SUJATA BHATT:

 Sujata Bhatt was born in Ahmedabad, India, in 1956.

 Bhatt's parents are Indian, but when she was twelve her parents moved to the United
States.
 She received her MFA from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, and now
lives in Germany with her husband and daughter. Her husband is a German writer.
 She is the recipient of various awards, including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia)
and the Cholmondeley Award.
 Sujata Bhatt's multicultural perspectives on language, culture, art and history surely
originate in her own life experiences.
 Born in India, with Gujarati as her mother tongue, she has studied in Britain and the USA
(at the famed Iowa Writers Workshop), taught in Canada, travelled widely, and now lives
and works in Germany.
 Her poems have appeared in various journals in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United
States, and Canada.
 Her first collection, Brunizem, moves through the stages and countries of her life, from
India, to North America, to Europe.
 Bhatt's next collection, Monkey Shadows, contains some work of "astonishing
brilliance.”
 In her poetry, Sujata Bhatt uses linguistic variations and multilingual mixings, thereby
employing language as a means to represent cultural identity and difference.
 Many of her poems have love and violence as themes, and explore issues such as
racism and the interaction between Asian, European, and North American culture.
 “A DIFFERENT HISTORY”
Great Pan is not dead;
he simply emigrated
to India.
Here, the gods roam freely,
disguised as snakes or monkeys;
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,
a sin to toss one carelessly
across a room.
You must learn how to turn the pages gently
without disturbing Sarasvati,
without offending the tree
from whose wood the paper was made.
2
Which language
has not been the oppressor’s tongue?
Which language
truly meant to murder someone?
And how does it happen
that after the torture,
after the soul has been cropped
with a long scythe swooping out
of the conqueror’s face –
the unborn grandchildren
grow to love that strange language.
 A DIFFERENT HISTORY BY SUJATA BHATT
INTRODUCTION:
The title relates to the poem in the way that it can be said to be about different histories,
different cultural backgrounds but also about Sujata Bhatt’s own past.
In another context, it could also said to be about history itself, relating to Greek mythology
and Indian religion that is centuries old. There is no regular rhyme scheme and the rhythm
varies.
‘A Different History’ is a poem that tells us about a different language. It also tells how a
change of culture affects the people of a country. This is when a foreign rule forces you to
adapt to their life style, learn their language and inculcate their culture in you. She makes
references to Indian gods and goddesses. This makes the poem appealing as the reader
wants to gain knowledge and learn about Indian culture.
But as you read further it is about learning a new language. She claims that she found it
very hard and had to go through great difficulties in learning the Indian traditional language
and the English language.
She calls this language as a strange language because at that time she was very young.
She refers to this foreign language as an oppressor language. It affects not only the
mother tongue of the people but also changes their culture, way of living and many adapt
to new religion.

ANALYSIS OF THE POEM

‘A Different History’ is in two linked parts: lines 1-18, then lines 19-29. In the first part of the
poem, she concentrates on respect for education and learning. She claims that in Indian
religion every Object is sacred. There is God in trees. You should treat your books as the
goddess of knowledge.

The second part of the poem returns to the idea of a foreign language; all languages, it says,
have once been the language of an invader or an oppressor, but despite this there always
comes a time when younger and newer generations not only speak the oppressor’s
language but they actually come to love it.