Jejuri excerpt2

From Jejuri by Arun Kolatkar The Bus  The tarpaulin flaps are buttoned down on the windows of the state transport bus all the way up to Jejuri. A cold wind keeps whipping and slapping a corner of the tarpaulin against your elbow. You look down the roaring road. You search for signs of daybreak in     what light spills out of the bus. You own divided face in a pair of glasses on an old man's nose in all the countryside you get to see. You seem to move continually forward towards a destination just beyond the caste mark between his eyebrows. Outside, the sun has risen quietly. It aims through an eyelet in the tarpaulin and shoots at the old man's glasses. A sawed off sunbeam comes to rest gently against the driver's right temple. The bus seems to change direction. At the end of a bumpy ride with your own face on either side when you get off the bus you don't step inside the old man's head. 

© Arun Kolatkar