Response to "Search my tongue" by Sujata Bhatt

The image above is of the poem by Sujata Bhatt. She has described that how living in different culture has manipulated her to forget her mother tongue.

I have noted a few things while examining the structure. It is that the poem is divided into three parts and the central part is in historic Hindi. The other two parts are in English but have different tones of approach. The first stanza has lights of negativity. Third stanza on the other side tends to be more positive. Overall there is no rhyme scheme, however there is repetition of some words at the end of each verse like "tongue" and "mouth".

Secondly I think, this is not a very serious matter to publish and create a fuss of. This is because there are people around the world knowing more than five languages yet facing no such problems and maintaining. It will not really be an issue if she can just try speaking the language to herself regularly or making friends that know her language. Factually more than 55% of all literate people are bilingual. This assures that more than half the literate people can speak two languages and do not face such problems.

Now I will relate her situation with my personal situation particularly. I speak two languages and live in Dubai where mostly I only get to speak English, however whenever I go to Pakistan and talk to my grandmother, I can confidently utter pure Urdu ensuring satisfactory conversation. Sometimes I don't get to speak Urdu for weeks yet I can always remember the language as I watch movies and shows.

However the other interpretation regarding this can be that she is referring to the historically used Hindi. The Hindi in the poem is very historic and only a few people like Hindi literary writers can understand it. It make sense this way as she must have been talking about the outmoded Hindi used hundreds of years ago that no one speaks these days and therefore she feels that she is losing it.

In the last stanza she changes the entire mood of the poem and uses positive words like "strong" and "blossom". This shows her enjoyment of dreaming in her mother tongue and ensuring that she hasn't lost her language completely.

Overall this poem is aberrational because of its structure and use of two languages. Sujata Bhatt must cope with the language problems she is facing by watching movies and making friends.