She is from this Country, Imtiaz Dharker reply through her Poem “They’ll Say, ‘She Must Be From Another Country”

Abstract

Imtiaz Dharker, for the first time introduced a strong personal voice in Indian English poetry as no other woman poet had done earlier. Her themes go beyond the traditionally accepted thought modes and embrace vast hidden areas of experience and complexity of feeling. Her Poetry is not merely Indian like others but a passionate reply of the universal experience of her alienated life. Her concern has been the existential pain of humanity as revealed mainly through woman’s relationship with man and the male-dominated society in which she is thought as a stranger. Dharker writes with frankness and openness unusual in the Indian background but in the view point of West. Most Indian poets in English do not have the candour of Imtiaz Dharker in creativity analysing and evaluating their experience. She exploits the confessional mode in order to expose the country that evokes frustration and disappointment for women and wants to discover the country that will bring joy and happiness for them. The adverse circumstances have rendered her vision tragic and melancholy, her upbringing by Islamic parents, and her marriage firstly with a Hindu man after his death with an English man in order to remove her parental control.  Her dissatisfaction with her ancestral religion and diaspiric life sharpened her consciousness.  She decided to air out her grievances through the poetic medium, by the poem “I speak for the devil” because many unpalatable things can be said in this medium without incurring the wrath of powerful persons. The research paper will focus Dharker’s poem “They’ll Say, ‘She Must Be From Another Counry’”.