topics: |  poetry | india | english | single-author

On the whole, many of Sujata Bhatt's poems glide by me, without touching
anything.  The Gujarati-inflected poems in Brunizem, for instance, do not
touch me - perhaps they would make more sense to Indian English (Gujarati)
speakers.  However, I do like many - I particularly like the craftsmanship
in Peacock, which has the flavour of a Kanpur veranda experience almost.
Her father was a scientist; I wonder if she may have spent some time on the
balconies on campus.... 

The Peacock: Sujata Bhatt

His loud sharp call
seems to come from nowhere.
Then, a flash of turquoise
in the pipal tree
The slender neck arched away from you
as he descends,
and as he darts away, a glimpse
of the very end of his tail.

I was told
that you have to sit in the veranda
And read a book,
preferably one of your favourites
with great concentration..
The moment you begin to live
inside the book
A blue shadow will fall over you.
The wind will change direction,
The steady hum of bees
In the bushes nearby
will stop.
The cat will awaken and stretch.
Something has broken your attention;
And if you look up in time
You might see the peacock turning away as he gathers
his tail
To shut those dark glowing eyes,
Violet fringed with golden amber.
It is the tail that has to blink
For eyes that are always open.

---
	Which language
	has not been the oppressor's tongue?
	Which language
	truly meant to murder someone?
	     ("A different history")

Other Review

South Asian Voices by John Welch (1988)

Sujata Bhatt: mother tongue Gujarati, educated subsequently in America and
now living and working in Germany. Born in 1956, Brunizem is her first
collection, and makes clear throughout the threefold nature of her
experience-India, North America and Europe. In "A Different History" she
explores the enigma whereby the language of the conqueror is cherished by
later generations: "Which language/ has not been the oppressor's
tongue... And how does it happen/ the unborn children/ grow to love the
strange language". In "The Undertow" she writes "There are at least three/
languages between us... there's a certain spot/ we always focus on,/ and the
three languages are there/ swimming like seals fat with fish and sun..." In
a longer piece, "Search for my Tongue", she mixes English and Gujarati: "I
ask you, what would you do/ if you had two tongues in your moth". The poem
incorporates a transcription of a tape from home that includes local sounds
and a tabla being played; it would make a fine performance piece.

There is a freshness and clarity of physical perception in many of these
poems that is most attractive. The physical is represented as a source of
both comfort and truth. In the erotic "The Kama Sutra Retold" the teenage
lovers are guided to one another by the rightness of their unspoken,
spontaneous desires: "When he touches her nipples/ he doesn't know/ who is
more surprised". This spontaneity is the complete opposite of the rigorously
decreed social gymnastics of the original Kama Sutra. "Mulierbrity", a rare
term defined in the Oxford Dictionary as "woman hood; the characteristics or
qualities of a woman", begins: "I have thought so much about the girl/ who
gathered cowdung in a wide, round basket". This situation-the poet (usually a
man) watching a (third-world) woman labouring-is deeply ambiguous. Sujata
Bhatt writes that she has been unwilling to "use her for a metaphor". Instead
she enumerates the smells that surround the image: "and the smell of cowdung
and road-dust and wet canna lilies,/ the smell of monkey-breath and freshly
washed clothes/ and the dust from the crows' wings which smells
different". Other poems in this collection, such as "Udaylee" and "Kalika",
deal in an equally direct way with the condition of womanhood. Occasionally
the energy of the writing declines into diffuseness, as in an occasional
piece such as "3 November 1984", her reaction to the violence in the Punjab,
viewed from her standpoint in America. It's as if, lacking immediate or
strongly recollected physical impressions, this writing loses its
genuineness. But overall this is an exciting first collection, moving and
invigorating. In the optimistic confidence with which it encompasses
different cultural and linguistic traditions, it is typical of much poetry
now being produced by South Asian writers.