Sahitya Akademi

Kamala Das: The Pity of it

Author(s): R. Raphael
Source: Indian Literature, Vol. 22, No. 3, Aspects of Modern Poetry (May-June 1979), pp. 127137
Published by: Sahitya Akademi
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Kamala

Das:

The

Pity of it

R. Raphael

David

McCutchion

Das, the Indo-English

says that Kamala
in
her poems, the 'origi
poet, uses the technique of free verse
nality' and 'freshness' of which arise out of her personality.
Roger Iredale says that "In many of the poems of Kamala
Das there is an almost violent frankness that expresses itself
as she explores the
through an outspoken use of languages

of the personal relationship." In a review article, K.

Das's poetry deals with a
Ayyappa Panicker says that Kamala
distinctly feminine world, "the intensely domesticated but never
tame or tepid world of man and woman." He goes on to say:
"In poem after poem there emerges the dark sinewy figure of
nuances

femininity complaining of the failure of love: a wild shriek of

despair fills every room until the walls visibly wobble." Many
critics have regarded Kamala Das as a confessional poet because
she "has

always dealt with private humiliations and sufferings

which are the stock themes of confessional poetry." E.V. Rama
Das not
krishnan says that the confessional poetry of Kamala
only avoids cliches of expression but also every trace pf senti
mentality and pathos even when dealing with the most intimate
Her poetry is the outcome of a struggle
personal experiences.
to relate her private experiences with the larger world outside
it is a struggle to maintain her personal identity.
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INDIAN

LITERATURE

poems deal with her own personality. "In her

poems Kamala Das lays bare her hesitations, failures, ignorance,
shame and feelings of guilt since all of them wear the stamp of
her personality. There is no attempt to idealize or glorify any
Kamala

Das's

embra
part of the self. One of her long poems, 'Composition',
ces such diverse moods as passionate attachment, agonizing guilt,
self-ques
nauseating disgust and inhuman bitterness. In'Blood',
tionings and self-assertions intermingle to form the dominant
'In Love', and 'Gino'
confessional tone. "The Old Playhouse',

begin with images of deep involvement in the physical act of love.

But, soon, these poems slip into images of physical rotting, dis
gust and sickness, suggested by the poet's awareness of the
essential futility of her experience," says E.V. Ramakrishnan.
That brings me directly to the problem of my enquiry,
namely, the poetry of Kamala Das derives its value from her
personality. The problem is vaguely stated by I.K. Sharma in
his review of Devindra Kohli's Kamala Das (New Delhi: Arnold
in The Journal of Indian
1975) which appeared
Heinemann,

1, January 1977, pp. 69-70).

Writing in English (Vol. I, No.
book does not give us a
that Kohli's
Sharma complains
of
Kamala Das. The charge is
of
the
sufficient picture
life-story
a serious one inasmuch as an understanding of the private life
of Kamala Das is an absolute necessity for an understanding of
her poetry. However, the task of understanding her life-story is
made simple by Kamala

Das herself in her autobiography.

II
My Story seems to have created some sort of
a sensation among the reading public and the controversy with
the publisher seems to have contributed much to its publicity.
However, anyone who wants to get at the personality of Kamala
Kamala

Das's

should read this little autobiography.

An author is a public possession, and his or her life-story,
when written sincerely, does fill a social as well as aesthetic
Das

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KAMALA

DAS:

THE

PITY

OF IT

function. Besides, critics tell us that the first duty of a good

student of literature is to establish a friendly and personal rela
tionship with the author. I am, therefore, perfectly within the

pale of aesthetic criticism, when I try to find out for myself if

Das has a personality rich, experienced and mellowed
Kamala
to
venture upon an autobiography.
enough
It must be noted that not all can write autobiographies.
Before writing his or her 'story', the autobiographer must have
lived his or her life fully: Every human being leads a twofold
existence: the inner or subjective World of meditation, intros
pection, beliefs and convictions, and the external or objective
or historical
life of adventures structured in a
chronological
order. A genuine autobiography should be much more than a

book of deeds of externalized adventures; it must

Actions and
the world of inner consciousness.
universe
the
have their
within
phenomenal
place
concentrate
also
should
upon
autobiographer

also explore
events taking
use, but an
the personal

or external world as
world, and recognize the phenomenological
as
it
lends
insofar
significance to the
being important only
inner world of emotive r spiritual values.
That means that the autobiographer must have lived his life
according to certain noble principles and ideals. The struggles
and tribulations that such a person encounters in upholding
these principles and the joy and satisfaction connected with their
life worth
achievements alone can make the autobigrapher's
must, therefore, live not only his
reading. The autobiographer
or her private life, but also that of his or her age. My Ex
periment with Truth is the autobiography of a man who lived
'fully and entirely' not only his private life but also the life of
his age: Gandhiji's
mankind
because

Experiment will live as long as humanity lives,

has great fascination for truth; Nirad C.

