CHENNAI: I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar, I speak three languages, write in Two, dream in one.
Three lines into the poem, An Introduction, you are introduced to the author in her own words. If there’s any context you need to appreciate and embrace the works of Kamala Surayya (formerly Das), it’s this. At a time when contemporaries were few and far apart, or worlds away, here was Kamala writing about everything that had been deemed taboo for women her body, relationships, sexuality, politics, faith and much more. Decades later, even as more and more women find solid ground to pitch their tales, her works continue to remain relevant, be it as an antidote to the silence subjected upon most women in this largely patriarchal populace or as a call to live by one’s own rules in a world that allows for that less and less.
“I was maybe 10 when I first read a short story by Kamala Das Madhavikutty as I had known her then called Neypayasam. It was one of the lessons in my Malayalam textbook. Neypayasam was a tragic tale of a family coping with grief, and it haunted me for days, maybe months, I suspect. Some five years later, I remember reading her autobiography Ente Katha. As someone who had, up until then, spent all her life in an orthodox, Hindu family, I believe Ente Katha played a major role in shifting my fundamental beliefs about love and gender,” reveals Bindu*, now a journalist and writer herself.
I was child, and later they
Told me I grew, for I became tall, my limbs
Swelled and one or two places sprouted hair.
When I asked for love, not knowing what else to ask
For, he drew a youth of sixteen into the
Bedroom and closed the door, He did not beat me
But my sad woman-body felt so beaten.
It was a similar resonance that hit home when poet and fiction writer Meena Kandasamy discovered Kamala in her formative years. Having found her footing through Tonight, This Savage Rite and several other poem collections, Meena terms the work as intimate and powerful. “Kamala Das’ poetry coincided with my own awareness of being a woman, being in a woman’s body, what it is to experience, have conflicting ideas of beauty…. For me, it was very special,” she shares.
You’ll find these themes recur throughout Kamala’s works. While her autobiography Ente Katha (My Story) may get the credit of being the ultimate representation of her writing, there’s much to discover in her many short stories, says Solomon Manoj of Broke Bibliophiles. “The first book (I was introduced to) was Padmavati the Harlot and Other Stories; it’s a collection of short stories she wrote in 1992. To have such a bold title...it took me by surprise,” he recounts.
“They say Kamala Das is erotic. Speaking of Kushwant Singh, they’ll say he writes about life and sex. But, the same thing from Kamala Das is treated like taboo,” says Shalin Maria Lawrence, writer and activist, whose introduction to the late author was this juxtaposition. “Once you get into reading her poetry or columns, you realise that she is writing about her own life instead of intentionally putting it out about yoni and tits. It’s more of a personal, political journey.
After all, a woman’s body is political,” she suggests. Solomon points out that she wrote about these subjects at a time when it was considered taboo. And that is the biggest takeaway for any reader and more so, the current generation of feminists, he says. “We had very few women writers at that point of time and very few wrote about politics the way she wrote.
‘Defining’ is the right way to use for her works, which offer a glimpse of how to express yourself, uninhibited; where you don’t hold back. You feel that it has to be told and you tell it. Considering the time when these books were written on these topics — which can be very common these days, where women don’t hold back talking about sexuality, love or lust. It streamlines these subjects and makes them natural, and not something that has to be hidden,” he points out.
While Kamala’s works may be categorised in the ‘personal is political’ school of literature, she certainly wasn’t limited to that. And that needs as much recognition while returning to her writing, suggests Meena. “I wouldn’t only put Kamala Das within the confessional box; she was also extremely political than anything. When you start looking at someone only as a poet who says nice words and writes very good lines of woes, you stop looking at them as being intrinsically connected to politics and what’s happening in the country. Kamala Das filled this space; even before Arundhati Roy, who is the next person who comes to mind,” she offers.
Dress in sarees, be girl Be wife, they said. Be embroiderer, be cook, Be a quarreller with servants. Fit in. Oh, Belong, cried the categorizers. While Kamala Das may not have identified as a feminist, the nature of her works and the uninhibitedness with which she pursued it makes her a feminist favourite for any period. Bindu concurs. “Kamala Das was shockingly honest and exceptionally vivid. Her radical
take on relationships in a society rooted in patriarchy made her one of the first feminists to influence me,” she says.
Meena talks about graduating to the works of Slyvia Plath and Anne Sexton and finding similarities despite the different cultural contexts they came from. But, as much as she doesn’t think Kamala would
have accepted the word feminist, there’s much to learn from the way she wrote about men, she says. “It was not in spite, there was not any anger; instead, there was absolute pity and understanding. I think the
men came alive in her works, especially her poetry — particularly something like The Looking Glass,” she points out.
Ask Shalin and she says that the very absence of the label makes it feminism. “As far as I’m concerned, feminism is more of understanding the power between the word, your body and your mind. I think Kamala captured this very well. I see her as an icon and I find that men dismiss her even now. So I am not motivated in looking at how successful she was or how she was welcomed but how much she would have stirred the pot or how much she would have disturbed men,” she surmises.
I am sinner,
I am saint. I am the beloved and the
Betrayed. I have no joys that are not yours, no
Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I.
As an introduction to Kamala’s works, Meena suggests you dive into her collection of poems, Solomon points to the number of short stories she has penned and Shalin urges you to hit the autobiography
before all else. Wherever you start, you’ll find little reason to stop. And to find such resonance years after her passing is perhaps yet another reason to celebrate the life and works of Kamala Das aka Kamala Suraiya aka Madhavikutty.
*Name changed.