bus”etc. The poetalso forebodes dehumanization in The Bus indicated by the use of transferred epithets:roaring road, cold wind slapping etc