The British poet Daljit Nagra published "Singh Song!" in his award-winning debut collection, Look We Have Coming to Dover! "Singh Song!" is a dramatic monologue told from the perspective of a young British-Indian man, the Singh of the title, who works in his father's corner store. Head over heels in love with his new wife, Singh neglects his duties—much to the frustration of his customers, who deem the store the "worst Indian shop" in the neighborhood. With affectionate humor, the poem shows how young love makes Singh giddy, silly, and more than a little irresponsible. Beneath the humor, the poem also examines the ways in which young immigrants or the children of immigrants may clash with the cultural expectations of their parents' generation.
I manage one of my father's many shops, working all day—from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. My dad would prefer me not to take a break at all, but whenever the shop is empty I lock the door.
That's because my new wife is upstairs. We eat chapatti and chutney together, after making love as though we were rowing in a boat race.
When I go back down to the shop with my apron untied, the customers point at me and complain: "Singh, where have you been? Your lemons and limes are all mixed up, and what you've labeled as bananas are actually plantains! Your shop floor is dirty and needs mopping. This is the worst of all the Indian shops on the whole road."
I can hear my wife's high heels clicking on the ground of the apartment above me. She's up there using the internet, playing with the mouse. When she snags matches on her Sikh lover site, she sets them up for a date for a fee.
Ah, my wife: she swears at my mother using lots of colorful Punjabi words. She stumbles around pretending to be drunk, doing an impression of my dad.
Ah, my wife: she has beady black eyes, like the hole of a gun, and her belly is like a teddy bear's.
Ah, my wife: she has short red hair and wears a sari with a Tartan pattern, a workwear jacket, and high heels. She catches the young girls trying to steal sweets from my shop.
When I go back down to the shop after making love to my wife, the shoppers always point at me and complain: "Singh, where have you been? The milk and the bread have gone bad, and your sale items are out of stock. This is the worst of all the Indian shops on the whole road."
When midnight comes around, and you shoppers are wrapped up in bed—when the concrete outside is cool and quiet—my wife and I sneak downstairs and sit on the shop's silver stool. We look past the chocolate bars and the sale signs in the window, staring at the UK's beaches bathed in bright moonlight.
On the stool each night my wife asks me: how much does that moon cost, baby?
From the stool I reply: it costs half as much as you do, baby.
Then she asks me: how much is that, baby?
And I reply: it's priceless, baby.
"Singh Song" celebrates love's ability to bring joy and passion to life. The speaker is a British-Indian man tasked with running his "daddy's" shop, but who refuses to make his work his top priority; he's far too caught up in the giddy joys of young love for that! With sweetness and humor, the poem depicts how the shopkeeper sidesteps his duties in order to be with his new bride. The poem thus shows how love can make people obsessive, silly, and even irresponsible, gently poking fun at its speaker while also presenting the love that he and his wife share as what really matters.
Singh, the poem's speaker, has a lot of pressure on him: he’s supposed to run his father’s shop from 9:00 in the morning to 9:00 at night without a break. But Singh's head is totally in the clouds—or, more accurately, in the flat upstairs, which he shares with his new bride. That's why, as soon as there is no one in the shop, Singh locks the door and runs upstairs to make "luv." He readily shirks his responsibilities, neglecting the mundane realities of everyday life for the much more exciting prospect of having a "tickle" with his lover.
The speaker’s antics have consequences: the shop is a mess—fruit is mislabelled, bread is stale, milk is expired—and customers are constantly berating Singh for running the “worst Indian shop” around. Young love, this all implies, makes the speaker more than a little absent-minded and irresponsible.
And yet, the poem doesn't judge Singh for the way love distracts him from his duties. In fact, it implies that love is what matters—even if, or perhaps because, it makes people goofy and a bit irrational. Through love, Singh and his wife take a little piece of their lives back for themselves.
At night, Singh and his wife sit in the shop, “behind di chocolate bars,” and look out “past di half-price window signs” at one of England's moonlit beaches. It’s a romantic scene that reflects love’s power to transform the everyday world of work and responsibility into a place of delight and wonder. This, the poem ultimately suggests, is what makes love "priceless."
“Singh Song" is mostly a celebration of young love, but it also subtly explores immigration and assimilation. The poem implies that both the speaker and his wife have either grown up in or at least some of their youth in the UK, and that they combine elements of Indian and British culture in their language, dress, and behavior. At the same time, they butt heads with Singh's parents and with the local Indian community coming into the shop (who deem it the "worst Indian shop" around). The poem thus illustrates how young immigrants (or the children of immigrants) may form hybrid identities that blend their two cultural influences, and also how their assimilation into Western culture can be a source of tension with older generations.
Singh and his father, for example, clearly have very different expectations when it comes to work. Singh's "daddy" is a demanding figure who owns multiple shops and expects his son to work from nine in the morning till nine at night, without even taking a break. While Singh's father seems to represent the stereotypically hardworking immigrant, Singh himself is trying to do the bare minimum so that he can concentrate on what he really cares about: his wife.
