Poem: “Voice of the Unwanted Girl” | By Sujata Bhatt

About the Poet

Sujata Bhatt was born in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, and later moved abroad for her education and writing career. She is a graduate of the prestigious Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa, one of the oldest and most respected creative writing programmes in the world, and her achievements as a poet have earned her the reputation of being “one of the finest poets alive today.” Bhatt writes in English but her poetry is deeply rooted in Indian sensibility, often dealing with questions of identity, migration, womanhood, and social injustice. The poem, “Voice of the Unwanted Girl,” is taken from her anthology titled My Mother’s Way of Wearing a Sari. It is written with what critics describe as “rare sensitivity and social concern,” and it directly critiques the practice of patriarchy while demanding a world free of gender discrimination.

Background and Context of the Poem

India, like many other patriarchal societies, has historically witnessed a strong cultural preference for male children over female children. This preference has, in its most extreme and horrifying form, led to the practice of female infanticide (the deliberate killing of a female infant, sometimes even before birth through sex-selective abortion, known as female foeticide). Parents who wish only for sons may, upon learning through medical tests that the unborn or newborn child is a girl, choose to have the child killed, either in the womb or immediately after birth. This is not a matter of ancient history alone; such practices have continued into the modern age despite being illegal, and India has seen a skewed sex ratio because of it.

Sujata Bhatt’s poem is extraordinary because of the technique she uses. She does not describe this horror from the outside, as a narrator or observer might. Instead, she gives voice to the victim herself. The poem is written in the first person, spoken by the girl child who has been killed, addressing her own mother directly. This technique is called a dramatic monologue; a poem in which an imagined speaker (here, the dead infant) talks to a silent listener (here, the mother), and through this speech we understand the speaker’s suffering, emotion, and point of view. By making the victim speak from beyond death, Bhatt achieves a haunting, unforgettable effect; the poem becomes not just a social commentary but an emotional indictment, a direct and personal accusation.

Detailed Explanation of the Poem

The poem opens with the girl addressing her mother plainly, telling her that she is the child who was “sent away” once the doctor revealed her sex. The word “sent away” functions as a euphemism, a softer way of saying “killed”, and this choice of words itself reflects how society avoids naming the brutality of what it does. The girl then states without any softening that an injection was used to kill her, confirming that her death was a deliberate medical act, almost certainly describing sex-selective abortion or termination through an injected chemical; a method that was, and tragically remains, common.

She then recalls, in a strange and moving way, the last sensory impressions she had before dying:

I heard
the traffic rushing outside, the monsoon
slush, the wind sulking through
your beloved Mumbai —

These lines place the poem’s setting in Mumbai, and the ordinary details of city life (traffic, rain, wind) are given to a being who technically should have had no memory or sensory experience at all. This is the poet’s way of humanising the unborn/newborn child. Before she is even allowed to live, Bhatt insists that she already had the capacity to feel and to exist as a person. The girl even imagines,

“I could have clutched the neon blue no one wanted,”

suggesting the city lights she might have reached for had she lived, and subtly equating herself with that unwanted blue light.

The poem’s emotional core intensifies in the next section, where the girl describes how no one wished to touch her; except, later, in the autopsy room (a room where a medical examination of a dead body is carried out to determine the cause of death), because by then her “mouth would not search for anything.” This is a devastating image. Her own mother never touched her with love, yet strangers were willing to touch her body only after death, when there was no risk of her needing anything; no risk of a demanding, living bond. Her head, the poem tells us, was “measured and bent cut apart,” and she compares her own body to “a sliced pomegranate – The fruit you never touched.” The pomegranate is traditionally associated in Indian culture with fertility and the richness of life, yet here the image is turned clinical and violent, cut open on an autopsy table.

The poem then shifts to describe the mother’s behaviour after the killing:

Afterwards, as soon as you could
you put on your grass-green sari —
the orange stems of the parijatak blossoms
glistened in your hair —

The parijatak (also called night-flowering jasmine or coral jasmine) is a fragrant flower in Indian tradition, associated with beauty and festivity. The image of the mother adorning herself with flowers and a beautiful sari immediately after her daughter’s killing is deliberately jarring. It shows how quickly normalcy and even celebration resumed for the family, as though nothing tragic had occurred. The single line that follows, that everyone smiled, is perhaps the most condemning in the poem; the death of a daughter is shown to have been treated not as a loss to be mourned but as a relief, even a cause for quiet rejoicing.

