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.