- - Bharti Nagpal Research Scholar, FET,
Manav Rachna International University, Faridabad Asst. Prof. Echelon Institute
of Technology &
- - Dr. Jyoti Sharma Research Guide &
Asst. Prof. FCH, Manav Rachna International University,Faridabad
Abstract:
A woman covers a bundle of emotions &
relationships that are sometimes with reason or without reason. Kamala Das, a
renowned feminist writer is a master artist in the portrayal of such human
relationships especially in context of a woman in different shades. Her life
& works is the collective repository of a woman’s experience. Kamala Das
has exposed the diverse colors in a woman’s life by subverting patriarchal
stereotypes on one hand and depiction of rejuvenating role of a woman on other
hand that always helped her to wipe away unlimited tears and restored in her
unbeatable strength to face her miserable life. However, Das emerged to be an
unconventional and unorthodox figure in the society but at the same time she
never forgot her moral & traditional values. Thus in spite of her daring
nature, she came out as a responsible woman, a dutiful wife, a concerned
daughter, an emotional grand daughter and a caring mother. The present paper
depicts as how she gave preference to establish an identity equal to that of
man without compromising her feminity as a daughter, granddaughter, wife, and
worshipper and as a devoted mother.
Introduction:
Kamala Das is
undoubtedly the greatest woman poet in the contemporary Indo-Anglian Literature
who has displayed diverse shades of feminity in her works. Kamala Das was born
on 31st March, 1934 at Punayarkulam in the coastal region of Malabar in the
state of Kerala. She was a bilingual writer. Ever since the publication of the
first volume of her poems “Summer in Calcutta” (1965) she has been known for
her bold and undaunted honest expression of various stages of her womanhood and
role of woman in traditional Indian context. Das’s power lies in the
naturalness with which she records and reveals her most intimate experiences
which are very much uncommon in the Indian Society. Her volumes of poem such as
“Summer in Calcutta” (1965), “The Descendents” ( 1967), “The Old
Playhouse”(1973), “The Annamalai Poems”(1988) , “Only the Soul Knows How to
Sing”(1996) and her Last collection “Ya Allah”(2001) , all more or less deal
with her journey of womanliness. The present paper describes her voyage of
femininity at different junctures of her life but with indianess and
traditional touch in her attitude. The present paper shows that though she
revolted against the society but she never dishonored the human values and
tried her level best to give it expression. In fact in her poems she talked
about the feelings and experience of the woman in general.
As a Daughter:
Kamala Das was the
daughter of V.M.Nair, a former managing Editor of the widely circulated Malayam
daily ‘Matrubhumi’ and Nalapat Balamani Amma, a renowned Malayali poetess. As
tender kids Kamala and her younger brother always bore the burden of swarthy
skin and ordinary features. She narrates that her parents never told them that
they were disappointed by the color of their skin but it was evident from their
every gesture. She remembers how her father used to repeatedly shout at them to
drink the purgative and told her grandma to apply turmeric and oil on Kamala’s
skin. She wanted her father’s love and affection but she did not get it the way
she wanted it. She writes in her poem “ Next to Indira Gandhi”:
“Father, I asked you now without fear
Did you want me?
Did you ever want a daughter
Did I disappoint you much
With my skin as much as yours.” (118)
Child’s psychology is much influenced by the parental
behavior and bondage with their kids. It seems that Das’s parents did not
encourage her poetic sensibilities. She remarkably asserts in her autobiography
My Story “I wondered why I was born to Indian parents instead to a white
couple, who may have been proud of my verses……” (9) Kamala Das notes that her
parents were least concerned with what she felt yet she was much influenced by
her mother’s poetic passion and sacred writings. That’s why she started writing
poems at the age of six and each of her poems on her dolls made her sad. Even
then when her mother grew old she developed an intense attachment to her as
evident in her poem “My Mother Sixty Six” This poem was published in 1999. This
poem is the representation of the melancholic feeling of the poet about her
mother old age and approaching death. In this poem she recounts her feeling
towards her mother when she was driving away from her parent’s home to Cochin.