In its final movement, the poem’s tone shifts from sorrowful recollection to urgent, repeated pleading. The girl tells her mother to look for her, explaining that she will not visit her mother in dreams; denying her even that comforting fantasy of ghostly reconciliation that many cultures imagine. She goes further, rejecting every poetic myth that death transforms the dead into something beautiful; she insists she will not become a flower, will not turn into a butterfly, and is not part of anyone’s song. The girl demands to be remembered as exactly what she was, a murdered child, not softened into a pleasant metaphor.

The repetition of the word “Look” across these closing lines functions almost as an invocation or command, forcing the reader (and the imagined mother) to confront what has been done rather than continue looking away, as both the mother and society have been doing. The girl asks her mother to look for “the place where you have sent me” and for “the unspeakable”, the place that can never be described, because the horror of her death is beyond what ordinary language can capture.

In the closing lines, the girl states plainly why she demands this: “this is what you have done,” refusing to let her mother attribute the death to fate. She goes further still, rejecting the common excuse used in patriarchal societies to justify such acts, that, they are somehow destiny or divine will, by stating directly that this is not “God’s will.” This is a crucial line. The poet, through the girl’s voice, insists the death was a human choice and a human crime, never an act of God.

The poem ends with the chemical used to preserve dead bodies, i.e., formaldehyde, a strong-smelling, colourless substance used in laboratories and mortuaries to preserve tissue. The girl’s identity, reduced from a living child to a chemically preserved corpse, is deeply tragic, yet even reduced to this (a smell, a specimen); she still ends with a flicker of longing, saying she still wishes her mother would look for her. This final yearning, even after death and even after open accusation, reveals that beneath the girl’s grief and anger remains a child’s basic, unconditional desire for her mother’s attention and love; which makes the poem’s emotional impact even sharper.

Central Theme and Message

The poem is a searing critique of female infanticide and foeticide, and more broadly of the patriarchal mindset that devalues the birth of girl children in Indian (and many other) societies. Through the device of the dead girl’s own voice, Sujata Bhatt forces readers to feel the horror of this practice from the inside, rather than observing it abstractly as a statistic or a news item. The poem also criticises the silence and denial surrounding this issue. The mother, representing society at large, prefers to move on, to smile, to dress beautifully, rather than confront what has happened. The repeated command “look” is the poet’s demand that society stop looking away from this reality and instead face it honestly, acknowledge responsibility, and reject false comforts such as religious fatalism (“God’s will”) that are often used to excuse such acts.

Significance of the Title

The title “Voice of the Unwanted Girl” is direct and declarative. It tells us exactly what the poem will do. It will give voice (literal, spoken voice), to a girl who was “unwanted” by her own family before she was even born or soon after birth. The word “voice” is significant because victims of such crimes are, in reality, silenced permanently; they have no opportunity to speak, protest, or be heard. By imagining and constructing this voice, the poet restores to the victim the one thing that was taken from her along with her life, the ability to speak and be heard.

Poetic Devices Used

The poem employs several literary devices to achieve its emotional and critical force:

1. Free Verse - The poem does not follow a regular rhyme scheme or fixed metre, which suits its conversational, almost desperate tone, as though the girl is speaking urgently and without poetic formality.
2. Dramatic Monologue - The entire poem is spoken by a single imagined speaker (the dead girl) to a silent listener (the mother), through which her suffering and point of view are revealed.
3. Repetition - The word “look,” used repeatedly in the closing lines, builds a rhythm of insistence and emotional intensity, almost like a chant that refuses to be silenced.
4. Imagery - Sensory details of traffic, monsoon rain, neon light, a green sari, and flowers in the hair contrast sharply with the cold, clinical imagery of the autopsy room, a sliced pomegranate, a body “bent cut apart,” the smell of formaldehyde. This contrast between vibrant life-imagery and cold death-imagery reinforces the central tragedy; a being capable of noticing and loving beauty was denied the chance to live and experience it.
5. Irony - The image of the mother dressing beautifully and everyone smiling right after the killing highlights the family’s emotional disconnect from the horror of what occurred.
6. Tone of Direct Accusation - The tone moves from mournful recollection to direct accusation, making the poem function almost like a trial in which the girl is both witness and prosecutor, and the silent mother is the implicated accused.

