“Presents from my aunts in Pakistan” and “Hurricane Hit England”
Moniza Alvi contrasts the exotic garments and furnishings sent to her by her aunts with what she saw around her in her school, and with the things they asked for in return. Moniza Alvi also shows a paradox (apparent contradiction), as she admired the presents, but felt they were too exquisite for her, and lacked street fashion. Finally, the presents form a link to an alternative way of life (remote in place and time) which Moniza Alvi does not much approve: her aunts "screened from male visitors" and the "beggars" and "sweeper- " in 1950s Lahore.
The bright colours of each salwar kameez suggest the familiar notion of exotic clothes worn by Asian women, but the glass bangle which snaps and draws blood is almost a symbol of how her tradition harms the poet - it is not practical for the active life of a young woman in the west. In a striking simile the writer suggests that the clothes showed her own lack of beauty: "I could never be as lovely/as those clothes". The bright colours suggest the clothes are burning: "I was aflame/I couldn't rise up out of its fire", a powerful metaphor for the discomfort felt by the poet, who "longed/for denim and corduroy", plainer but comfortable and inconspicuous. Also she notes that where her Pakistani Aunt Jamila can "rise up out of its fire" - that is, look "lovely" in the bright clothes - she (the poet) felt unable to do so, because she was "half-English". This may be meant literally (she has an English grandmother) or metaphorically, because she is educated in England. This sense of being between two cultures is shown when the "schoolfriend" asks to see Moniza Alvi's "weekend clothes" and is not impressed. The schoolfriend's reaction also suggests that she has little idea of what her friend, a young Pakistani woman is, and is not, allowed to do at weekends, despite living in Britain.