"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."
Here, Bhatt is speaking about the emigrant experience, living somewhere different from your homeland. She expresses the difficulty of this with a metaphor about her mother tongue and her foreign tongue, which both exist at the same time, but cause a sense of conflict with each other. She feels a sense of disillusionment and separation from both languages, making her feel like she is in a state of liminality.
"Every tree is sacred
and it is a sin
to be rude to a book
It is a sin to shove a book aside
with your foot
a sin to slam books down
hard on a table."
In her poem "A Different History," Bhatt explores India's rich history and heritage. Here, she tells us that books are sacred in the culture of her homeland, and for this reason books are also respected and handled carefully as they are made from trees. Overall this is a touching and poetic element of the culture that she shares with us.
"Everywhere you turn there are goats,
some black and lumpy.
Others, with oily mushroom-soft hair,
sticky yellow in Muslim sand
shaded by the mosque."
In her early poetry, Bhatt often describes the place she grew up. She explores aspects of Indian culture and also offers beautiful descriptions of the landscapes and wildlife. Here, she describes the goats who lived nearby in detail.