Singh also clashes with the customers who expect him to manage a well-organized and tidy store (perhaps of the kind that his father would run). Visitors to the shop are constantly nagging him, telling him his "lemons are limes" or his "bananas are plantains," or that the floor is "dirty." In short, they think he runs the "worst Indian shop" on the whole "Indian road." The poem thus implies that Singh isn't living up to the expectations of the Indian community.
But Singh and his wife have their own way of doing things. As members of a younger generation, they draw on their cultural heritage and on the customs and trends of the country in which they now live (and probably grew up, or at least spent much of their youth). Singh's wife wears both a sari and heels, for example, mixing Indian and Western styles. Her job—running a dating site for Sikhs—also feels distinctly modern (especially considering the long history of arranged marriage in many Indian cultures). She pokes fun at Singh's parents (even swearing at his mother), further suggesting the tension between these two generations.
At the same time, both Singh and his bride eat traditional foods like chapatti and chutney, and the entire poem is written to evoke an Indian accent peppered with English slang like “baby.” With a light touch, then, the poem shows how Singh and his wife have a nuanced relationship with their competing cultural influences—how they can draw on two cultures at once to forge their own, unique identities.
I run just ...
... di lock -
The poem opens with the speaker (the "Singh" of the title) talking about his responsibilities in his father's shop. Right away, readers will notice how the poem's phonetic spellings (things like "ov" and "vunt") evoke an Indian accent. While readers don't yet know that the poem actually takes place in the UK, some context is helpful for understanding what's happening here:
The poem implies that Singh's father is a hardworking man, giving that this store is just "one" of many that he owns and that he expects his son to work 12-hour days without a break.
Readers can also tell a lot about the speaker himself from these lines. For one thing, the word "daddy" makes him seem a bit young and immature. And it's clear that he doesn't really care for his job. Line 2 captures the dull drudgery of running the shop through the diacope (the quick repetition) of "9 O'clock":
from 9 O'clock to 9 O'clock
The repetition of the phrase captures the repetitiveness of Singh's days—getting up early, selling produce, restocking, going to bed, and so on—and sounds that much more boring than something like "for twelve hours." But the speaker also leads a kind of double-life. In line 4, he says:
but ven nobody in, I do di lock -
In other words, once the shop is empty, he closes and locks the door. The caesura, the first real pause in the poem thus far, indicates that something is changing—that there's much more to learn about Singh's life. That is, the locked door signals a transgression between two very different worlds. Readers will see what happens after this door-locking in the next stanza.
cos up di ...
... through Putney -
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... Indian road -
above my head ...
... her price -
my bride ...
... at my daddy
my bride ...
... ov a teddy
my bride ...
... my sweeties -
ven I return ...
... Indian road -
late in di ...
... my silver stool,
from behind di ...
... brightey moon -
from di stool ...
... priceless baby -
In lines 30-33, Singh describes his wife's typical outfit:
she hav a red crew cut
and she wear a Tartan sari
a donkey jacket and some pumps
Her sense of style symbolizes her cultural assimilation—the way she combines her Indian heritage with Western influences. The sari is a traditional Indian garment that uses draped cloth and often has beautiful patterning/coloring. Its usage dates as far back as the fifthth century B.C.E! By wearing it, then, Singh's wife stays in touch with her Indian roots. But this is a sari with a difference—it's made with a Scottish pattern called Tartan (intersecting lines/squares of different colors; think of plaid).
She puts her own twist on tradition, then, in a way that represents her independent spirit and her distinct cultural identity. Her short red hair further contrasts with the long, dark hair many Indian women favor, and she also pairs high heels with a "donkey jacket" (a kind of midlength workwear coat).
Alliteration fills the poem with music, which makes sense given that the title is "Singh Song"! It also works closely with consonance and assonance to create a poem that's simply fun to read aloud.
Some subtle alliteration here is just the result of the poet's choice to evoke an Indian accent (for example, "I do di lock" in line 4). Other moments are more striking, as with "chapatti" and "chutney" in the second stanza. These strong sounds ring out through the lines and suggest the speaker's excitement upon spending time with his new bride.
More alliteration appears as a chorus of disgruntled shoppers complains to Singh that "yor lemons and limes." Beyond simply sounding musical and a bit funny, the shared sounds of these words reflects the fact that the speaker doesn't really care to distinguish between fruits. To Singh, lemons might as well be limes, and vice versa—he's more interested in his wife than produce!
Later, the alliteration of "head high heel" in line 18 draws attention to Singh's wife tapping her feet upstairs, while the sharp /t/ sounds of "tiny eyes ov a gun / and di tummy ov a teddy" add a bit of bite to this description of her. And as the speaker describes sitting in the store at the end of the day, musical alliteration evokes an atmosphere charged with romance and magic. These lines are loaded with shared sounds, as Singh describes how "de precinct is concrete-cool" as he and his wife:
[...] sit on my silver stool
from behind di chocolate bars
vee stare past di half-price window signs
at di beaches ov di UK in di brightey moon —
This intense alliteration signals that the drudgery of the daytime has been dispelled by the power of the young couple's love. The sibilance here also gently evokes the hush of the evening, when the lovers finally get some time all to themselves.
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Get LitCharts A+Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
A thin flatbread popular in India.
