A Request
- Kamala Das
When I die
Do not throw the meat and bones away
But pile them up
And
Let them tell
By their smell
What life was worth
On this earth
In the end.
- Kamala Das
When I die
Do not throw the meat and bones away
But pile them up
And
Let them tell
By their smell
What life was worth
On this earth
In the end.
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ReplyDeleteWhat is her request? What is she requesting? Let us see. What does she want to say? How her words? This body of flesh and bones, how to be done with? What does she want it personally? How has she known it? What worth is it for? When she dies, she forbids to throw it away, but to pile them up for re-telling. Let them tell what it is in life. How is it lived? How did Kamala Das? This is her autobiography. What did life give it to her and what did she get it from it? Was she happy in her life? Or, was not? How was her love? How her body and the tales of it? What did she get it from love? The story of her, how does she say it? But the problem is in it that we just hear her, not the other side of the story.
ReplyDeleteKamala Das as a poetess here reminds us of the story of her life, especially the life a woman and above lll, what is it in the body? How the feminine body? How this body of man?
To read her is to recall the eunuch dances taking the centre space. To read her is to see he frescoes of Ajanta and Ellora and Khajuraho and to go through Vatsyayana's Kamsuttra.
When we read her, the picture of a modern girl with a tulsimala around her neck and into the rudrksha going conjures upon the mind's plane. As a poetess she is Sylvia Path. Neurotic eleemnts can never be denied. Her poetry forms a part of man-woman relationship as it is in D.H.Lawrence. She is sexual and possessive.
As a poetess she seems to be leaning towards, Sambhoga to samadhi. From sex to bliss, is the crux of her poetry. True satisfaction, where does it lie in? The other question is, was she dissatisfied in love? If not, why is this thirst for? There is something of extramarital relationships and sex satisfaction in the poetry of Kamala Das apart from the fictional tributes paid to an emotionally struggling and suffering woman. Love and sex are the main points of her poetry and around it moves the whole story.