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

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’”

Symbolic significance of Imtiaz Dharker’s poem “Leaving Fingerprints”

Imtiaz Dharker although spent diasporic life willingly but she never forgot her motherland and always lived in the memories of Indian culture. Her poems show that she was pulled by her motherland again and again. Her poems prove that she was not only emotionally but also physically alienated from her birth place, Pakistan, and adapted country India. This is the reason that she writers most of her poems both about subcontinent India i.e. present Pakistan or India. Her poetry proves that her heart was deeply rooted in Indian culture and society. It also proves that she faced a lot of identical problems in UK and that’s why she felt alienated. Keeping all these things in view, it is very essential to see how Dharker was alienated from great Indian culture, how she felt rootlessness in a foreign country and how she proved herself as a true daughter of subcontinent   India. Her consciousness about Indian society and culture brought her recognization all over the world. Therefore, it seems necessary to appraise her personality based on her poetry in this context.  The story of Dharker’s search for an identity is in agreement with modern culture and demands of modern life which is expressed by her well known book “Leaving Fingerprints (2001).  This book has deeper symbolic significance as is indicated from the title of the book. The title of this book works like a sign board which gives proper direction. So, the focus of this paper will be the about the deeper and symbolic significance of its very title i.e. “Leaving Fingerprints”