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’
Sujata Bhatt – Search For My Tongue
You ask me what I mean
(parantoo rattray svupnama mari bhasha pachi
by saying I have lost my tongue.
aavay chay)
I ask you, what would you do
ફુલની જેમ મારી ભાષા મારી
if you had two tongues in your mouth, (foolnee jaim mari bhasha nmari jeebh)
and lost the first one, the mother tongue, મોઢામાું બીલે છે
and could not really know the other,
(modhama kheelay chay)
the foreign tongue.
ફુલની જેમ મારી ભાષા મારી
You could not use them both together (fullnee jaim mari bhasha mari jeebh)
even if you thought that way.
મોઢામાું પાકે છે
And if you lived in a place you had to
(modhama pakay chay)
speak a foreign tongue,
your mother tongue would rot,
it grows back, a stump of a shoot
rot and die in your mouth
grows longer, grows moist, grows strong veins,
until you had to spit it out.
it ties the other tongue in knots,
I thought I spit it out
the bud opens, the bud opens in my mouth,
but overnight while I dream,
it pushes the other tongue aside.
મને હત
ુ ુંુ કે આબ્બી જીભ આબ્બી
(munay hutoo kay aakhee jeebh aakhee
bhasha)
મેં થક
ું ી નાબી છે
(may thoonky nakhi chay)
પરું ત ુ રાત્રે સ્વપનાુંમાું મારી ભાષા પાછી આવે છે
Everytime I think I’ve forgotten,
I think I’ve lost the mother tongue,
it blossoms out of my mouth.
Mini Task 1
Write down what you think is the ‘story’ of
the poem.
Sujata Bhatt – Search For My Tongue
The Story Of The Poem
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.
Sujata Bhatt – Search For My Tongue
About the Poet
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."
Mini Task 2
You ask me what I mean
by saying I have lost my tongue.
What are the key words in these two lines?
Mini Task 2
You ask me what I mean
by saying I have lost my tongue.
What are the key words in these two lines?
lost & tongue
Sujata Bhatt – Search For My Tongue
Structure & Meaning
You ask me what I mean
by 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.
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.
Mini Task 3
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.
How has the metaphor changed here?
Mini Task 3
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.
How has the metaphor changed here?
Two tongues, the mother tongue and the
foreign tongue
Sujata Bhatt – Search For My Tongue
Structure & Meaning
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.
.
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.
Mini Task 4
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.
How has the metaphor changed in these lines?
Mini Task 4
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.
How has the metaphor changed in these lines?
• metaphors in this part of the Poem are all
about death and decomposition.
Sujata Bhatt – Search For My Tongue
Structure & Meaning
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.
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.
Sujata Bhatt – Search For My Tongue
Structure & Meaning
I thought I spit it out
but overnight while I dream,
મને હત
ુ ુંુ કે આબ્બી જીભ આબ્બી
(munay hutoo kay aakhee jeebh aakhee
bhasha)
મેં થક
ું ી નાબી છે
(may thoonky nakhi chay)
પરું ત ુ રાત્રે સ્વપનાુંમાું મારી ભાષા પાછી આવે છે
.
(parantoo
rattray svupnama mari bhasha
pachi aavay chay)
ફુલની જેમ મારી ભાષા મારી
(foolnee jaim mari bhasha nmari jeebh)
મોઢામાું બીલે છે
(modhama kheelay chay)
ફુલની જેમ મારી ભાષા મારી
(fullnee jaim mari bhasha mari jeebh)
મોઢામાું પાકે છે
(modhama pakay chay)
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
Mini Task 5
…..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.
Every time I think I’ve forgotten,
I think I’ve lost the mother tongue,
it blossoms out of my mouth.
What happens to the metaphors in this
part of the poem?
Mini Task 5
…..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.
Every time I think I’ve forgotten,
I think I’ve lost the mother tongue,
it blossoms out of my mouth.
The metaphors in this part of the poem
are all about growth and rejuvenation in
contrast to the metaphors before the
Gujarati stanza.
Sujata Bhatt – Search For My Tongue
I thought I spit it out
but overnight while I dream,…..
Gujarati/phonetic text
…..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.
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