One
of the productive leftovers of two hundred years long British rule in India was
an impressive mass of writings in English that could be conveniently described
as "Indo English Literature" or Anglo- Indian Literature. Indian
English literature is noted for its diversity of works from different social,
political and cultural backgrounds. Different states , its numerous cultures and languages enrich Anglo Indian Literature to such a
level that no other country in the world can be proud of such a diversity in their literary
productions. Anglo Indian writing started with Ram Mohan Roy, first great
Anglo-Indian writer of prose. If Ram Mohan Roy was the first Indian to write
English prose with self-confidence and masterly ease, Henry Derozio was the
first of the Anglo-Indian poets. Half Indian, half Portuguese, Derozio was wholly
Indian in spirit and aspired to be India's National bard. Set on roll by Henry Derozio, Anglo Indian Literature, in
general, Anglo Indian poetry in particular gave birth for many canonical
figures like Don Moraes, Nisim Ezekiel, P. Lal, A.K. Ramanujan, Kamala Das and
others contributed to various literary movements and phenomena which emerged
from time to time like romantic poetry , confessional poetry , feminist poetry
etc. Giving an estimate of contemporary Anglo-Indian poetry Amalendu Bose
writes, "As a historical phenomenon, it is engrossingly interesting that since 1947 a great deal of
poetry has been written by Indians in
English; that both in quality and quality, this poetry compares very well with the English poetry that Indians wrote
from the days of Derozio and Kashiprasad
Ghose till 1947; that in both quality and quantity, this poetry perhaps
compares well also with the poetry of quite a few of the current Indian
languages and that this poetry is the expression of certain attitudes and
values believed in by certain sections of today's Indian society, wholly urban
and metropolitan, middle-class, familiar with the Euro-American world either by
direct personal experience as in a derivative manner that claims the validity
of direct experience. This poetry, in respect of its pervasive sense of
direction as much as of it's balance-sheet of achievement, deserves the
attention of the serious student of
Indian
poetry."[1]
Kerala,
the southernmost state of India has the
credit of being the cradle of many eminent Anglo-Indian writers like Arundathi
Roy , Shashi Tharoor, Kamala Das etc… Among the writers Kamala Das, novelist, short-story writer, essayist and memoirist
out-shines the others for carving out
her own niche in world literature. She finds herself among the circle of
confessional poets like Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and
W. D. Snodgrass. Her noted
autobiographical work “My Story” is
often equated with Lowell’s “Life Studies” , a seminal work which brought in the new genre in poetry , popularly known
as “confessional Poetry”.
Kamala
Das: Life Sketch
Kamala Das, the rebel Indian
English poet and the firebrand short story writer is also known as Madhavikutty, the pseudonym she used when
writing in the Malayalam language. She used Ami, the pet name with which she referred to
herself in her memoirs. Much later in life, she gave herself yet another name,
Suraiyya, to mark her conversion to Islam. Straddling many names was one way in
which Das straddled multiple identities
Social Life
Kamala
Das was born with a literary spoon as she was descendent of a well-known literary family. Her mother, Balamani Amma,
was a well-known Malayalam poet and her great-uncle, Nalapat Narayana Menon,
was a writer and translator. Das was home-schooled and most of her education
came through extensive reading. Her childhood was divided between
Punnayurkulam, her ancestral village in Kerala, in the south-west, and the
north-eastern city of Kolkata, where her parents lived. In 1949, when she was
15, she married Madhava Das, a bank official. Her
experiences in different stages of life are clearly reflected in her writings
throughout her life.
In the 1980s she
dabbled in painting and politics. While she attained some acclaim as an artist,
her political career did not take off. She stood unsuccessfully for the Indian
parliament in 1984 and later launched a short-lived political party, Lok Seva
(public service).
In 1999 she took her
final acts of reinvention to convert to
Islam in 1999, a move especially bold because of her aristocratic Nair lineage.On
her decision to convert to Islam, she said “"No one came home when I was a
Hindu. Islam brought me friends and love. Several poor women and children come
to me, they love me and I reciprocate their affections."
In 2009, aged 75, she
died at a hospital in Pune.As per her already written will her body was flown
to her home state of Kerala. She was buried at the Palayam Juma Masjid at
Thiruvanathapuram, Kerala with full state honor.
Writing career
During
her teenage itself, she started writing and publishing. Along with other poets
of her generation like Nisim Ezekiel, A. K Ramanujan, Das was at the forefront
of a new movement in Indian English poetry, a shift in focus from the colonial
experience to the personal. However, unlike most of her contemporaries, she was
actively writing fiction in her mother tongue and English at the same time.
