Search for My Tongue

It might seem obvious, but speaking is really important to our speaker. We're not just talking about speaking to us in the poem, either. Her concern is with speaking in general, just as it is with listening, reading, writing—the whole experience of using language. By and large, sadly, that experience has been no bed of roses for her.

As someone who is forced to use a second, foreign language to get around, our speaker has two problems. Problem 1: she can't ever "really know" the second language in the same way that she knows her native language (6). What's worse, though, is Problem 2: by speaking this second language, the speaker is in danger of forgetting and losing her "mother tongue" (5).

These aren't just personal problems that she's trying to get off her chest. Our speaker's not simply putting out a list of complaints. Instead, she wants us readers to both understand her difficulties and to appreciate the importance of language in preserving our sense of ourselves. That explains the second stanza, written in Gujrati and with English pronunciations. By chucking that right into the middle of a free verse poem (see "Form and Meter" for more on that), our speaker is forcing us to endure just a teensy, weensy piece of what she lives with every day.

Now, you may think that it's more than just a coincidence that our speaker chooses Gujrati to turn the tables on her readers, given that our poet Sujata Bhatt is herself originally from Gujarat in India. And, much like our speaker, Bhatt was educated and worked abroad, so she knows first-hand the experience of being estranged from her native home and language.

While it's never a good idea to confuse a poem's speaker with the actual poet herself, we do have to say that this is one case where the poet is drawing from her own real life experiences to speak to us readers though—and as—her speaker. And what she's saying to us is pretty powerful: language can be just as much a part of you as your own body.