She notices her mother sitting beside her. She minutely observes her face weak
like a dead body. This reminds her agonizingly and painfully that her mother
has grown old and could die one day leaving her alone:
“Driving from my parent’s
Home to Cochin last Friday Morning,
I saw my mother. (Line 1-3)
The stances “Driving away from my parent’s home/Last
Friday,/Morning” suggest that the poetess is leaving her home to Cochin. She
left her parent’s house by Friday morning. The word “Friday’ might indicate
“later part of the week or life” and “Morning” might refer to “new dreams and
new aspirations”. The speaker perception of her mother would entirely be a
fulfilling experience:
“………I saw my mother,
Beside me,
Doze, open mouthed, her face
Ashen like that
Of a corpse and realized with
Pain That she thought away, and
Looked…………….….”. (Line 3-10)
In the above Para the poetess is having a very close glance
at her mother with a possessive and concerned outlook. She is able to view a
very sad state of ageing and the gloom of death that is quite visible on the
mother’s face. Ageing is a natural phenomenon and face reflects it. Similarly
Kamala Das’s mother’s face is reflective of the natural process of ageing. The
poetess in a fast running life pauses for a moment to think intensely about her
mother. She is very close to her mother and the thought of growing old kindles
fear in poet’s heart:
“…………..but after the airport’s
Security check, standing a few yards
Away, I looked again at her, wan
Pale as a late winter’s moon and felt that
Old familiar ache, my childhood’s fear….” (Line 15-19)
Any child feels insecure and becomes vulnerable whenever the
child feels or finds itself separated from the mother. Similarly in this poem
the apprehension of the poetess about her separation from her mother and moving
towards the final & eternal truth worries her as her “old familiar ache”.
After the airport check, the poetess again turns her gaze towards her pallid
mother. It seems as if she is seeing her off to the Death. And then she tells
her mother positively “see you soon” because she wants to see her mother again
in pleasant phase either on earth or in heaven.
As a grand daughter:
Kamala Das was being loved and cared by her grandmother in
her childhood. In the poem “The Grand Mother House” we witness the beautiful
memories of her childhood where she misses her grandmother. At the same time
she feels proud of her grandmother and the love she received from her. She
feels so bigheaded while talking about her grandmother and her house as she
spent some of the happiest days of her life. Das recalls her ancestral home and
her dead grandmother in the poem “My Grandmother’s House” published in 1965 in
her poetic collection Summer in Calcutta. The poem is a reminiscence of the
poet’s grandmother and their ancestral house in Punnayurkulam in Kerala. Her
deepest remembrance of love she received from her grandmother is associated
with the image of ancestral home:
“There is a house now far away
I received love………………..” (32)
The poem starts with a story introducing a house which was
visited long back and it’s too far from the place where the poetess lived. Das
expresses very clearly about the unconditional love which she received from her
grandmother and she is carving for such love which is lost. The poet now lives
at another place but the remembrance of her grandmother’s ancestral house makes
her gloomy and sad. She is almost heartbroken because with the death of her
grandmother the house has become deserted. The poetess affirms that due to the
demise of her grandmother, the silence began to sink in her grandmother house:
“…….………………..That woman died,
The house withdrew into silence………,” (32)
She realizes that she cannot go back to the past but she
wants to go back to the ancestral house which has become desolate where the
snakes crawled among the books. The poetess wants to look through its windows
and catch a handful of darkness to keep as a reminder of her lost happiness.
The poetess is now covered with the intense grief .She hankers for love like a
beggar going from one door to another asking for love at least in small
quantity but her love hunger remains unsatisfied, and there is a big void which
she longs to fill up with love :
“……..…….…………………snakes moved
Among books, I was then too young
To read, and my blood turned cold like the moon
How often I think of going
There, to peer through blind eyes of windows or
Just listen to the frozen air,
Or in wild despair, pick an armful of
Darkness to bring it here to lie
Behind my bedroom door like a brooding dog….” (32)
The image of the window indicates the link between the past
and the present. It highlights the desire of the poetess for the melancholy
mood and her attempt to revive her dreams and desires.
