Tartan and Turban

A poetry anthology by Bashabi Fraser
Review by Dominic Rai

I was intrigued by the title, Tartan and Turban, when I saw Bashabi Fraser reading from her anthology at the Nehru Centre in London on March 4 2004.

Tartan and Turban is an excellently produced book with an eye-catching cover photograph and a contemporary, sexy title.

Fraser is a very interesting figure. She was born in West Bengal and was involved in the Naxalite left-wing movement in the 1970s.  She is now a distinguished academic at Edinburgh and the Open universities.  She is also one of the few first-generation Indian-Scottish voices who writes in English.  She says English is her language of creative expression. 

She writes: "I went to a very British boarding school (probably more British than schools in Britain) up in the Himalayas, where we weren’t allowed to indulge in the rich vernaculars of the Indian nation (though we did in secret and private conversations). So English remained my sole tool to wield as I pleased, in verse."  Her poetry reflects the fact that there is a big Asian community in Scotland and at least three Singh tartans.

The anthology is in three sections - Daughters of the East, The Same Shell and Tartan and Turban - and includes a wide variety of poems about women, war, and contemporary life.

Tartan and Turban

Give me your tartan
And I will imbue it with
The spirit of my race.
I can defend your borders
As I did the Punjab’s 
In long war-torn days.

I will wear your tartan 
With pride and strength
Of my history and tribe.
I will weave in its pattern
The breadth and length
Of five rivers that subscribed
To my wealth, which I will now
Lend to your tartan
And make it mine – this new 
Singh tartan, willing to
Blend with my Sikh turban 
At my journey’s end.

Another interesting poem is Mine in pain, yours in success.  It is a response to Khalil Gibran’s book The Prophet, where the mother is told ‘Your children are not your children.’

This is the last verse, which echoes her love for her 19-year-old daughter:

And when they strike gold, the world is theirs –
Friends, family, renown and comfort declare
Their ownership of my precious gifts;
My gifts send down roots and branches uplift
To prove that my children have built tomorrow
And my body aches when they are in sorrow
And if they die, the world moves on
But they live in my heart, where they were born.

This lovely poem could well be speaking about second and third generation British Asians. I look forward to hearing their voices very soon. 

Meanwhile, Bashabi’s anthology is a fine read to be savoured.
Tartan and Turban is published by Luath Press Ltd, Edinburgh, March 2004, £8.99.
www.luath.co.uk

Dominic Rai is artistic director of the Mán Melá Theatre Company.

Theatre Centre Anthology

An anthology of plays for young people.

Theatre Centre 
Celebrating 50 years of Theatre Centre

PLAYS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
Volume 1

Introduction by Rosamunde Hutt

A CHALLENGING AND CULTURALLY DIVERSE COLLECTION OF NEW PLAYS BY SOME OF THE UK’S FOREMOST WRITERS.

The Plays

• Listen To Your Parents by Benjamin Zephaniah
  Set against the backdrop of domestic violence, this portrayal of teenage life and ambition is deeply moving.
• Precious by Angela Turvey
  Decisions made at a young age are filtered through bitter adult experience in a tender, beautifully written piece.
• Look At Me by Anna Reynolds
  A highly sophisticated stage technique allows Reynolds to tell the stories of two young women facing exclusion from mainstream education.
• Gorgeous by Anna Furse
  A Victorian girl moves through time and body shapes in an unflinching portrait f self-image and eating disorders in young women.
• Glow by Manjinder Virk
  A pulsating, extrovert debut play about the will to fight for what you want, the desire to have some magic in life and fraught relationships with role models.
• Souls by Roy Williams
  Three brothers from a black British family struggle to connect with each other emotionally in the wake of their mother’s death and under the shadow of their father’s suicide.
  
  Beautifully written and tested in performance, these plays will become essential texts for theatres, schools, colleges and youth centres
  
  Theatre Centre, 50 years as one of the country’s leading producers of new plays for young people.
  

The anthology is published by
Aurora Metro Books and is available to buy from most book shops or from:
CENTRAL BOOKS
99 Wallis Road
London
E9 5LN
Tel: 020 8986 4854
Fax: 020 8533 5821
orders@centralbooks.com