Question

The quill is the central element of the poem – what does it symbolise?

Answer 1

The quill symbolises a new script. It is symbolic of the transition of a script, the characteristics that a script delivers to its successive script in legacy. Let us have a clearer idea of it by taking the evolution of Dogri's scripts into account. Around the time when the Dogri language developed, it used its native script Sharade, which evolved from the original Brahmi script. Sharade then came to be replaced by Devanagari, used presently. In the poem Mother Tongue, Padma Sachdev bemoans the depreciation of Sharade script. She explains a script's evolution by citing an example of a reed plant.