'Presents from my aunts in Pakistan' - review

                             The emotions of this poem are feeling alienation, different, feeling embarrassment, disappointment and love and happiness. The craft of this poem are as follows Line number eighteen says “I could never be lovely as those clothes”. This line prove how much she likes the clothes sent from her aunts in Pakistan and she also proves the happiness she felt from sending her beautiful clothes from her aunts in Pakistan although she was not in the position to wear them on. In line number twenty “I longed for denim and corduroy”. From these two lines I have mentioned, I can prove that she liked the gifts sent from her aunts in Pakistan but she not in a country where it would be parallel to wear as though of the same style as of Pakistan. And she wanted to wear her own clothes which the English style would accept. Line number sixteen says “I tried each satin-silken top was alien in the sitting room”. First of the word Alien means foreign, strange. Therefore when she wears the Pakistani styled cloth in her English styled built house it makes her feel that there is an alien standing in her house. Therefore she is feeling alienation, different. Major problem to her is that she was born in Pakistan and was brought up in England in English style of living therefore she is having two citizenship and she doesn’t have a fixed nationality. I too is same as the girl who has been described because, I was born in Sri-Lanka and formally getting brought up in England. The following are the gifts she received from her aunts in Pakistan salwar kameez, slippers, bangles, and camel skin-lamp. Out of these received goods she liked most of them but she could not use them but she liked only the camel skin lamp which was taken by her parents. This line can be proved from this quote from the poem I.e. “I wanted my parent’s camel skin-lamp-switching it on my bed room”. In this line she feels that it’s being cruelty to animal kinds. People killed the camel and mould it and brought to the lampshade. Therefore she feels that is being cruelty to animals.  Line number fifty-five says “I pictured my birthplace from the fifties photographs”. She didn’t even remember the place she was born and she recaps her place of birth from the fifties photograph. This line proves her emotion of being happy of seeing the place of birth. This line also proves how closely she was ongoing with the English life style and with the English culture. Line number sixty-one says “ My aunts in shaded rooms screened male visitors”. This shows how the culture in Pakistan and the culture where she now lives is different. In the place where she lives now, she even takes her friends to her bedroom. See how different is the culture and way of living in Pakistan and England are different.

                                                          From the whole poem the purpose was to show how different she feels when she received gifts from her aunts in Pakistan because the life style of English were more far than of the Pakistani’s are. And the author wanted to make us understand how different and alienation she feels when she received the gifts. I think from his poem the author has achieved the target what he wanted to achieve and he has done an excellent job.