"Singh Song!" is a dramatic monologue told from the perspective of a young Indian-British shopkeeper. Apart from that, it doesn't use any established form; instead, it breaks its 58 lines into 13 stanzas of very different lengths. The form is thus unpredictable and perhaps even seems a bit random or disorganized, which evokes its speaker's mindset; Singh is totally giddy with love, to the point that he mislabels fruit and forgets to restock items.
The poem does become more regular in the end, when Singh and his wife go downstairs and stare romantically at the moonlight coast. The shop closed and customers gone, the poem takes on a steadier, calmer tone that is reflected by the couplets that comprise the final eight lines ("from di stool [...] is priceless baby"). The couplets might visually represent the bond between Singh and his wife.
"Singh Song!" is written in free verse, meaning it doesn't have a regular meter. This makes sense, given the poem's casual tone and its speaker's excitement throughout. Singh seems a bit all over the place, neglecting his work duties because of the giddy love he feels towards his wife. The lack of meter here keeps things conversational and natural, while also preventing the language from feeling stiff or stilted.
"Singh Song!" doesn't have a regular, steady rhyme scheme, but it does use lots of rhyme throughout. Having so many unpredictable rhymes reflects the speaker's excited, giddy state of mind.
The first stanza follows an ABCB pattern, where "O'clock" in line 2 rhymes with "lock" in line 4. The assonance and consonance at the end of every line here, however, makes the whole stanza feel musical; note how the "shops," "O'clock," "break," and "lock" all shared at least one consonant or vowel sound.
The next stanza introduces a different pattern, to comic effect:
[...] bride
[...] chapatti
[...] chutney
[...] luv
[...] Putney —
The rhyme between "chutney" and "Putney" rings out clearly, drawing attention to the speaker's silly and happy boast about his lovemaking.
The poem plays with rhyme like this throughout, inserting a new pattern into each stanza. Take lines 18-21, which features two sets of slant rhymes:
[...] ground
[...] mouse
[...] site
[...] price
All these shifting patterns and sounds make the poem feel lively, energetic, and, above all, like a "song."
The poem's speaker is the "Singh" of the title: a young British-Indian man who works in his father's shop. Singh is head over heels in love with his wife, to the point that neglects his work-related duties in order to be with her. The poem implies that, in this way, Singh is very different from his father, who owns multiple shops and expects his son to work a 12-hour shift without a break. Both Singh and his wife have also adopted elements of British culture, peppering their speech with slang like "baby" and wearing a mixture of Western and Indian clothing.
The poem has two distinct settings. First, there is the shop that Singh runs for his father. This seems to be a corner store or small grocery shop of some sort, located near other establishments owned and/or frequented by Indian immigrants (customers describe the shop as being on the "Indian road"). Singh finds the shop dull and doesn't take the best care of it, often mislabelling items, running out of stock, and failing to clean up properly.
The poem alternates between this setting and that of Singh's apartment above the shop, where he lives with his wife. There, his wife works on the internet, and the two make love and eat traditional foods like "chapatti" and "chutney."
These two settings capture the division in Singh's life between work and love, between the responsibilities and expectations of his father/the Indian community and his own personal desires. And only when customers have gone for the day does the shop itself transform into a more welcoming setting for Singh. Late at night, he and his wife go downstairs and stare out at the moonlit coast of the UK. That they look "past" the shop suggests their desire to be free of the responsibilities it entails.
Daljit Nagra is a British poet born in 1966. "Singh Song!" was first published in his debut collection Look We Have Coming to Dover!, which won a 2007 Forward Prize. Nagra is a graduate of Royal Holloway University, where he attended workshops by other prominent contemporary poets, such as Carol Ann Duffy, Jackie Kay, and Pascale Petit.
"Singh Song!" is fairly typical of the book in which it appears. Look We Have Coming to Dover! primarily explores the experiences of second-generation British-Indians who, unlike their parents, were brought up in Britain rather than India. Many of the poems in the book are also dramatic monologues, inventing characters in order to explore and question cultural stereotypes. Some of the other poems in the book are also like "Singh Song!" in that they use "Punglish"—a hybrid mix of English and Punjabi words/phonetic pronuciation (e.g., "ov" for of).
After World War II saw a significant drop in the population of local working-age men, the British government invited people from across the Commonwealth to live and work in the UK. The 1949 Royal Commission on Population stated that immigrants of "good stock" would be welcomed to the country "without reserve." A large number of people subsequently emigrated from the Indian subcontinent during the 1950s and 1960s, including Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims.
Nagra's parents, Sikhs from the Punjabi region, arrived in Britain in the 1950s and owned a shop much like that in this poem in Sheffield, a town in the north of England. The poem implies that Singh is either a second-generation British Indian like Nagra or someone who moved to the UK from India as a young person.
Nagra Reads the Poem — Hear the poem in the poet's own voice.
An Interview with Nagra — Check out an interview with the poet in the British newspaper The Guardian.
Look We Have Coming to Dover! — Watch Nagra read from and discuss his prize-winning debut collection.
The Corner Shop — An article about the kind of shop that Singh runs for his dad.