Diasporic elements in Sujata Bhatt’s The One Who Goes Away . How does she express the pain of separation and longing for home?

Diasporic elements in Sujata Bhatt’s The One Who Goes Away . How does she express the pain of separation and longing for home?

Sujata Bhatt’s poem “The One Who Goes Away” is a poignant reflection on the diasporic experience, capturing the emotional, cultural, and psychological dimensions of leaving one’s homeland. The poem begins with the repeated line, “I am the one who always goes away,” emphasizing the speaker’s continuous sense of movement and displacement, which is central to the idea of diaspora. Bhatt portrays the first departure as “the most silent,” showing the inner turmoil and unspoken grief that accompanies leaving familiar surroundings. While physical distance separates the speaker from her homeland, she carries it within her heart, symbolizing the internal preservation of identity, culture, and memory. This reflects a common diasporic experience, where home becomes an internalized, emotional space rather than a physical location.

The poem also explores the tension between tradition and new realities. The ritual of throwing coconuts into the Arabian Sea is contrasted with beggars seizing them, highlighting how cultural practices are interpreted differently in changing contexts, and pointing to the loss and transformation inherent in migration. Bhatt further explores the idea of nostalgia and alienation as the speaker searches for a place where her soul can remain, yet realizes that “I never left home. I carried it away with me,” showing the impossibility of separating personal identity from one’s roots. The imagery of the “deserted beach,” the “in-between darkness,” and the ocean in the bedroom evokes the liminal, in-between spaces that diasporic individuals often inhabit — neither fully belonging to the homeland nor completely at ease in the new environment.

Gradually the poem captures the fluidity of diasporic identity. The speaker’s home is “always changing,” with “windows [that] don’t match” and colors that clash, symbolizing the constant negotiation of selfhood in response to new experiences and surroundings. The diaspora here is not only geographical but also emotional and cultural, as the speaker carries the essence of home within her blood, memory, and consciousness. Bhatt’s work thus highlights the complexities of migration: the longing, the preservation of heritage, the inevitable change, and the resilience of identity in the face of separation from one’s birthplace.

Bhatt expresses the pain of separation mainly through nostalgia, emotional imagery, and the recurring tension between the homeland and the adopted land. The poem suggests that the one who migrates undergoes a deep inner loss, as home becomes a space of memory rather than physical presence. Everyday sights, sounds, and languages of the homeland return repeatedly to the migrant’s mind, reminding them of what has been left behind. Bhatt often uses sensory images—such as the feeling of warmth, the sounds of the mother tongue, the memory of familiar landscapes—to express how strongly the migrant yearns for the old life. This longing creates a sense of emotional exile because the new land never provides the same comfort or sense of belonging. Bhatt also shows how language becomes a site of conflict; the migrant must adopt a foreign language, but the mother tongue remains tied to emotion, childhood, and identity. This tension intensifies the longing for home, as the migrant feels progressively distanced from their cultural roots. By combining memory, emotion, and linguistic conflict, Bhatt beautifully captures the sorrow of uprooting and the deep desire to return to the place that continues to live in the migrant’s heart, even when physically far away.