Glossary

Question-Answer

Q1. To whom is the “Voice of the Unwanted Girl” addressed?

The poem is addressed directly to the speaker’s mother. The girl, speaking from beyond death, uses the word “Mother” repeatedly throughout the poem, turning it into a personal and intimate accusation rather than a general social commentary. By addressing her mother specifically, rather than society in the abstract, the poet makes the emotional charge of the poem far more powerful and uncomfortable.

Q2. Why was the girl child killed?

The girl child was killed simply because of her gender. The poem tells us that when “the doctor told you I would be a girl,” the parents decided to have her killed through an injection. This reflects the real social practice of female foeticide/infanticide, where a child is destroyed purely on the basis of being female, revealing a preference for sons and neglect of daughters in patriarchal thinking.

Q3. In which city does the infanticide take place?

The infanticide takes place in Mumbai. The poem specifically mentions “the wind sulking through your beloved Mumbai,” placing the setting of the tragedy in this city, even though the practice of female infanticide is not confined to any one place and occurs across much of the country.

Q4. What did the doctor tell the mother that resulted in this decision?

The doctor informed the mother that the unborn/newborn child was a girl (“I would be a girl”). This single piece of information was enough to trigger the decision to kill the child, which shows how deeply entrenched and automatic the preference for sons over daughters was in this family’s mindset; the gender of the child alone, with no other factor, decided her fate.

Q5. What does the killed infant smell of?

The killed infant says she smells of “formaldehyde,” the chemical used in mortuaries and laboratories to preserve dead bodies and tissue samples. This detail is mentioned at the very end of the poem and is deeply tragic, as it shows how the girl’s identity has been reduced from that of a living, feeling child to a mere preserved specimen in an autopsy room.

Q6. Describe the scene in the autopsy room.

In the autopsy room, the girl’s dead body is examined without any tenderness. The poem tells us that people were willing to “touch” her only in this room, and only because they knew her “mouth would not search for anything”, meaning there was no risk of her needing nurturing or love, since she was already dead. Her head is described as being “measured and bent cut apart,” a cold and clinical process. She compares her own appearance to “a sliced pomegranate,” an image that combines the natural redness of blood and seeds with the violence of being cut open. The scene is deliberately presented as the opposite of a mother’s tender touch; it is where strangers finally “touch” her, but only in death, and only out of professional duty, not love.

Q7. How does the “Voice of the Unwanted Girl” question the mother’s conscience?

The poem questions the mother’s conscience by confronting her with the plain truth of what she did, refusing to let her hide behind comforting excuses. The girl directly states, “this is what you have done,” placing the responsibility squarely on the mother rather than on fate or circumstance. She also rejects the excuse of religious fatalism by saying, “this is not ‘God’s will’,” denying the mother the comfort of believing the death was somehow predetermined or beyond her control. By recalling how quickly the mother resumed normal life (putting on a beautiful sari, wearing flowers in her hair, smiling along with everyone else), the poem exposes the mother’s lack of guilt or mourning, and through repeated demands to “look,” forces an imagined reckoning with what has been so easily forgotten or suppressed.

Q8. Why is there a repetition of the word “look” in this poem?

There is repetition of the word “look” throughout the latter half of the poem as both a plea and a command. It functions to force attention onto something that society, represented by the mother, would rather ignore or forget. Each repetition adds urgency and emotional pressure, functioning almost like a chant that will not let the listener (the mother) look away or move on without acknowledgment. It also emphasises the idea that this crime is not just something to feel vaguely sorry about, but something that demands to be actively confronted, named, and never swept aside as unspoken or unspeakable.

Q9. Is there any evidence in the poem to show the mother’s lack of apparent concern at the horror of female infanticide?

Yes, there is clear evidence. Immediately after the killing, the poem states that the mother “put on your grass-green sari” and wore “the orange stems of the parijatak blossoms” in her hair; acts of beautification and normalcy that suggest no visible grief. The line “everyone smiled” afterwards is the strongest evidence of this lack of concern; rather than mourning, the family appears relieved or even pleased. This absence of visible sorrow, contrasted with the girl’s own vivid, aching awareness of her death, strongly conveys the mother’s (even society as a whole) emotional indifference to the loss of a daughter.