Kamala Das as a Poet
Indian English Literature: - Indian English Literature (IEL) is the body of writers in India who write in English. It is also associated with the works of Indian diaspora who are of Indian descent. It is also known as Indio- Anglian Literature. Poetry is the expression of human life from times eternal. India infact has a long tradition of arts and poetry from ages. Colonialism gave a
new language, English for the expression of Indians. Indian is the third largest English book producing country after U.S.A and U.K. English was known as Christen tongue first in India because they want to spread Christianity. In 1813 Charter Act was passed by the Parliament of U.K. for spreading English as a language by Christian Missionaries. First book, written by an Indian in English is “Travels of Dean Mohamed (1793) by Sake Dean Mohamed. The first Indian play written in English is Krishan Mohan Bannerji’s play “The Persecuted” (1831). The first Indian novel in English is “Rajmohan’s Wife” (1864) by Bankim Chandra Chattopady. Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1809-1831) is considered as first Indian poet in English. The first translator who translate India in to English is Kesari Mohan Gangali who translated Mahabharata in to English. P. Pal is the first person who found the Press in 1950’s for Indian English Writing. The pioneers of Indian writing are: Michael MadusudanDutt, R.K. Narayan, Mulk Ray Anand, Raja Rao etc.
Feminism in the Indian context is by product of the western liberalism in general and feminist thought in particular. The indigenous contributing factors have been the legacy of equality of sexes inherited from the freedom struggle, constitutional rights of women, spread of education and the consequent new awareness among women. In literary terms it precipitates in a search for identity and a quest for the definition of the self. In critical practice, it boils down to scrutinizing empathetically the plight of women characters at the receiving end of human interaction. In the contemporary Indian literary scenario, Kamala Das (1934-2009) occupies a prominent position as a poetess of talent and artistry. She is certainly the most considerable Indian woman poet writing in English today. She, as a major Indian poetess in English, has attracted international attention by virtue of her bold, uninhibited articulation of feminine urges along with other women. She is one of those pioneers in Indian poetry in English who liberated it from outmoded diction and sentiment and from derivative thematic representations. She chalked out a distinctly unconventional mode of relating herself to the Indian milieu. Her poetry is not merely Indian women poets writing but a passionate expression of the universal experience of love, despair, anguish, anxiety, and failure apprehended through a feminine Indian sensibility.
Kamala Das has never striven to be merely Indian in her poetry. Her concern has been the existential anguish and anxiety of humanity as revealed mainly through woman’s relationship with man and the male-dominated society. Her poems are about desire, love and emotional involvement. Her first collected poems created a minor storm when it was released, but won her instant recognition with her uninhibited treatment of sex. Pain, anguish and anxiety are woven into the fabric of her poetry. Her anguished affirmation of independence is available in her autobiography, My Story. Her quest for identity is directly the progeny of an old social set up, oriented towards the total annihilation of the feminine personality. Love and sex are, no doubt, the leitmotif of her poetry but the depth of her distress seems to have left her identity with a certain tincture of pangs. The attempt of this research is to explain the feminist voice through some of her poems in which she has projected a new device to liberate the women from the anguish and anxiety in a male-dominated society. An astounding assertion of individuality of feeling and exceptionality of emotion marks her poetry. As Prof. K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar says she is “aggressively individualistic”. She is essentially “a poet of the modern Indian woman’s ambivalence,” portraying nakedly the Indian life and culture.
My Grandmother's House
by Kamala Das
There is a house now far away where once
I received love……. That woman died,
The house withdrew into silence, 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…you cannot believe, darling,
Can you, that I lived in such a house and
Was proud, and loved…. I who have lost
My way and beg now at strangers' doors to
Receive love, at least in small change?
Introduction
The poem My Grandmother’s House is written by Kamala Das. The poem has been written in the memory of her grandmother with whom she had spent her childhood.
The poet considers those moments to be the best moments of her life and desires to get them. She also mourns their loss.
Kamala Das
My Grandmother’s House by Kamala Das
The poem, My Grandmother’s House, first appeared in Kamala Das’s first anthology of verse titled Summer Time in Calcutta (1965). It is also an autobiographical poem in which the poet’s longing for her parental house in Malabar is movingly described. She is reminded of the ancestral house where she had received immense love and affection from her grandmother.
The poet’s feminine sensibility finds its clearest loveless relationships in it. A note of pessimism runs throughout the action of the poem. It reveals the poet’s painful unfulfilled desire to visit her grandmother’s house to which she is deeply and emotionally attached. The poet is shocked to learn that the house is all in ruin after the death of her grandmother. She suffers in silence due to the wear and tear it has undergone in her absence. A death-like silence reigns in her grandmother’s house.
Moreover, the intensity of her grief is suggestively conveyed by the ellipsis in the form of a few dots in this section of the poem. It was her disenchantment with her loveless marriage which reminded her of her grandmother’s pure and selfless love. Her heart is itself like a dark window where the fresh air does not blow. The image of the house has stuck to her mind. The poet has also used the similes of a brooding dog show her inability to pay a visit to her grandmother’s house. She has also used suggestive visual imagery of ‘blind eyes of the windows’ and ‘the frozen air’ to convey the idea of death and desperation.
