Kamala Das is one of the best poets in modern-day Indo-Anglian literature. Kamala Das. born in Kerala in 1934. is a bilingual author. She writes in Malayalam. her female parent lingua. under the anonym Madhavikkutty. Her poesy is an geographic expedition of the geographics of her ain head. and the words is an case of such self-exploration. Through images of repulsive force and horror. she brings out the emotional emptiness and asepsis of her married life. and the strength of her wretchedness as a married woman who had to subject to her hubby whom she found abhorrent. and with whom she had no emotional contact at all.
She has won many awards for her work. some of them being the P. E. N. Asian Poetry Prize. Kerala Sahitya Academy Award for fiction. Asiatic World Prize for literature. Kendra Sahitya Academy Award etc. She was short listed for the Nobel Prize along with Marguerite Yourcenar. Doris Lessing and Nadine Gordimer. On 31 May 2009. aged 75. she died at a infirmary in Pune. but has earned considerable regard in recent old ages. Subjects in the Poetry of Kamala Das:
The poesy of Kamala Das is a hunt for the indispensable adult female. and therefore the adult female character of her verse forms plays the assorted functions of unhappy adult female. unhappy married woman. kept woman to lusty work forces. loath nymphomaniac { A adult female with unnatural sexual desires } . soundless Devdasi and love-lord Radha. Kamala Das has besides been called a poet in the confessional manner. The confessional poets deal with emotional experiences which are by and large forbidden.
There is a pitiless soul-searching and a tone of arrant earnestness. E. V. Ramakrishnan justly says. “In her poesy. Kamala has ever dealt with private humiliations and agonies which are the stock subjects of confessional poesy. ” Reminiscent of the Poet’s Ancestral Home: The verse form is a reminiscence { a mental apprehension of the verse form by people } of the poetess’ grandma and their hereditary place at Malabar in Kerala. Her memory of love she received from her grandma is attached with the image of her hereditary place. where she had passed some of the happiest yearss of her life. and where her old grandma had showered her love and fondness. With the decease of her grandma the house withdrew into silence.
When her grandma died. even the house seemed to portion her heartache. which is expressed in a really affecting mode in the phrase “the House withdrew” . The house shortly was crushed by heartache and serpents crawled among books. Her blood became cold like the Moon because there was none to love her the manner she wanted. She understands that she can non repossess the yesteryear but she wants to travel back place. expression one time once more through its Windowss and convey back a smattering of darkness – sad and painful memories. which she would hold made her changeless comrade. to maintain as a reminder of her past felicity.
The poet is unable to continue with her ideas for sometime as is indicated by the eclipsiss points. The poet is now strangled with the strength of heartache. She craves for love like a mendicant traveling from one door to another inquiring for love in little alteration. Her demand for love and credence is non satisfied in matrimony and she goes after aliens for love at least in little measure. But she does non acquire it even in little alteration or coins. Her love-hunger remains unsated. and there is a large nothingness. a space within her. she seeks to make full up with love but to no advantages.
The image of the window is a nexus between the yesteryear and the present. It signifies the desire of the poet for a nostalgic cheep into her past and resurrects her dreams and desires. The Moon is being an emblem of love. The worms on the books seem like serpents at that minute. in comparing to the size of the small miss. The poet besides implies that the abandoned house is like a desert with reptilians creeping over. The poet now longs to ‘peer’ at a house that was one time her ain. She has to glance through the ‘blind eyes’ of the Windowss as the Windowss are for good closed.
The air is frozen now. as compared to when the grandma was alive-the milieus were filled with the heat of empathy. Kamala Das pleads with us to “listen” to the “frozen” air. Neither is the air a ocular medium. nor can aerate do any supplanting because it is “frozen” . In wild desperation. she longs to convey in an “armful of darkness” . First. that it is non a ‘Handful’ but an armful. Second. ‘darkness’ that by and large has negative sunglassess to it. has positive consequence here of a protective shadow. It besides reflects the ‘coziness’ inside the house. This armful of darkness is her kernel of hungering for her yesteryear.
Kamala Das was really proud about her grandma and the love she received. The Ellipsis after the word loved shows how much she grieves at the loss of the individual who unconditionally loved her and satisfied her to the nucleus. She was so positive by the environment. in which she lived. that the loss of it was indigestible. and un-compromisable. She feels so proud of her grandma and the house in such a manner that she wants all the others know how promising and satisfying was the ambiance at her grandmother’s place. The pronoun ‘I’ here is really emphasized and besides melancholy.
Sudden and strong in order to state the universe that no 1 would or could hold come across such an look up toing portion of life the poet had lived and melancholy to allow the readers know that she is a great also-ran and there can be no also-ran like her in the universe. It besides echoes her interior echos that when her grandma was alive she was rich with love and after her death she became belly-up and started imploring at stranger’s door. She dint expect the equal sum of love that she received from her grandma from the society she was in but merely small. Even that small love she was deprived of.
This makes it clear that Kamala’s grandma was a form of unconditioned love. Decision: The poem springs from her ain disenchantment with her outlook of unconditioned love from the one she loves. In the verse form. the image of the hereditary place bases for the strong support and unconditioned love she received from her grandma. The imagination is personal and attractively articulates her predicament in a loveless matrimony. Therefore. the old house was for her a topographic point of symbolic retreat to a universe of artlessness. pureness and simpleness. a topographic point of complete cloud nine and delectation and peace universe where love and felicity are still possible. ”
