Bus

#27 by Urstruly

Abe (gadhe) you write about donkeys with 5-th legs and turning 17 year famished into whores and that is art?

Ansari

I found your response and your theorising to be facile. But you are entitled to exercise your moral judgment and classify this piece along with pornography if that is the way you see things, and I am entitled to disagree with you.

ansari

kam bolte ho, magar khoob bolte ho.

I think you are right; with socheta`s powerful style of writing such explicit details could have been easily avoided. With her style she had an option to turn it into a work of art. It is true that there is a very thin line that separates ``The Nymph Galatea`` by Raphael from ``Debby Does Dallas`` by Seymour Butts.

Sucheta #22,

‘Like the other millions of his fellow country-men, it did not even occur to him to check whether his wife had felt any pleasure.`

Sucheta, I will take this with the same amount of salt and masala as with `women enjoying being groped in the bus.`

So, no I won`t call you on it. :)

Nazar uncle: who says the 21st century is more progressive than the ones that preceded it? Mere passage of time doesn`t ensure progress - we need to examine our own values and reactions to find how sophisticated we really are.

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PunjabiZulu: I`m afraid I disagree with you. And we can have quite a dialogue on the pros and cons of such literature but if we really want to avoid rhetoric and get to the truth, ask yourself this one question: how would you feel if your wife or your sister had an experience similar to that described above, if they found themselves consenting to being fondled by a stranger on a bus? Would you enjoy listening to their account? If the answer to this question is no, then anything anybody else says in defense of this theme is not true.

While this may be a story and its characters fiction, it doesn`t preclude us from exercising our own moral judgement. To Miss Potnis` credit, the story is exceedingly well-written and she draws us into Padma`s predicament quite artfully, a fact that only makes the subsequent incident all the more repulsive.

(Sir, I intend no disrespect towards you or your family. I`m only trying to illustrate a point.)

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Jang: Yes, this story quite skillfully mirrors commonplace events. But then, sodomy occurs frequently enough, so does paedophilia. Would it be alright with you to have a story about incest? Where do we draw the line at what`s morally acceptable and what`s not? Kuch baaton main majority rule pe jaana munaasib nahin.

Nazar uncle: who says the 21st century is more progressive than the ones that preceded it? Mere passage of time doesn`t ensure progress - we need to examine our own values and reactions to find how sophisticated we really are.

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PunjabiZulu: I`m afraid I disagree with you. And we can have quite a dialogue on the pros and cons of such literature but if we really want to avoid rhetoric and get to the truth, ask yourself this one question: how would you feel if your wife or your sister had an experience similar to that described above, if they found themselves consenting to being fondled by a stranger on a bus? Would you enjoy listening to their account? If the answer to this question is no, then anything anybody else says in defense of this theme is not true.

While this may be a story and its characters fiction, it doesn`t preclude us from exercising our own moral judgement. To Miss Potnis` credit, the story is exceedingly well-written and she draws us into Padma`s predicament quite artfully, a fact that only makes the subsequent incident all the more repulsive.

(Sir, I intend no disrespect towards you or your family. I`m only trying to illustrate a point.)

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Jang: Yes, this story quite skillfully mirrors commonplace events. But then, sodomy occurs frequently enough, so does paedophilia. Would it be alright with you to have a story about incest? Where do we draw the line at what`s morally acceptable and what`s not? Kuch baaton main majority rule pe jaana munaasib nahin.

Good reading.

Do women really get ``filled with a warm gush``? Isn`t it just kind of, uhhhm, sticky?

Why did Padma use the bus when everybody else would use the train?

From the working women`s hostel next to Tarapore Aquarium, there are atleast half-a-dozen stops before the bus reaches Nariman Point. Our elbow and finger could have played saxophone by then, especially upper deck of the bus.

The conductors can usually spot this.

Just joking, Potnis, Your secrets are safe.

Hello All,

First of all, thanks for taking the time to read my story and then thanks for taking the trouble to write in your reactions. I am overwhelmed!

May I say a little bit about something in the story that seems to have irritated some of you?

The fact that Padma`s brother ran away with a Muslim girl.

In this context, Muslim can easily be replaced by Christian, Sikh, Parsee, Buddhist, whatever!

As you will notice, that Padma comes from a very simple lower economic class working Hindu background. They obviously haven`t had much exposure to worldly culture. The taboos and the norms that are contained therein, are from that strata of society where ~ any one ~ outside their own little `community` is an outsider, therefore not suitable for marriage.

So if Padma was Philomena,, then the brother could have run away with a Priya, or if Padma was Firdaus, then the brother could have run away with a Patricia. With the same result of being ostracised by the family. This is ~no comment ~ on the girl he ran away with. The only stereo type here is the family`s reaction to it.

What I am trying to say, is that in certain level of society, any person from another faith, nay, even another cast or another community, may have had the same reaction of alienation.

I am sure you are well aware of that.. and this is the reality.

I would not dare to insult the intelligence of the Chowk community by mouthing the cliche `some of best friends are Muslim` - it is too obvious a thing. A person`s religion is very very much the choice of the individual - including whether or not they want to practice it!

And to take the argument further back, the story could easily live without that brother ever having been ~born~ . What do you think? Padma may well have been an only child - thereby saving us all this headache! LOL!

Personally, I find it the story rather poignant - how a woman never felt the simple basic joys of love - physical or otherwise. In this short bus ride, she gets a startling and fleeting glimpse of what physical pleasure could mean.

Irony is that she discovers it with a nameless faceless stranger - and may never find it ever again. That`s the sad part of the story.

Amazingly, none of the men have objected to my broad statement ‘Like the other millions of his fellow country-men, it did not even occur to him to check whether his wife had felt any pleasure.`

Are you all going to let me get away with that?

LOL!

enjoyable read. dont listen to that no good ansari.

Samankhan #14,

Bollywood has rarely protrayed Muslims as caricatures. Their are many movies where the protagonists are Muslims and they have been shown as normal human beings.

everyone has its own life and he /she should live it fully,
if one starts comparing we will end up frustrating only.

Loved your writing style.

#14 by samankhan
you are right about muslim characters in bollywood...things are changing with movies like munnabhai, in which zahir is a clean-cut indian boy from nagpur (rss HQ) who is merely a muslim.

Mr Ansari, this is a story of human condition.

very interesting and well written

Quite interesting and with very real and empathetic characters.

Ciao

Soundmeister,
Did enjoy the story but that `one detail` is irritating me no end just as the movies, that put in a taxi driver/sweeper/hapless whatever Muslim character in a sea of other characters by way of charity, do.
Either that or the villains and the goons will be characteristically wearing a bunyan and a lungi, not to mention the beard.
Why can`t the world understand that Muslims can be normal too just like the others.....that they can also be good/bad/moderate just as others and not excusively bad?
I would appreciate complete absence of a Muslim character rather than one creep against 99 other good samaritans.
Don`t you think writers have more responsibility towards depicting an unbiased/true picture rather than projecting caricatures?