My Grandmother’s House” is a constituent poem of Kamala Das’s maiden publication Summer in Calcutta. Though short, the poem wraps within itself an intriguing sense of nostalgia and uprootedness. In her eternal quest for love in such a ‘loveless’ world, the poet remembers her grandmother which surfaces some emotions long forgotten and buried within her-- an ironical expression of her past which is a tragic contrast to her present situation. It is a forcefully moving poem fraught with nostalgia and anguish.
The poet says that there is a house, her grandmother’s home, far away from where she currently resides, where she “received love”. Her grandmother’s home was a place she felt secure and was loved by all. After the death of her grandmother, the poet says that even the House was filled with grief, and accepted the seclusion with resignation. Only dead silence haunted over the House, feeling of desolation wandering throughout. She recollects though she couldn’t read books at that time, yet she had a feeling of snakes moving among them-- a feeling of deadness, horror and repulsion, and this feeling made her blood go cold and turn her face pale like the moon. She often thinks of going back to that Old House, just to peek through the “blind eyes of the windows” which have been dead-shut for years, or just to listen to the “frozen” air.
The poet also shows the ironical contrast between her past and present and says that her present has been so tormenting that even the Darkness of the House that is bathed in Death does not horrify her anymore and it is a rather comforting companion for her in the present state of trials. The poets says that she would gladly (“in wild despair”) pick up a handful of Darkness from the House and bring it back to her home to “lie behind my bedroom door” so that the memories of the Old House and its comforting darkness, a rather ironical expression, might fill assurance and happiness in her present life.
She wraps up the poem saying that it is hard for one to believe that she once lived in such a house and was so loved by all and lived her life with pride. That her world was once filled with happiness is a sharp contrast to her present situation where she is completely devoid of love and pride. She says that in her desperate quest for love, she has lost her way; since she didn’t receive any feelings of love from the people whom she called her own, she now has to knock “at strangers' doors” and beg them for love, if not in substantial amounts, then atleast in small change i.e. in little measure atleast.
The poet has intensified the emotions of nostalgia and anguish by presenting a contrast between her childhood and her grown-up stages. The fullness of the distant and absence and the emptiness of the near and the present give the poem its poignancy. The images of “snakes moving among books”, blood turning “cold like the moon”, “blind eyes of window”, “frozen air”’ evoke a sense of death and despair. The house itself becomes a symbol - an Ednic world, a cradle of love and joy. The escape, the poetic retreat, is in fact, the poet’s own manner of suggesting the hopelessness of her present situation.
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 neighbors 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…
poem, The Stone Age, by Kamala Das has been taken from the collection of poems called The Old Playhouse and Other Poems (1973). The poem shows the relevance of extra-marital relationship in a ruined marital life. It reveals the pathos of the female speaker who is deprived of her individuality and freedom by her lustful husband and dehumanized her beyond limits. She loses all her identity as a female in this life of suffocation and utter neglect.
The poem, The Stone Age, is about the loss of a female’s individuality. Here the speaker, who is a female persona, addresses her husband in a satirical manner. The lady speaker is shown very critical of her husband’s repulsive physical appearances and calls him an ‘old fat spider’ who has built ‘walls of bewilderment’ around her. She charges him for turning her into ‘a bird stone’, /‘a granite dove’. He has built around her a shabby drawing-room and absentmindedly stokes her face while reading. He often disturbs her early morning sleep and directs a finger into her dreaming eye. While day-dreaming, she finds her husband an unwanted intruder into the privacy of her mind, haunted by strong men. They vanish like ‘white suns in the swell of my Dravidian blood’.
The poem, The Stone Age, is about the loss of a female’s individuality. Here the speaker, who is a female persona, addresses her husband in a satirical manner. The lady speaker is shown very critical of her husband’s repulsive physical appearances and calls him an ‘old fat spider’ who has built ‘walls of bewilderment’ around her. She charges him for turning her into ‘a bird stone’, /‘a granite dove’. He has built around her a shabby drawing-room and absentmindedly stokes her face while reading. He often disturbs her early morning sleep and directs a finger into her dreaming eye. While day-dreaming, she finds her husband an unwanted intruder into the privacy of her mind, haunted by strong men. They vanish like ‘white suns in the swell of my Dravidian blood’.
After her husband’s departure, she would leave the house in a battered car along the blue sea. She would climb the ‘forty noisy steps to knock at another’s door’, closely observed by the neighbours while she appeared and disappeared like rain, in search of love. She was asked questions like what he observes in her, why he is called a lion or libertine, the flavour of his mouth and why his ‘hand sway like a hooded snake before it clasps my pubis’. She is further asked why he felled like a tree on her breasts and slept on them. Finally, she is asked why life was short and love shorter still, and what bliss was and its price.
