This poem is a melancholy reflection on the vanishing of cultural heritage through the loss of the mother tongue, Gujarati. The language barrier creates practical, heartbreaking losses. The author cannot pass down recipes because a key herb has “no English name”.
It is impossible to share the prayers and the history with a new generation. The poem notes that Gujarati “falters” and the words that should have been carried “disappear”. The poem concludes that all that is left in the wake of this cultural erosion is devastating “silence”.
- I can’t sing the folk lullaby
- that used to make me sleep like a baby,
- because those curvy, complex letters
- aren’t in the alphabet I know
- and even that is replaced by emojis.