Sujata Bhatt – Search For My Tongue

Sujata Bhatt – Search For My Tongue

Starter

Write a few lines about a time when you were abroad and found the different language you had to use confusing.

Learning Objectives

As we study the poem you will learn about– the poem’s meaning and message– the term ‘mother tongue’– the relationship between language and

identity– the term ‘extended metaphor’

You ask me what I meanby saying I have lost my tongue.I ask you, what would you doif 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 togethereven if you thought that way.And if you lived in a place you had tospeak a foreign tongue,your mother tongue would rot,rot and die in your mouthuntil you had to spit it out.I thought I spit it outbut overnight while I dream,

મને� હુ� તું�� કે� આબ્બી� જીભઆબ્બી�(munay hutoo kay aakhee jeebh aakhee bhasha)

મ� � થૂં�� કે� ને�બી� છે�(may thoonky nakhi chay)

પરં� તું� રં�ત્રે� સ્વપ્નાં�� મ�� મ�રં� ભ�ષા� પ�છે� આવ� છે�.

(parantoo rattray svupnama mari bhasha pachi aavay chay)

ફુ� લને� જે�મ મ�રં� ભ�ષા� મ�રં�(foolnee jaim mari bhasha nmari jeebh)

મ�ઢા�મ�� બી�લ� છે�(modhama kheelay chay)

ફુ� લને� જે�મ મ�રં� ભ�ષા� મ�રં�(fullnee jaim mari bhasha mari jeebh)

મ�ઢા�મ�� પ�કે� છે�(modhama pakay chay)

it grows back, a stump of a shootgrows 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.

Sujata Bhatt – Search For My Tongue

Mini Task 1

Write down what you think is the ‘story’ of the poem.

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The poet explains what it is like to speak and think in two languages.

She wonders if the new language is stronger than her original language and whether she might lose the language she began with.

However, the ‘mother tongue’ remains with her in her dreams and so she does not loose it.

By the end of the poem, she is confident that the ‘mother tongue’ will always be part of who she is.

The Story Of The Poem

Sujata Bhatt – Search For My Tongue

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Sujata Bhatt, was born in 1956 in Ahmedabad, the largest city in the Indian state of Gujarat, where her ‘mother tongue’ was Gujarati.

Later, her family lived for some years in the United States, where she learned English. She now lives in Germany. She has chosen to write poems in English, rather than Gujarati. But a number of her poems, including this one, are written in both languages.

This poem is part of a longer poem ('Search for my Tongue'), written when she was studying English at university in America and was afraid she might lose her original language.

In an interview, she said: "I have always thought of myself as an Indian who is outside India.“

Her mother tongue is for her an important link to her family, and to her childhood: "That's the deepest layer of my identity."

About the Poet Sujata Bhatt – Search For My Tongue

Mini Task 2

What are the key words in these two lines?

You ask me what I meanby saying I have lost my tongue.

Mini Task 2

What are the key words in these two lines?

lost & tongue

You ask me what I meanby saying I have lost my tongue.

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The poem starts with a question that immediately goes to the core of the issue Sujata Bhatt is addressing in this poem ~ the fear that she has lost he ability to speak in her ‘mother tongue’.

Because she stars the question with ‘You’ the poem becomes very personal asks you to challenge to your perceptions of language and identity.

Tongue is used as an extended metaphor for language throughout the poem and she calls her original language, Gujarati, her ‘mother tongue’.

The English language she uses to speak to you is therefore the ‘second…foreign’ tongue.

Structure & Meaning You ask me what I meanby saying I have lost my tongue.

Her decision to describe her inability to speak Gujarati as a loss is interesting. Loosing something is normally accidental, you don’t deliberately ‘loose’ something.

The use of the word ‘lost’ also carries with it a sense of regret ~ we are normally not happy about loosing something ~ and we generally want to find it again, especially if it is precious to us and our identity, as her ‘mother tongue would seem to be for her.

Sujata Bhatt – Search For My Tongue

Mini Task 3

How has the metaphor changed here?

I ask you, what would you doif 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 togethereven if you thought that way.

Mini Task 3

How has the metaphor changed here?

Two tongues, the mother tongue and the foreign tongue

I ask you, what would you doif 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 togethereven if you thought that way.

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The personal challenge continues in the third line where she asks you what you would do if you had to cope with being bi-lingual and your native language was being suppressed.

