Moniza Alvi’s “Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan” is penned in free verse echoing the randomness of her ruminations. Regarding the poem Moniza Alvi says: ” Presents from My Aunts…was one of the first poems I wrote. When I wrote this poem, I hadn’t actually been back to Pakistan. The girl in the poem would be me at about 13. The clothes seem to stick to her in an uncomfortable way, a bit like a kind of false skin, and she thinks things aren’t straightforward for her. I found it was important to write the Pakistan poems because I was getting in touch with my background. And maybe there’s a bit of a message behind the poems about something I went through, that I want to maybe open a few doors if possible.”

The clothes that came as presents from her relatives in Pakistan were indeed symbolic. The flamboyant colours were suggestive of the colourfulness of the tradition. She refers firstly to the ‘peacock-blue colour”. Thus, unconsciously the thirst for the unified India springs up yet gain as she refers again and again to aspects of the same in other poems like “An Unknown Girl”,”The Country at My Shoulder”.etc. She refers to another conspicuous colour “glistening like an orange split open,”  as the culture had blossomed and was ripe and open.…