“I longed for denim and corduroy” She longs to be English; she admires our culture but can’t have it.
“My costume clung to me and I was aflame” She’s acting by describing it as a “costume” and she’s dressing up when she wears it, it’s not how she likes to dress.
“My mother cherished her jewellery- Indian gold, dangling, filigree. But it was stolen from our car.” It doesn’t belong there.
“The presents were radiant in my wardrobe.” They’re vibrant and very beautiful unlike “My Aunts requested cardigans from Marks and Spencer.” It makes England sound boring and not sophisticated.
“My salwar kameez didn’t impress the school friend who sat on my bed, asked to see my weekend clothes.” She didn’t fit in and couldn’t have any English clothes.
Alvi describes her impressions of Pakistan. She mentions how she’d watched on the news that there was a war going on “there was a conflict, a fractured land throbbing through newsprint.” She can feel the terrible pain that the country is going through and she is suffering too by seeing her culture being “fractured” by war.
She shows how women were treated as well “Sometimes I saw Lahore- My Aunts in shaded rooms, screened from male visitors, sorting presents, wrapping them in tissue.” The females aren’t allowed to be seen by males and they spend most of their time wrapping up all kinds of presents.
Similarly in Search For My Tongue Sujata Bhatt shows her difficulties and feelings about living between two cultures but unlike Presents From My Aunts In Pakistan this poem finds their real identity however at first we see Bhatt’s fear of losing it.
Bhatt places her own first language, Gujerati in the middle of the poem giving the impression that it’s separated out both English and pushes them onto either side out of the way showing that it’s not forgotten and is too powerful to be pushed away by her foreign tongue.
In Alvi’s poem she tries to work out who she is and find her real identity by her reflection “But often I admired the mirror work, tried to glimpse myself in the miniature glass circles.” The lines in the poem break up suggesting that she’s seeing herself in different places.
She remembers her journey to England “…. Recall the story how the three of us sailed to England. Prickly heat had me screaming on the way.” The weather was far too hot in Pakistan than it is here.
“I ended up in a cot in my English Grandmothers dining room, found myself along playing with a tin boat.” This shows she was separated and left isolated- it’s as if her Grandmother didn’t improve of her because she doesn’t belong and the tin boat shows it’s hard and not a baby toy- she doesn’t get treated the same because of her culture.
There was great poverty in Pakistan “or there were beggars, sweeper- girls and I was there- of no fixed nationality, staring through fretwork at the Shalimar gardens.” She doesn’t belong and there’s a barrier stopping her so she’s looking in from the outside of it. Moniza Alvi feels confused and strange about being involved in two different cultures. She doesn’t know where she belongs and who she is and by the use of her language she shows great sadness of not being able to find herself. She would like to belong but can’t and not knowing her real identity is all reflected to match with the tone of the poem.
In contrast Bhatt’s poem starts off like a conversation she’s talking to an unseen person “You ask me what I mean by saying I have lost my tongue.” She’s answering an unseen question.
She uses a metaphor “I ask you what would you do if you had two tongues in your mouth, and lost the first one, the mother tongue and could not really know the other, the foreign tongue” By using the term “two tongues in your mouth” she means two languages, “the mother tongue” being her first culture, Indian and “the foreign tongue” being her second culture, American. She fears she is losing her Indian culture because her second culture, American is pushing it out of the way. “And if you lived in a place you had to speak a foreign tongue, your mother tongue would rot, rot and die in your mouth until you had to spit it out.” She uses an extended metaphor and says she is being forced to speak a foreign language that is alien to her and so her mother tongue is being left behind and pushed away- she uses repetition to show how deeply she fears it being forgotten and she gives an unpleasant image of it rotting in her mouth so that it has to be spat out, she can’t use both cultures. “You could not use them both together even if you thought that way.”
She shows she thinks she’s left it out and uses incorrect grammar showing not completely in control “I thought I spit it out but overnight while I dream.”
She creates a new image of her tongue growing back “it grows back, a stump of a shoot grows longer, grows moist, grows strong veins, it ties the other tongue in knots, the bud opens, the bud opens in my mouth, it pushed the other tongue aside.” She describes it like a flower healthy and powerful, it’s still alive, she uses a metaphor “bud” showing spring and new life, “Bud opens in my mouth pushes other tongue aside.”
Rebirth always happens, her own culture is always within her and her new culture can never overtake it. “Every time I think I’ve forgotten, I think I’ve lost my mother tongue, it blossoms out of my mouth.”
Referring back to Alvi’s poem the way she structures her poem shows that she’s torn in half- there’s different parts of the poem that are split open, it’s very jerky and not smooth showing the discomfort that she feels, each stanza has details of both cultures showing the contrast between them. She uses enjambement as if she’s thinking aloud- quick movement between the lines showing it’s fractured like some of the language used “glistened like an orange split open”
In Bhatt’s poem the poem is written in one stanza separated by the Gujerati in the middle showing it can burst out of her at anytime, she uses enjambement as well in the structure of the poem like in Presents From My Aunts In Pakistan, which shows she’s thinking aloud.
The tone of the poem at first is in contrast to Presents From My Aunts In Pakistan because she shows her sadness and resentment that she’s losing her mother tongue and finds it difficult sharing between two cultures because it’s hard to find her real identity but unlike Alvi’s poem, Bhatt finds her identity and shows her happiness and joy that her first culture is still within her and feels proud of her Indian culture whereas in Alvi’s poem she never feels happiness because she can’t find her real belonging.
I thoroughly enjoyed both poems and felt their feelings about just how difficult it is living between both cultures however I think Alvi’s poem had the most effect on me as a reader because she made an impression of both cultures and because she never felt any happiness it made me feel sorry for her by the use of language and the jerky structure she used to show the unhappiness she felt however I thought that Bhatt’s structure was also really good how she separated the English with the Gujerati- I think they’re both enjoyable poems with a real meaning to them which I found great to read.