She uses a very graphic metaphor ~ ‘two tongues’ to convey this idea.

And then she suggests that you cannot really know and be at home with you second language ‘the foreign tongue’. Furthermore they are mutually exclusive and cannot be used together, even if you think in both languages.

Structure & Meaning You ask me what I meanby saying I have lost my tongue.I ask you, what would you doif 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 togethereven if you thought that way.

Sujata Bhatt – Search For My Tongue

Mini Task 4

How has the metaphor changed in these lines?

And if you lived in a place you had tospeak a foreign tongue,your mother tongue would rot,rot and die in your mouthuntil you had to spit it out.

Mini Task 4

How has the metaphor changed in these lines?

• metaphors in this part of the Poem are all about death and decomposition.

And if you lived in a place you had tospeak a foreign tongue,your mother tongue would rot,rot and die in your mouthuntil you had to spit it out.

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Here she puts forward the idea that living in a place where your native language is not spoken will eventually destroy your ability to speak in your ‘mother tongue’

She uses the word ‘rot’ as another very graphic and this time disturbing metaphor to describe this process of destruction which results in the ‘death’ of the language of your birth.

A natural consequence of having something rotting in your mouth is that you would want to spit it out; and this metaphorically is what happens to your language. Not only is it suppressed to the point of extinction, you then actively try to get rid of what remains.

Structure & Meaning You ask me what I meanby saying I have lost my tongue.I ask you, what would you doif 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 togethereven if you thought that way.And if you lived in a place you had tospeak a foreign tongue,your mother tongue would rot,rot and die in your mouthuntil you had to spit it out.

Sujata Bhatt – Search For My Tongue

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However although you may think you have got rid of this language, a vestige remains to haunt your dreams.

And to make her point in this section you hear her ‘mother tongue’ spoken. The words in brackets are an English phonetic translation of the Gujarati text which she then gives us in English in the last few lines of the poem

Structure & Meaning I thought I spit it outbut overnight while I dream,

મને� હુ� તું�� કે� આબ્બી� જીભઆબ્બી�(munay hutoo kay aakhee jeebh aakhee bhasha)

મ� � થૂં�� કે� ને�બી� છે�(may thoonky nakhi chay)

પરં� તું� રં�ત્રે� સ્વપ્નાં�� મ�� મ�રં� ભ�ષા� પ�છે� આવ� છે�(parantoo rattray svupnama mari bhasha pachi aavay chay)

ફુ� લને� જે�મ મ�રં� ભ�ષા� મ�રં�(foolnee jaim mari bhasha nmari jeebh)

મ�ઢા�મ�� બી�લ� છે�(modhama kheelay chay)

ફુ� લને� જે�મ મ�રં� ભ�ષા� મ�રં�(fullnee jaim mari bhasha mari jeebh)

મ�ઢા�મ�� પ�કે� છે�(modhama pakay chay)

Sujata Bhatt – Search For My Tongue

Mini Task 5

What happens to the metaphors in this part of the poem?

…..it grows back, a stump of a shootgrows 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.Every time I think I’ve forgotten,I think I’ve lost the mother tongue,it blossoms out of my mouth.

Mini Task 5

The metaphors in this part of the poem are all about growth and rejuvenation in contrast to the metaphors before the Gujarati stanza.

…..it grows back, a stump of a shootgrows 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.Every time I think I’ve forgotten,I think I’ve lost the mother tongue,it blossoms out of my mouth.

I thought I spit it outbut overnight while I dream,….. Gujarati/phonetic text…..it grows back, a stump of a shootgrows 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.Every time I think I’ve forgotten,I think I’ve lost the mother tongue,it blossoms out of my mouth.

In the English translation of the Gujarati we learn that far from being dead, her mother tongue is simply a dormant ‘stump’ waiting to be re-born.

Not only is her native language re-discovered, it returns stronger than the new language she has learnt to use; so much so she is now able to tie the other ‘tongue’ in knots to the point where she is almost ‘Tongue-tied’.

This is obviously a constant battle because she says ‘every time’ so this sense of the loss of language has happened before and in this poem language is strongly associated with identity. So in loosing her language she looses part of her own identity.

Sujata Bhatt – Search For My Tongue

Sujata Bhatt – Search For My Tongue