Sujata Bhatt

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Sujata Bhatt Search For My Tongue
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Starter

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

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Learning Objectives

• As we study the poem you will learn about
• the poems meaning and message
• the term mother tongue
• the relationship between language and identity
• the term extended metaphor

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Sujata Bhatt Search For My Tongue
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, ??? ????? ?? ????? ???
?????(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) 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 Ive forgotten,I think
Ive lost the mother tongue,it blossoms out of
my mouth.
http//www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english_
literature/poetry_slideshow/search/photoplayer.sht
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Mini Task 1

• Write down what you think is the story of the
  poem.

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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.
.
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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."
.
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Mini Task 2
You ask me what I meanby saying I have lost my
tongue.

• What are the key words in these two lines?

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Mini Task 2
You ask me what I meanby saying I have lost my
tongue.

• What are the key words in these two lines?
• lost tongue

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Sujata Bhatt Search For My Tongue
Structure Meaning
You ask me what I meanby saying I have lost my
tongue.
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 secondforeign tongue.
Her decision to describe her inability to speak
Gujarati as a loss is interesting. Loosing
something is normally accidental, you dont
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.
.
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Mini Task 3
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.

• How has the metaphor changed here?

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Mini Task 3
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.

• How has the metaphor changed here?
• Two tongues, the mother tongue and the foreign
  tongue

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Sujata Bhatt Search For My Tongue
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.
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.
.
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Mini Task 4
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.

• How has the metaphor changed in these lines?

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Mini Task 4
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.

• How has the metaphor changed in these lines?
• metaphors in this part of the Poem are all about
  death and decomposition.

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Sujata Bhatt Search For My Tongue
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.
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.
.
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Sujata Bhatt Search For My Tongue
Structure Meaning
I thought I spit it outbut 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)
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
.
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Mini Task 5
..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 Ive forgotten,I think
Ive lost the mother tongue,it blossoms out of
my mouth.

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

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Mini Task 5
..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 Ive forgotten,I think
Ive 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.

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Sujata Bhatt Search For My Tongue
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.
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 Ive forgotten,I think
Ive lost the mother tongue,it blossoms out of
my mouth.
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Sujata Bhatt Search For My Tongue