Dothead

The word in the poem’s title is an ethnic slur for anyone whose religious or cultural heritage entails wearing a bindi, a small circular mark on the forehead. It is offensive because it represents a dismissive and disrespectful attitude toward an ethnic or religious group. It also reveals ignorance about the meaning and value that certain symbols have for members of that group. In the context of the poem, even if the insult is a result of thoughtlessness rather than malice, it would likely have a hurtful effect on both the person at whom it was directed and on anyone else of their cultural background. (For Majmudar’s reasons for using that word in the title, see Cultural Context.)

The poem opens with direct speech, the speaker’s response to a question about his mother. Acknowledging that his mother does wear the bindi, he worries that his friends might misunderstand someone’s remark that the bindi is a “third eye” (Line 2). He does not want them to think that she has a physical abnormality “like / on some Chernobyl baby” (Lines 4-5). (Chernobyl is a place in Ukraine where there was a nuclear power plant disaster in 1986, spreading radioactive gases that caused dozens of immediate deaths and numerous diseases in the survivors and birth deformities in their children.) This “third eye,” the speaker struggles to explain, is not literal but symbolic: “it means” (Line 5), “it’s showing” (Line 6), it is “on the inside” (Line 7); his mother is “marking it” (Line 8). He is trying to say that this symbol stands for something invisible but valuable, like the “X” on a treasure map that stands for the treasure itself (Lines 8-9).

It turns out, however, that he does not actually say any of that because his friends’ attitude flusters him: “Their laughter / had made my mouth go dry” (Lines 11-12). The next few lines reveal the setting for this conversation and clarify how it came about. The boys are at lunch at the school cafeteria right after having a World History class: “that week was India—myths, / caste system, suttee, all the Greatest Hits” (Lines 13-14). The wording suggests that the speaker is frustrated by how this class presented information about Indian culture. The caste system is a historical Indian social structure in which a person’s position in society is determined by birth and almost unchangeable. It relegates the members of the lowest class to the status of “the untouchables,” who are often segregated from higher classes and experience social discrimination. Suttee is an ancient practice in which a widow would throw herself onto her husband’s funeral pyre. These elements of traditional Indian culture, which have become illegal and marginal in contemporary India, are “the Greatest Hits” in American classrooms because they seem shocking and very different from Western customs, especially when taken out of their historical context. The poem’s speaker recognizes that such disconnected snippets of information create a skewed impression of Indian culture and have little to do with his family’s heritage.

The speaker specifies that the other boys at the table are “white kids” (Line 15) and that they were his friends only “as I defined a friend back then” (Line 16). These lines reveal that he recollects this experience from a later, more mature perspective. He now realizes the limits of his friendship with these schoolmates. What follows suggests that at least one reason for his reevaluation of that friendship is the other boys’ dismissive attitude toward cultural difference. When the speaker reveals that his mother does “wear a dot” (Line 17), a classmate smirks and asks disrespectful questions: “She wear it to the shower? And to bed?” (Line 19). For the other boys—all of them with conspicuously Western names: Nick, Todd, Jesse, and Brad—this is an ordinary situation. They eat their lunch and drink chocolate milk while unthinkingly putting their non-white friend on the spot with their sneering curiosity. Because they are teenagers, they are not likely to have strong cultural sensitivity, but their behavior is symptomatic of a broader cultural phenomenon: members of the racial/ethnic/religious majority perceiving diverse customs and beliefs as weird, if not primitive or immoral.

The speaker, himself a teenager, apparently has some awareness of that problem (he might have had similar experiences before) and intuitively refuses to let it pass. Because words have failed him—and they might not mean much to his classmates anyway—he springs into action. Grabbing a packet of ketchup, he squeezes some of it on his finger and makes a circle on his forehead “till the red planet entered the house of war” (Line 25). Playing with astrological language, the speaker signals that his action is not about fooling around and entertaining the other boys. In fact, it is a declaration of his resistance to their passive-aggressive prodding at his heritage. The use of the word “war” and the violent imagery that follows are metaphorical. He does not desire to fight with his classmates or wish them harm, but he might want to embarrass them into examining their behavior by publicly—“for the world to see” (Line 26)—expressing loyalty to his family and his ethnicity.

Fittingly, the final image is taken from Hindu mythology. The speaker imagines that his “third eye” (a symbol of wisdom) “burned those schoolboys in their seats” (Line 27), in the sense that his action would have an impact on them, burning away their thoughtlessness. As a result, “their flesh” would turn into “pale pools where Nataraja cooled his feet” (Lines 28-29). In Hinduism, Nataraja is a manifestation of the great god Shiva, and one of his attributes is to be the destroyer of ignorance. Thus, he is a suitable figure for ending a poem about the harms of cultural ignorance. Learning about Hindu spiritualism—and not only the caste system and burning widows—would benefit people like Nick, Todd, Jesse, and Brad. (For more about Nataraja, see Symbols & Motifs.)