The poetess also implies that the house is like a desert
with snakes and other reptiles crawling over. The air is frozen now, as
contrasted to when the grandmother was alive – the atmosphere was filled with
compassion and love. In the sad mood, she also long to bring in an “armful of
darkness”. This armful of darkness shows her nostalgic state of mind:
“…………………..you cannot believe, darling,
Can you, that I lived in such a house and
Was proud, and loved…………..…………..” (32)
Das is very proud of the unconditional love she received
from her grandmother. The poem shows how much she grieves at the loss of the
person who gave her warmth of empathy and satisfied her to the core. She feels
proud of her grandmother and her house and wants all the others know how
pleasing and satisfying was the atmosphere at the grandmother’s house. Das is
at her best in portraying the picture of her grandmother. In her My Story she
gives a feministic outlook of her grandmother. Kamala Das opined that she was
the great grandmother of the women’s lib who advocated the rights of women
whenever a controversy cropped up and a female oppressed.
As a wife:
According to Kamala
Das, a woman as a wife is an abode of sensual pleasure for men and they employ
all their mannish authority to dominate her. Married to a man of her father’s
age, at the age of 15, Das suffered a tremendous mental pressure to overcome
the constant disrespect because of her husband’s physical desires. Das as a
confessional poet has candidly described how dissatisfied she was due to the
harsh treatment of her husband as he always considered her a plaything and
physical relationship between them had just become a skin communicated thing.
She considered herself a helpless victim of a young man’s carnal hunger. Her
husband successfully used her body and making his bodily juices mingle with
hers. In the following lines Das presents the candid details of the essence of
the womanhood to fulfill the physical and sexual needs of the man and accept
their self-centeredness and domination in her poem “The Looking Glass” from her
poetic collection “The Descendents”:
Gift him all,
Give 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…..” (25)
Her husband did not realize that her physical wishes have
fully been fulfilled but she remained emotionally incomplete and hungry. As
through most of her poems we can understand that her only desire is to get love
from her beloved but instead of love in every man she gets lust as explained in
her poem “The Freaks” from “Only the Soul Knows How to Sing”:
“Who can help us who have lived so long?
And have failed in love?
The heart
An empty cistern, waiting
Through long hours, fills itself
With coiling snakes of silence.” (59)
Instead of waiting for love for long time her heart remains
an empty cistern which is filled with coiling snakes of silence. Women are just
treated as an inanimate object and suffer the loss of freedom especially after
their marriage. As mentioned in the poem “The Stone Age” from her poetic
collection “The Old Playhouse & other poems”:
“You turn me into a bird of stone, granite
Dove, you build round me a shabby room
And stroke my pitted face absent-mindedly while
You read…..” (51)
Here the bird, the symbol of freedom is ironically converted
into a lifeless showpiece which is kept in the room to showcase, which is very
common in Indian society as in case of women who are kept in home as a
showpiece and are denied any type of freedom. She cannot fulfill her desires
& wishes because of her marriage. The same feeling we can find in the
following lines of her poem “The Old Playhouse” from her poetic volume “The Old
Playhouse & the other Poems”:
“You called me wife I was thought to break saccharine into
your
Tea and to offer at the right moment vitamins,
Cowering beneath your monstrous ego. I ate
The magic loaf and became a dwarf……” (01)
Kamala Ds firmly believed that love is the essence of life
for a woman. She longed to receive and to give love. Her dreams about the
marriage, love and home were unfortunately shattered by an insensitive husband
and he made her fall down to earthly realities from her dreamy world. Her
husband always hurt her and evoked a sense of disappointment in her.
As a Worshipper:
When she was craving
for love, she decided to seek it out of her legal orbit. She made up her mind
to move toward another alternative. As she was a bit of conservative and God-
fearing so she tried to brought in the spiritual aspect in her life and in her
poems such as “Radha”, “Ghanshyam”, “Vrindavan” and later on her poetic
collection “Ya- Allah”.
