When I first met her she was Madhavikutty, and for her English readers, Kamala Das. But she had changed to Kamala Surayya when I last met her in 2005. A conversion to Islam was nothing but a shift from Krishna to Allah, from saree to parda.
“I feel very comfortable and safe inside the parda,” she told me once, sitting inside her flat in Ernakulam. The war was on when she and her husband, an employee with the IMF, just landed in Sri Lanka. The attack was mostly on south Indians. As soon as they entered the flat, the security man told them about a murder
in the neighbourhood the previous day. So the only option left was parda. When Kamala came out wearing a parda, even the vegetable vendor said: “They don’t attack Pakitani sisters.
So don’t worry.”
“A writer always changes. And change is a kind of growth. When I professed Islam, some said I was abandoning my tradition. This is purely baseless. Even if I have abandoned a tradition, I have inaugurated a new one. Mine was an evolution,’’ was what she told me about her conversion. But Kerala society didn’t take it that way. Everyone tried to sideline her, they even killed her a number of times when she was alive. As I wrote this, I saw a flash in a famous Malayalam TV channel claiming documents showing that some Hindu organisations had tried to cremate Kamala’s body as per Hindu rites in Pune soon after her death. The channel showed the number of the document through which they sought permission. Like jealous critics and writers, some journalists also troubled her throughout her life. Once Kamala had to ask one reporter to get out of her house because the chap wanted to know how many men she had slept with.
Kamala’s love for literature began at an early age. Her uncle and prominent writer, Nalapat Narayan Menon, influenced her. Kamala was also deeply touched by the poetry of her mother, Nalapat Balamani Amma. She was educated until the age of 15, when she was married to K Madhava Das. It all began with My Story (Ente Katha), Kamala’s controversial autobiography that portrayed extreme personal experiences, including her growth into womanhood, her quest for love and her life in matriarchal rural south India after inheriting her ancestral home.
A poet, short-story writer and novelist, Kamala was shortlisted for the Literature Nobel Prize in 1984, along with Marguerite Yourcenar, Doris Lessing and Nadine Gordimer. Some of her prominent works in Malayalam include Narichirukal Parakumbol, Manasi and Balyakalasmaranakal. Kamala wrote in Malayalam, her mother tongue, as well as in English. Summer in Calcutta, The Descendants, and Only the Soul Knows How to Sing are her collections of poems in English. In 1964, she was awarded the Asian Poetry Prize for her anthology The Sirens; in 1965, she received the Kents Award for Summer in Calcutta; In 1969, her short story, Thanuppu, won the Sahitya Akademi award.
“There is nobody to protect writers in our society. We are tortoises whose shells are removed.” As she told me this, I saw her eyes fill with tears. She was recovering from a stroke that presented her with a wheelchair and a magnifying glass. After her conversion to Islam, Hindus started threatening her. Then it was the turn of the Muslims saying that she was not taking her religion seriously.
“I love travelling,” she said, shifting to the wheelchair. She then talked about the most beautiful cities in the world. “It was fun walking down the roads of New York, Manhattan, Paris, Jamaica, Melbourne and Montreal. Paris is a wonderful city. The roadside cafés are spectacular. Canada is beautiful. In India, I like Delhi…”
As the conversation went on, I noticed her voice breaking. The sound was not coming out properly and most of the time it ended up in whispers. But still she continued: “I can barely walk, but if you put me into water I will swim. I love swimming.”
— mtsaju@yahoo.com