Kamala Das A Writer Extraordinary

A Tribute

Kamala Das died in Pune early Sunday on 31 May 2009.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Sunday expressed grief at the demise of eminent poet and author Kamala Das and praised her poems “focusing on womanhood and feminism” for sensitivity. In his condolence message, the prime minister paid glowing tributes to Das, saying her “poems focusing on womanhood and feminism gained her recognition as one of the most noted of modern Indian poets”.

Kamala Das

Kamala Suraiya, better known as Kamala Das, is a well-known female Indian writer writing in English as well as Malayalam, her native language. She is considered one of the outstanding Indian poets writing in English, although her popularity in Kerala is based chiefly on her short stories and autobiography. Her open and honest treatment of female sexuality, free from any sense of guilt, infused her writing with power, but also marked her as an iconoclast in her generation. On 31 May 2009, aged 75, she died at a hospital in Pune, but has earned considerable respect in recent years.

Much of her writing in Malayalam came under the pen name Madhavikkutty. She was born on March 31, 1934 in Malabar in Kerala, India. She is the daughter of V.M. Nair, a former managing editor of the widely-circulated Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi, and Nalappatt Balamani Amma, a renowned Malayali poetess. In 1984, she was short-listed for the Nobel Prize for Literature along with Marguerite Yourcenar, Doris Lessing, and Nadine Gordimer. Kamala Das is probably the first Hindu woman to openly and honestly talk about sexual desires of Indian woman, which made her an iconoclast of her generation. Kamala Das spent her childhood between Calcutta, where her father was employed as a senior officer in the Walford Transport Company that sold Bentleys and Rolls Royce, and the Nalappatt ancestral home at Ponnayoorkulam in south Malabar region. Her husband often played a fatherly role for both Das and her sons. Because of the great age difference between Kamala and her husband, he often encouraged her to associate with people of her own age.

Biography
Recognized as one of India's foremost poets, Kamala Das was born on March 31, 1934 in Malabar in Kerala (Dwivedi 297). Her love of poetry began at an early age through the influence of her great uncle, Nalapat Narayan Menon, a prominent writer. Das remembers watching him "work from morning till night" and thinking that he had "a blissful life" (Warrior interview). Das was also deeply affected by the poetry of her mother, Nalapat Balamani Amma, and the sacred writings kept by the matriarchal community of Nayars (IndiaWorld). She was privately educated until the age of 15 when she was married to K. Madhava Das (IndiaWorld). She was 16 when her first son was born and says that she "was mature enough to be a mother only when my third child was born" (Warrior interview). Her husband often played a fatherly role for both Das and her sons. Because of the great age difference between Kamala and her husband, he often encouraged her to associate with people of her own age. Das says that he was always "very understanding" (Warrior interview).

My Story

My Story by Kamala Das was published in the year 1977. `My story` is a masterwork by Kamala Das. She raised many topics in this book, which are still under cover. She was much ahead of her time and this book is the perfect example of her far sightedness. My Story by Kamala Das is worth reading.

The tone of the autobiography is quite outspoken in nature. As a result the book was drawn into a number of controversies. It presents several details about the author`s life including her strained relationship with her husband. Kamala Das had a natural flair for both Malayalam language and English. The book faced several controversies as it contains some frank discussion from the author about her quest for love inside and outside the marriage. In the book, Kamala Das had written about the then society and its conventional conservativeness. The book was written with a clear vision about her relationships and the various aspects of traditional society. My Story shocked the mainstream Kerala with its candid accounts of her encounters with men. As an artist, her paintings included nude ones. In this piece of work of Kamala Das clearly depicted the intensely personal experiences including her growth into womanhood, her unsuccessful quest for love in and outside marriage, and her living in matriarchal rural South India after inheriting her ancestral home.My Story;  was originally written in Malayalam and later she translated it into English. Later she admitted that much of the autobiography had fictional elements.

Kamala Das ' first book of poetry, Summer In Calcutta was a breath of fresh air in Indian English poetry. She wrote chiefly of love, its betrayal, and the consequent anguish. Ms. Das abandoned the certainties offered by an archaic, and somewhat sterile, aestheticism for an independence of mind and body at a time when Indian poets were still governed by "19th-century diction, sentiment and romanticised love." Her second book of poetry, The descendants was even more explicit.

In MY Story My life had been planned and its course charted by my parents and relatives. ... I would be a middle-class housewife, and walk along the vegetable shops carrying a string bag and wearing faded chappals on my feet. I would beat my thin children...and make them scream out for mercy. I would wash my husband’s cheap underwear and hang it out to dry in the balcony like some kind of national flag, with wifely pride....”

Kamala Das' Poem  "The Looking Glass." Only the Soul Knows How to Sing. Kerala, India: DC Books, (c) 1996, p. 55. This directness of her voice led to comparisons with Marguerite Duras and Sylvia Plath.

The Looking Glass

by Kamala Das

Getting a man to love you is easy
Only be honest about your wants as
Woman. Stand nude before the glass with him
So that he sees himself the stronger one
And believes it so, and you so much more
Softer, younger, lovelier. Admit your
Admiration. Notice the perfection
Of his limbs, his eyes reddening under
The shower, the shy walk across the bathroom floor,
Dropping towels, and the jerky way he
Urinates. All the fond details that make
Him male and your only man. Gift him all,
Gift him what makes you woman, the scent of
Long hair, the musk of sweat between the breasts,
The warm shock of menstrual blood, and all your
Endless female hungers. Oh yes, getting
A man to love is easy, but living
Without him afterwards may have to be
Faced. A living without life when you move
Around, meeting strangers, with your eyes that
Gave up their search, with ears that hear only
His last voice calling out your name and your
Body which once under his touch had gleamed
Like burnished brass, now drab and destitute.

Kamala Das wrote on a diverse range of topics, often disparate- from the story of a poor old servant, about the sexual disposition of upper middle class women living near a metropolitan city or in the middle of the ghetto. Some of her better-known stories include Pakshiyude Manam, Neypayasam, Thanuppu, and Chandana Marangal. She wrote a few novels, out of which Neermathalam Pootha Kalam, which was received favourably by the reading public as well as the critics.