The Stone Age
By Kamala Das
Fond husband, ancient settler in the mind,
Old fat spider, weaving webs of bewilderment,
Be kind. You turn me into a bird of stone, a granite
Dove, you build round me a shabby room,
And stroke my pitted face absent-mindedly while
You read. With loud talk you bruise my pre-morning sleep,
You stick a finger into my dreaming eye. And
Yet, on daydreams, strong men cast their shadows, they sink
Like white suns in the swell of my Dravidian blood,
Secretly flow the drains beneath sacred cities.
When you leave, I drive my blue battered car
Along the bluer sea. I run up the forty
Noisy steps to knock at another's door.
Though peep-holes, the neighbours watch,
they watch me come
And go like rain. Ask me, everybody, ask me
What he sees in me, ask me why he is called a lion,
A libertine, ask me why his hand sways like a hooded snake
Before it clasps my pubis. Ask me why like
A great tree, felled, he slumps against my breasts,
And sleeps. Ask me why life is short and love is
Shorter still, ask me what is bliss and what its price....
(From The Old Playhouse and Other Poems)
By Kamala Das
Fond husband, ancient settler in the mind,
Old fat spider, weaving webs of bewilderment,
Be kind. You turn me into a bird of stone, a granite
Dove, you build round me a shabby room,
And stroke my pitted face absent-mindedly while
You read. With loud talk you bruise my pre-morning sleep,
You stick a finger into my dreaming eye. And
Yet, on daydreams, strong men cast their shadows, they sink
Like white suns in the swell of my Dravidian blood,
Secretly flow the drains beneath sacred cities.
When you leave, I drive my blue battered car
Along the bluer sea. I run up the forty
Noisy steps to knock at another's door.
Though peep-holes, the neighbours watch,
they watch me come
And go like rain. Ask me, everybody, ask me
What he sees in me, ask me why he is called a lion,
A libertine, ask me why his hand sways like a hooded snake
Before it clasps my pubis. Ask me why like
A great tree, felled, he slumps against my breasts,
And sleeps. Ask me why life is short and love is
Shorter still, ask me what is bliss and what its price....
(From The Old Playhouse and Other Poems)
The poem titled The Stone Age is not historical, but is mythical and this is but one of the scenes of the Old Theatre, the Old Playhouse and as thus part we our scenes, the scenes of love starting from there. We know it how were it the Stone Age people, how was it their life and living and she as a reader of human psychology, man and mind sees it no change in his behaviour as far as primitive instincts are concerned, animal sensations are. Taking a cue from the gorillas, orangutans, hanumans and moneys, we can feel how has man developed, come of the ages and stages of life undergoing changes, metamorphosis and transformation. It is a story of man-woman relationship, love and sex, dream and desire. What does the self want it from? How the history of our relationship? How the history of love? How our relationship? How our love?
ReplyDeleteThe Old Theatre is the same and the personae too the same. Only the script varies it from play to play. However be the figures and shapes of them, the characters are almost the same. However be we, our emotions are the same, the same primitive emotions. How were Adam and Eve banished from the Garden of Eden?