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Sujata Bhatt hs 123u912e423njfrndfsr.pptx
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Argha Basu HSS IITP
HS212: Diasporic Literature
“A Different History” by Sujata Bhatt
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Argha Basu HSS IITP
Sujata Bhatt (1956 - present)
• Born in Ahmadabad, Gujarat 1956.
• Brought up in Pune until 1968.
• Moved to USA and pursued MFA.
• Went on to work as a writer in
residence in Canada.
• Received the Commonwealth Poetry
Prize (Asia) and Alice Hunt Bartlett
Prize for her first collection of poems,
Brunizem in 1987.
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Argha Basu HSS IITP
Part 1
Part 2
• The poem follows the free verse
format. (Enjambment)
• Therefore, we can’t see any
discernible rhyme scheme (Shows the
complexity of the issues addressed).
• It is divided into two parts.
• Observe the structure of the poem.
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Argha Basu HSS IITP
Great Pan is not dead;
he simply emigrated
to India.
Here, the gods roam freely,
disguised as snakes or monkeys;
every tree is sacred
and it is a sin
to be rude to a book.
Pan is a deity of the wild, shepherds and
flocks, rustic music and impromptus, and
companion of nymphs in the religion and
mythology of ancient Greece.
The Vedic variant is Pushan.
The acceptance of other religions and
cultures.
How the notion of God is embedded within
the symbolic representations of nature and
natural objects/beings.
The word “sin” stands for a negative
commentary of religion but simultaneously
suggests the importance of preserving
tradition.
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Argha Basu HSS IITP
It is a sin to shove a book aside
with your foot,
a sin to slam books down
hard on a table,
a sin to toss one carelessly
across a room.
You must learn how to turn the pages gently
without disturbing Sarasvati,
without offending the tree
from whose wood the paper was made.
The aspects of pantheism is
reflected on in this section.
The appreciation of culture
simultaneously emphasizes on the
idea of freedom and
comprehending it beyond
selfishness.
The book functions as an
example or a symbol that
represents the Indian culture.
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Argha Basu HSS IITP
Which language
has not been the oppressor’s tongue?
Which language
truly meant to murder someone?
And how does it happen
that after the torture,
after the soul has been cropped
with a long scythe swooping out
of the conqueror’s face –
the unborn grandchildren
grow to love that strange language.
What Bhatt means when she asks
“Which language” is that she is
attempting to reconcile how India feels
about English and how she uses
English, which is the language of India's
oppressors. The fact that colonialism
took place is not the language's fault,
and the British's historical behaviour
does not make all English speakers
deserving of hatred today.
A persistent historical reminder of
colonial cruelty and the eradication of
culture (the nation's essence).
Disconnected to one’s roots and
emerging global citizens with a
different historical sensibility.
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Argha Basu HSS IITP
“Search for My Tongue” by Sujata Bhatt
You ask me what I mean
by saying I have lost my tongue.
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.
You could not use them both together
even if you thought that 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.
I thought I spit it out
but overnight while I dream,
munay hutoo kay aakhee jeebh aakhee bhasha
may thoonky nakhi chay
parantoo rattray svupnama mari bhasha pachi
aavay chay
foolnee jaim mari bhasha nmari jeebh
modhama kheelay chay
fullnee jaim mari bhasha mari jeebh
modhama pakay chay
(I felt that the language that belonged to my tongue
I had spat it out
But at night, I see dreams in my mother tongue
My mother tongue is like a flower
It blooms on my tongue
My mother tongue is like a flower
It ripens my mouth)
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 pushes the other tongue aside.
Everytime I think I've forgotten,
I think I've lost the mother tongue,
it blossoms out of my mouth.
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Argha Basu HSS IITP
“An Introduction” by Kamala Das
I don't know politics but I know the names
Of those in power, and can repeat them like
Days of week, or names of months,
beginning with Nehru.
I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar,
I speak three languages, write in
Two, dream in one.
Don't write in English, they said, English is
Not your mother-tongue. Why not leave
Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,
Every one of you? Why not let me speak in
Any language I like? The language I speak,
Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses
All mine, mine alone.
It is half English, half-Indian, funny
perhaps, but it is honest,
It is as human as I am human, don't
You see? It voices my joys, my longings,
my
Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing
Is to crows or roaring to the lions, it
Is human speech, the speech of the mind
that is
Here and not there, a mind that sees and
hears and
Is aware. Not the deaf, blind speech
Of trees in storm or of monsoon clouds or
of rain or the
Incoherent mutterings of the blazing
Funeral pyre. […]
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Argha Basu HSS IITP
The Identity Question:
1. One of the central ideas in the poem is the question of identity. Who we are and where do
we belong?
2. The anxiety around being uprooted from one’s past is evident.
3. The love and appreciation for English create a convoluted sense of guilt and pleasure.
4. Diasporic concern around identity becomes prevalent as the diasporic experience has long
been marked by a sense of loss of roots.
5. Diaspora is a journey towards self-realization, self-recognition, self-knowledge and self-
definition.
6. Sujata Bhatt converts dislocation into a positive state of multiple-belongingness.
7. For her English might pose a threat to the vernacular tongue, but not necessarily dismantle
its foundation.
8. She has talked about her identity struggle with Gujarati (an Indian language) representing
the ‘deepest layer of her identity’, but English representing her daily life and work.
9. She embraces both the languages with similar passion. Her engagement with translation
(from Gujarati to English) manifests the practicability of her vision.