In the essentially tragic drama of selfhood that Das’s
poetic pilgrimage represents, the poet’s union with Krishna is delineated in
her poetry as well as in her autobiography, as a redeeming finale. Depressed
and disgusted by the lustful and self-interested human bondage, the poet finds
herself in a mystical communion with Krishna. For Kamala Das love as skin
communicated thing, seems to be no love at all and only an emotional
fascination in love can do justice. Love has become the pervasive theme in
Das’s poetry and it is through love that she endeavors to discover her identity
and soul. And then later on she drifts towards spirituality in quest of her
ideal love as explained in her autobiography “My Story”:
“Free from that last of human bondage I turned to Krishna. I
felt that the show has ended and the auditorium was empty. Then He came, not
wearing a crown, not wearing make-up but making a quiet entry. What is the role
you are going to play, I asked Him. Your face seems familiar. I am not playing
any role, I am myself, He said. In the old playhouse of my mind, in its echoing
hollowness, His voice was sweet. ” (195)
It is an imaginary and theatrical monologue between the
speaker’s soul and the Almighty. In fact, it is an account of the union of the
limited to the unlimited. Similar kind of contrast between the shadow and real
can be found in Das’s poem “A Man is Season” from her book “Only the Soul Knows
How to Sing”. It shows a fine relationship between the evanescent human lover
and the eternal lover.
“A man is season,
You are the eternity,
To teach me this you let me toss my youth like coins
Into various hands, you let me mate with shadows,
You let me sing in empty shrines……………………” (81)
Krishna is the real lover and human lover is the shadow. Mr.
A.N.Diwedi in his book explains that Das sometimes gives a mythical structure
to her quest for true and ideal love, and identifies it with the Radha-Krishna
myth or with Mira Bai’s abandoning the ties of marriage as she expresses in her
poem “Vrindavan”:
“Vrindavan lives on in every woman’s mind,
And the flute, luring her
From home and her husband.” (116)
In another poem entitled “Radha” from her poetic collection
“The Descendents” she tries to feel some mystical experiences of Lord Krishna,
her divine lover. She writes of herself that the long waiting had made their
bond so pure. She further explains in her poem that she has engulfed herself
with Lord Krishna when she says
“Everything in me
is melting, even the hardness at the core
Krishna; I am melting, melting, melting
Nothing remains but you ….”(15).
In the passion of her relationship with Lord Krishna, the
poet as a literary incarnation of Radha finds herself melted in the body of her
lord. Lord Krishna appears to her in myriad shapes and stays in her
consciousness. She realizes that the relationship with men is temporary but our
eternal relationship is with Almighty God. God can be our divine lover. Kamala
Das realizes that all her worldly lovers are the reflection of her eternal
lover and that is God.
In another poem called “Ghanshyam”, she asserts that
Ghanshyam (another name of Lord Krishna) is her ideal lover who occupies her
heart. All her lovers are the shadows of her real lover which is God. She is
also in intense love with Nature which is another name of Lord Krishna.
The poet also rejects lust in one of her poems called “The
Prisoner”. She tells that deceitful lust is mortal and is of no significance. A
fine comparison has been done between prisoner and the woman involved in the
sexual act. The prisoner is trapped in the jail and the woman is locked with
her lover’s body and wants get away from it. It means woman in this poem finds
herself caught in the prison of desire and sexual hunger and wants to get out
from this trap.The poem also has spiritual meaning that soul is trapped in the
physical boundaries. After sometime, the soul longs to leave the physical
boundary and become free. Kamala Das realizes the difference between perishable
and the imperishable. She says that Krishna is the ultimate reality and the
human lover is just an illusion.
Irshad Gulam Ahmed writes “In Das human ties are seen as
being accidental and confined only to this perishable body and hence
inconsequential. The soul’s union with God is the only kind of bond that is
permanent.” (97). Kamala Das writes of the pains and sufferings, of disappointment
and of fulfillment as well as acknowledging the Almighty God as her real &
ideal lover. Pier Paolo Piciucco in his book opines that trapped in the bitter
relationship with an insensitive male, the poet escapes from the material world
to divinely spiritual world and finds the ultimate solace as explained in the
poem “Request”: “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?
What love was worth in the end ?”(155)
This poem shows the sense of disgust of the bodily union.
This poem is also related to alienation and search of love which is incomplete,
endless and eternal. Contrary to her passion with physicality, she affirms the
need to look beyond the human skin, transcend flesh and hence achieve complete
union with the God.
