A Different History by Sujata Bhatt - Analysis
Explore the ideas in the poem A Different History by Sujata Bhatt.
Sujata Bhatt reflects and explores on the ideas of ‘culture, ‘values’, human struggle, religion combined with its beliefs and acquisition of foreign or strange language. Bhatt invites the readers and takes them through the culture of India and its religious beliefs that every life respects them there. There is enough vocabulary to understand this in the poem. She also expresses her bitterness and strong emotions towards the struggle and torture borne by the people ‘here’ in the past. She wonders and ponders on the issues of ‘tongue’ and ‘language’ She shows her amazement and expresses her inability to understand how people ‘here’ learn to love the ‘strange language’ that put to suffer the torture and struggle for identity.
The poem does not have a traditional structure in terms of stanzas or the rhyme scheme in it. The complex ideas of religion, beliefs, values, culture and loving foreign language might be the reasons for composing it with no rhyme and irregular parts. The first 18 lines run in religious and reverential tone but the poet immediately shifts to bitterness and wonder.
The first part begins with an introduction to the Nature god, Great Pan, who assumed to be dead to rest of the world. But Bhatt reminds the world that India welcomed this ‘immigrant’. The phrase,’Great Pan is not dead’, conveys the world that the culture of worshipping “Nature’ gets home in India. The word ‘emigrated’ shows us that this emigrant is neither dead nor has intensions to return to his country. Thus, she makes a point that the culture in India is unique with ‘A Different History’; a history which respects and worships the Nature and the environment around without somebody gives any awareness.
Introducing the word ‘India’, she touches the living values and culture in this country. She tries to conjure the readers into understanding how the people ‘here’ believe in ‘snakes and monkeys as gods’. She
Sujata Bhatt reflects and explores on the ideas of ‘culture, ‘values’, human struggle, religion combined with its beliefs and acquisition of foreign or strange language. Bhatt invites the readers and takes them through the culture of India and its religious beliefs that every life respects them there. There is enough vocabulary to understand this in the poem. She also expresses her bitterness and strong emotions towards the struggle and torture borne by the people ‘here’ in the past. She wonders and ponders on the issues of ‘tongue’ and ‘language’ She shows her amazement and expresses her inability to understand how people ‘here’ learn to love the ‘strange language’ that put to suffer the torture and struggle for identity.
The poem does not have a traditional structure in terms of stanzas or the rhyme scheme in it. The complex ideas of religion, beliefs, values, culture and loving foreign language might be the reasons for composing it with no rhyme and irregular parts. The first 18 lines run in religious and reverential tone but the poet immediately shifts to bitterness and wonder.
The first part begins with an introduction to the Nature god, Great Pan, who assumed to be dead to rest of the world. But Bhatt reminds the world that India welcomed this ‘immigrant’. The phrase,’Great Pan is not dead’, conveys the world that the culture of worshipping “Nature’ gets home in India. The word ‘emigrated’ shows us that this emigrant is neither dead nor has intensions to return to his country. Thus, she makes a point that the culture in India is unique with ‘A Different History’; a history which respects and worships the Nature and the environment around without somebody gives any awareness.
Introducing the word ‘India’, she touches the living values and culture in this country. She tries to conjure the readers into understanding how the people ‘here’ believe in ‘snakes and monkeys as gods’. She