Chaudhuri's Autobiography of an Unknown Indian tells less about

himself than about the age in which he lives and the historical
forces that made it to be what it is today. Chaudhuri.is so
alive to his social and cultural environments that his Autobio
graphy remains "a refreshing and many-pronged

attack on that

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INDIAN

LITERATURE

nebulous phenomenon called the British Empire in India," says

K. Raghavendra
Rao.
St. Augustine's Confessions is the first completely honest self
analysis in the history of literature. Book XI of the Confessions is
pure philosophy. And Augustine was not always a philosopher:
he was a pleasure-seeking profligate and a lascivious philandrer,
sexually more deviated than Kamala Das. Yet his Confessions
lives, not because he narrates his own vices and sins of the flesh
but because his life was a quest after perfection. For instance,
he sought his salvation in Maaichaeism and then wanted to
establish himself as a rhetorician. Both these he gave up. Finally,
he discovered his real self in Christianity. I am not insinuating
that one can discover one's true self only in Christianity: one
could equally discover one's self in any religion or in any ideo
logy. The important point is to discover one's selfwhich is
as long as one does
neither pure flesh nor pure spiritbecause
not

know

one's

real

self,

one

wallows

in ignorance.

Thus, Cardinal Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua is a pas

sionate defence, by the leader of the Oxford Movement, of the
roads he took in his chequered march towards Truth. It is the
story, once again, of his intellectual development and conver
sion to Catholicism. The Apologia pro Vita Sua "is among the

of the world," says George Sampson.

greatest autobigraphies
W.B. Yeats's autobiography is called A Vision, "and that book
is an attempt to let Western civilization, or the mind of the
race itself, write its own autobiography; at that period in his
life Yeats tried to find in the structure of history the structure
of his own personality," says Daniel Albright in the Preface to

his book The Myth Against Myth.

of these elements find any place in Kamala Das's
None
not the story of the unfolding of a great person
It
is
Story.
ality. There is no element of quest, spiritual or otherwise, no
ideological confrontation. The structure of her Story may be
analogically spoken of as a passage from ignorance of her flesh
to a knowledge of it: at the beginning of her story she felt that
she was incapable of enjoying sex and looks suspiciously at her
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KAMALA

DAS:

THE

PITY

OF

IT

husband who enjoys it. But there soon came a stage when she did
learn to enjoy orgasmic pleasure. And once she learnt that, she
went after quite a number of strong men to satisfy the demand
of her flesh.
Apart from her 'sex-story' there is nothing enduring and
Das's Story. Kamala belongs to the
endearing about Kamala
Nair caste, of which she makes a few pejorative remarks, such
as 'the Nair males are violent in temper' and that they are
crude when sexually aroused. She seems to have not loved any
one, including her parents. She is the type of unhappy soul
who wants the whole world to turn on the axis of her person

ality, and when it refuses, she condemns it. In fact, My Story

is an emotional
outburst of someone
someone
disgruntled,
afraid. "My story is my autobiography which I began writing
during my first serious bout with heart disease. The doctor
thought that writing would detract my mind from the fear of a
sudden death and, besides, there were all the hospital bills to

be taken care of," says Kamala Das in the Preface to her Story.
Once the understanding was reached with the editor of a jour
nal, she wrote her Story rapidly. "I wrote continually, not
merely

to

honour

my

commitment

but

because

wanted

to

empty myself of all the secrets so that I could depart when the
time came, with a scrubbed-out conscience."
And what does she empty herself of so that she could de
part with a scrubbed-out conscience? Surely not her spiritual
con
anxieties, not her religious quest and not her ideological

Instead, she pours out from the cauldron of her

her
sensual longings and frustrations, humiliations
personality
and triumphs. It is not in her to sublimate any of her instinc
tive reactions for any nobler cause. Never does she seem to sit
down for a moment to find out the real cause of her misery. As

frontations.

a result there is no structural growth in her Story. If at all we

find a sense of growth in her Story, it takes the form of her
desire to experiment with sex under the pretext of a liberated
woman.

