Women as writers

If we were to look into our past, we’d find that a woman writer was not accepted in male-dominated societies across the world. For centuries, women writers used male pseudonyms while publishing their work. Any form of literary work by women was nipped in the bud. The pen was considered a symbol of masculinity, and a woman was believed to be unfit to use it. A woman’s role was limited to domesticity, marriage and motherhood. After years of fighting for their own rights, women were finally accepted as writers, with certain limitations. Gender constraints and closed minds prevented many women writers from exploring what we in India now call ‘women’s issues’.

When Kamala Das entered the world of Indian literature, things were thankfully not as rigid as they were earlier. She addressed issues through her work that were consigned to the periphery. She had what we might call a combination of boldness, creativity and skill. However, one must beware of the semantic pitfall of focusing on her work only as that of a woman poet, which she had surpassed long before in her exploration of myriad and complex themes. Das began writing at a young age; and one can trace her inspiration to write to Nalapat Narayan Menon, her uncle and a well-known writer. She was influenced by her mother, who was also a writer. In her interviews we often see Das drawing a parallel between her mother and her uncle. She threw light on the fact that being a man meant that one wasn’t caught in the spurn of marriage and the responsibilities that come along with it as women are. Hence, he could devote endless hours to his work and advance his career as a writer.

Life and Work

Kamala Das got married when she was very young, at the age of fifteen, and gave birth to three children. She often recollected her experience of being a mother and said that she was mentally ready to mother only when she had her third child. Often, motherhood signifies that a woman’s career has ended, as other duties take precedence. Re-asserting her strong sense of self, it is only after she became a mother that Das’s career actually took wing.

Personal experiences like becoming a mother at an age when she herself was childlike, the rigid and orthodox surroundings engulfing her and the identity of being a woman stuck in a man’s world—all are impressed into her verse. Her first book, Summer in Calcutta was fresh in terms of its exploration of emotions and relationships, which left many spellbound because a woman writing explicitly about sexuality, love and betrayal was uncommon.

It was hot, so hot, before the eunuchs came
To dance, wide skirts going round and round, cymbals
Richly clashing, and anklets jingling, jingling
Jingling... Beneath the fiery gulmohur, with
Long braids flying, dark eyes flashing, they danced and
They dance, oh, they danced till they bled...

[The Dance of the Eunuchs (Summer in Calcutta)]

She is often remembered for her line, ‘Poetry does not sell in India,’ in an interview she’d once given. She chalked out her career as a columnist, which helped her to earn a livelihood. Kamala Das’s poetry speaks about the experiences she encountered through her bodily functions. For instance, she speaks of the “warm menstrual blood flowing” and “unfulfilled sexual fantasies”. Her brash confessions, coupled with straightforward expression, are a distinctive quality of her poetry. The element of the ‘body’ assumes importance here, but one shouldn’t ignore the feelings trapped within that body. Many critics and academicians who set rigid boundaries are for the most part unlikely to enjoy the emotional overtones in Das’s poetry, which is full of meaning beyond surfaces.

Interestingly, it was her husband who supported her venture into writing. In many of her interviews to the media, Das recollects moments when she used to sit at night, when everyone was fast asleep, and type away after finishing her domestic chores. Her husband, Mr. K. Madhava Das, supported her desire to write and generate an income to keep the family afloat. She gave him credit for most of her writing career.

As a writer in both Malayalam, under the name Madhavikutty, and English, Das’s typical wordplay in English is quite recognizable. Her words are unkempt and have an almost peculiar mode of expression when she writes in English.

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....

[The Stone Age (The Old Playhouse and Other Poems)]

Many critics and readers alike attribute the label ‘feminist’ to Das because the themes she delves into in her poetry concern a woman’s feelings. Interestingly, though, she never associated herself with any school of feminism. Clearly, for a woman who was against being labeled, Kamala Das let her poetry do all the talking. For her the experience of letting go and being with ‘another man’ does not necessarily mean that she is unaware of her moral obligation. On a more humane level, one can connect with the intricacies that bind one human being closer to another—both imperfect and with flaws. The following verse, in many senses, describes the peering eyes of society:

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.
Through peep-holes, the neighbours watch,
they watch me come

[The Stone Age (The Old Playhouse and Other Poems)]

As a reader and also as a poet, I consider it essential for any admirer of Kamala Das’ poetry to read the poem ‘The Looking Glass’from The Descendants. Often ignored as a poem for study by literature students, this poem is a masterpiece in itself. Through her verse she seems to urge women to show men as they really are. Here are some sharp, explicit lines from the poem, using words sparingly:

[The Looking Glass (The Descendants)]

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