As a mother:
After the birth of
her first son Das’s life took a new turn. Her complete world seemed to be
revolving around her child. She found a toy to play with. Das herself explained
the experience of child bearing in her autobiography and her poems in a very
candid manner. She called it as one of the major milestones of her life. In her
autobiography she has given a vivid account of her three deliveries in most
effective terms. During her pregnancy her creativity reached at the peak and
she used to sit throughout the night writing poetry. Even post- delivery, the
motherhood brought a great change in Das’s approach towards life. In fact she
shed all the carnal desires and became more inclined towards her kids and
religion. “Jaisurya” is one of the famous poems of Kamala Das on motherhood
which was published in 1967 under the heading of “Only the Soul; Knows How to
Sing”. The theme of this poem is child birth and poet recalls her experience of
giving birth to her first child “Jaisurya”. Here Kamala Das speaks of her
groaning due to the labour pains. It was the time of rain and every “weeping
tree the lush moss spread like eczema”, and from the beneath the muddy earth,
the fat worms emerged. It is noteworthy that imagery used here, is sad and
depressing. It was a “slanting rain” which had begun to fall at the very time
of the first labour pain experienced by Kamala Das to keep company with her. At
that time she neither felt the desire to be loved by her husband and nor the
feeling of lust but what mattered to her most was the child whom she was going
to give birth. When the child emerged from her womb, she felt proud of her son
who has been separated from the darkness:
“Separated from the darkness that was mine,
And in me…………” (71)
Kamala Das felt so happy when she became mother and gave
birth to her first son who had now entered the world of sunshine and
brightness:
“Out of the mire of a moonless night was
He born, Jaisurya, my son…………………..”(71)
Here Kamala Das gives a fine comparison. The son was born in
the same way as explained below:
“Out of the
The wrong is born the right and out of the right
The sun-drenched golden day………………………..” (71)
Similarly in the poem “The White Flowers” the newly born
child is set against the background of ‘war’, ‘bloodshed and despair’. In the
view of Mr. A.N.Diwedi , this poem is a sort of prayer wishing her son a long
life in the face of violence in the outer world. The contrast has been shown
between the White Flowers (symbol of peace) and red of the cherry wine (blood,
& mortality). He writes that there are solitary gestures of heroism in the
poem:
“Today some of us will rise and sing for love
In voices never as
sweet before…………….” (13)
But the glasses are cold like a dead man’s palm and horrible
sobbing tend to suppress the poet’s prayer for the preservation for the child.
Kamala Das in her personal life had three sons - M D Nalapat, Chinnen Das and
Jayasurya Das. Madhav Das Nalapat whom she was so much attached.
CONCLUSION:
Kamala Das ,in her
various literary works, has candidly enumerated the expectations of society
from a woman. Kamala Das was one of the very few Indian English writers who
revolted against the pre established norms of the feminism and female identity.
In most of the works of Kamala Das, woman is the main character and that too in
different shades such as a daughter, granddaughter, wife, and mother but
primarily as the woman who seeks unconditional love and respect in the society
and family. For Kamala Das besides being wrapped in all different roles during
her life it is more important to be a woman and a lover with a body and soul
without disgracing and dishonoring the human values but externalizing the
natural and inner human feelings. Kamala Das strongly feels that woman always
carries the positivity of being a faithful daughter & wife and a loving
mother and she should be gifted with her individual identity and be accepted as
a normal human being.
Works Cited:
1. Ahmed, Irshad Gulam, Kamala Das : The Poetic Pilgrimage,
Creative Books, 2005
2. Bhatnagar, Manmohan Krishna, Indian Writing in English
Atlantic Publishers, 1996.
3. Das Kamala, Frigidity and The Sepia – Tainted
Photographs, Opinions, No-27, 1973.
4. Das Kamala, My Story, Sterling Publishers, 1977.
5. Das Kamala, Only the Soul Knows How to Sing, D.C.Books
kottayam, 1996.
6. Das, Kamala, The Descendents, Writer’s Workshop, 1967
7. Das, Kamala, The Old Play House & other Poems, Orient
Longman 1973.
8. Diwedi, A.N., Kamala Das and Her Poetry, Atlantic Publishers,
2000.
9. Piciucco, Pier Paolo. Kamala Das: A Critical Spectrum,
Atlantic Publishers, 2007.
10. http:/www.wikipedia.org/wiki/kamaladas
11. http:/www.wikipedia.org/wiki/mother poems.
Source: The criterion: Vol. 5, Issue. VI December 2014
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