Throughout her writing career, Das would move adroitly between genres (poetry,
fiction, memoir) and languages (English and Malayalam). "I speak three
languages, write in two, dream in one,"[2]
she wrote in An Introduction, a poem from her first collection, Summer in
Calcutta (1965). She tells about her wiring career "I started writing
stories when I was 17. I wrote my first story and sent it to Mathrubhumi. It
was published, and I got Rs. 12 for it, ... I would publish a story every
month. My first story was a love story. I published it under the name of
Madhavi Kutty (Madhavi because I was Madhava's wife, and Kutty because I was
just a child) because I did not want my grandmother to know. And since then
there has been no stopping me. I write about the poor and the disadvantaged.
They are voiceless... little maidservants who get beaten up, little
12-year-olds fetching pails of water, who do not even get proper salaries. I
wrote a story about a child prostitute after visiting a brothel. K.P. Kumaran
has made it into a beautiful film."
She
began to break taboos with her early poetry, in which she celebrated her
sexuality and advised women to
“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 ..."
–
(The Looking Glass, from The Descendants,
1967).
Catapulted
to the limelight with her poetry, Kamala Das won a deep-seated popularity and
recognition as a woman of letters with her autobiographical novel “My Story
About the open- handling of sex, love and lust in her works , once she said
“"If love is a flower, lust is its fragrance. Without love, where is lust
and without lust, can life be created?" Kamala Suraiyya quotes Jayadeva's
Gita Govindam. "I think of Radha and Krishna when I think of love. Life is
all about various dimensions of love."
It is noteworthy about her
literary career that she has won a series of international and national
literary awards like Kent Award for English Writing from Asian Countries , Asian Poetry Prize ,
Kerala Sahitya Academy Award , Ezhuthachan Puraskaram of Kerala government. As a
golden feather to her literary crown, she was Nominated and shortlisted for
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1984.
The spontaneity and
literary out-burst characterize her
writings. In 1984 in an interview with Shobha Wariyar for Eve's Weekly, she
made the following statement: "Yes, I know, yesterday I might have been
against liberation, today I am for it. Tomorrow I do not know what I would say,
and how I feel".
References
1. Kamala Das: “Summer in Calcutta: Fifty Poems” published by
“R. Paul for Kamala Das, Orient Longman, New Delhi,1965.
2. Kamala Das: The Old Play House and other poems, Orient
Longman, New Delhi,1973.
3. Kamala Das: “My Story”,
D C Books Publications , Kerala, 1997.
4. P.P. Raveendran, "Of
Masks and Memories: An Interview with Kamala Das," Indian Literature 155
(May-June 1993)
5. Das, Kamala. “An Introduction.” Nine Indian Women Poets: An
Anthology. Ed. Eunice De Souza. 1997. New Delhi: Oxford U P, 2004.
6. Eunice de Souza, Essay "Kamala Das," in Indian
Poetry in English: A Critical Assessment, ed. V.A. Shahane and M.
Shivaramakrishna (New Delhi: Macmillan, 1980)
7. Pier Paolo Piciucco “Kamala Das: A Critical Spectrum”,
Atlantic Publishers & Dist, New Delhi,
2001
[1]
Amalendu Bose : Contemporary Indo-Anglian Poetry
[2]
“ An Introduction” from “Summer in Calcutta: Fifty Poems” published by “R. Paul
for Kamala Das, 1965
[3]
The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (1995) p. 199
[4]
“ An Introduction” from “Summer in Calcutta: Fifty Poems” published by “R. Paul
for Kamala Das, 1965
[5]“
An Introduction” from “Summer in Calcutta: Fifty Poems” published by “R. Paul
for Kamala Das, 1965
[6]
"The Old
Playhouse" from “The Old Playhouse And Other Poems” by Kamala Das, Pub: Orient
Blackswan, Mumbai, 2004
[7]
Composition” from “The Old Playhouse And
Other Poems” Pub: Orient Blackswan, 2004
[8]
“ An Introduction” from “Summer in Calcutta: Fifty Poems” published by “R. Paul
for Kamala Das, 1965
[9]
My Story : D C Books Publications , New Delhi, 1997
[10]
Page-47, My Story : D C Books Publications , New Delhi, 1997
[11]
Page: 90 , My Story : D C Books Publications , New Delhi, 1997
[12]
Page: 93 , My Story : D C Books Publications , New Delhi, 1997
[13]
P.P. Raveendran, "Of Masks and Memories: An Interview with Kamala
Das," Indian
Literature 155 (May-June 1993)
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