Womanhood in verse
Deepa Gopala Krishnan

"I cannot fold

I got to read Kamala Das in 2003, when I had her poems in my Honours course. Then, I, along with my other classmates, used to literally cringe at the blatant frankness in her poems, wondering, why were such sexually explicit poems included in our syllabus? How could she be one of the most famous writers in Indian English literature?

But, that was just the beginning.

Later, as I re-read her writings in a different light, I was able to understand the sensitivity of her poems. Her poems spoke of love, its betrayal, the consequent anguish and a lonely heart.

This bespoke not just her own needs, but it is also a representation of the desires of those voiceless, restricted women, who are taken for granted, both in household and outside.

In the 1960s, women were not allowed to think about their own needs, be that financial, social or physical needs. Women were not supposed to have any desires. Any woman who defied the social codes was looked down upon.

It was in such a society that Kamala decided to initiate her writings. Being afraid of criticism, she wrote under the nom de plume of ‘Madhavikutty’. ‘Madhava’ being her husband’s name and ‘kutty’ means a child in Malayalam. She wrote about the less privileged, voiceless "young maidservants who got beaten up, 12-year-olds fetching pails of water, who do not even get proper salaries". (In an interview with Suresh Kohli, The Hindu).

Her poems were an exploration of her sense of identity and redefinition her own life. Somewhere, they echoed paradox also. One of her poems, The Invitation, talks of the sea as a lover inviting the protagonist to drown herself in an eternal union. While on one hand, the poem seems to be outright romantic; on the other hand, it seems to have a suicidal tone also. This is the beauty of Kamala Das’s poems. They speak of man’s domination over woman, her emotional bondage and the subsequent betrayal, all simultaneously.

Her poems are very precise, short and like a story have a beginning, middle and an end. There are no jerky pauses — neither in the writing nor in the thought process. The flow typified Kamala Das’s own self — A seeker of truth and love, who in spite of betrayals looked at the brighter side of life. Her poems are honest portrayals of her life, of every woman’s life.

At 42, Kamala Das came out with her autobiography in Malayalam Ente Katha, translated into English as My Story. The book invited a lot of controversies, many not of any literary value. But, in South Asian Fiction Studies, the book became a medium to explore the intensely personal experiences of a woman, including her growth into womanhood, her unsuccessful quest for love in and outside marriage and her "afterlife". It was a paradigm for the way repressive societies fear women’s speaking, writing and other self-defining forms of personal expression.

Kamala Das again became a centre of controversy when, in 1999, she converted to Islam and changed her name to Kamala Suryya. From then onwards the religious imagery that she used changed drastically. The poet who had written "Krishna, I am melting,/ Melting, melting/ Nothing remains/ But you", now wrote "Ya Allah/ I perceive the Prophet’s features, as/ yet unrevealed, on my beloved’s/ mien`85."

Das was a person who never lost the zest for life. She dabbled in painting, fiction, and even politics. In 1984, she floated her party named "Lok Seva Party" to address women’s needs.

Though she failed to win a parliamentary seat in 1984, she proved to be successful as a syndicated columnist. She was even nominated for Nobel Prize for Literature in 1984.

Call her Madhavikutty, Kamala Das or Kamala Surayya, you just can’t "crawl her into coffins of religion", or name or being.

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