The editor who published her Story was

quick

to

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perceive

INDIAN

LITERATURE

the predominance of sexual motive in it. He, therefore, calls it a

sizzling, spicy and lovable autobiography, the most sensuous life
story ever written. The word 'sensuous' is ill-chosen: 'sensual'
and 'erotic' would describe the book more appropriately.
The
note of My Story is one of erotic self-pity. And if
her apparently stormy life lacks conviction, the book as a
whole lacks art and proportion.
One reason for Kamala Das's tendency to take shelter in sex
seems to be her unhappy childhood. She 'grew up more or less
neglected'; her mother did not love her father. To her mother,

dominant

her father was a "dark stranger who had come forward to take
her out of the village and its security. She was afraid of her
father and afraid of her uncle, the two men who plotted and
conspired to bring for the first time into the family a bridegroom
who neither belonged to any royal family nor was a Brahmin,"
says Kamala Das.
Kamala
Das is quite unhappy that, though her mother
to
the
royal family, her father was neither a Brahmin
belonged
nor a member of the royal family. She, therefore, says that out

of such an 'arid union' were born her brother and she. Even as
of her swarthy skin and
a child, she was acutely conscious
From
features.
lack of strikingly charming
these, she makes the

most unjust generalization

regarding her parents: "We must
have disappointed our parents a great deal. They did not tell
us so, but in every gesture and in every word it was evident. It
was evident on the days when my father roared at us and
struggled to make us drink the monthly purgative of pure
castor oil."
Das is full of complaints
Kamala
against every body.
Chapter XIX of her Story makes it clear that she not only
misunderstood her parents' motives but also positively disliked
them. Here is an admirable example of how she could make
unconsidered judgments regarding her parents. Usually, children

complain of too much interference from their parents. Once

Kamala Das came home with a heavy heart after a visit to her
teacher's house. Her parents asked nothing about her visit.
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KAMALA

DAS:

THE

PITY

OF

It

they wanted not to interfere with her activities. But

says: "They took us for granted and considered us
mere puppets, moving our limbs according to tugs they gave us.
They did not stop for a moment to think that we had personali
Perhaps
Kamala

ties that were developing independently." I should think that

her parents did not ask her questions about her visit, because
they respected her personality developing independently.
My Story then, is an autobiography, written as if it were a
novel. The book reads like some of the 'real life confessions'. A
cloud of confessions hangs over us these days. Most often, these
feminine confessors burst into a storm of erotic self-pity. Every
woman seems to think that she is a potential Rousseauinnocent
but wronged by a male. But to have Rousseau's
impulse without
his genius is not an enviable position. It was once considered
desirable to learn how to live and how to write before attempt
ing an autobiography. But now every school girl seems to have

her confessions ready in her pillow case. And most often these
feminine confessors do not confess, but only narrate certain
tragic incidents in a raw manner designed rather to shock the
reader and bring some

selves

than

to

ennoble

sort
and

of sympathy
the

fortify

reader's

for their wronged

soul.

An autobiography is an attempt at self-analysis. It is a very

difficult thing to do objectively and honestly, because the
narrator

and

the

object

narrated

are

one

and

the

same.

Honest

self-analysis is difficult, because man lives a threefold life, the

These three
conscious, the unconscious and the subconscious.
that
of
mind
even
a normal
the
are
so
interdependent
layers
of
a
is
not
sure
of
the
motive
action.
Even
particular
person
Rousseau's
Confession is not accepted
by psychologists as a
genuine self-analysis, for although he wants to give us an honest
picture of himself, "throughout the book he retains blind spots
concerning his vanity and his ability to love," says Karen
Horney.
Rousseau
Das.

is very frank in sexual matters, and so is Kamala

But their frankness in sexual matters only shows how

ignorant they were of the other problems

that afflict man.

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Of

INDIAN

LITERATURE

course, I do accept that sex is a very important factor in the deve

lopment of our personalities, and that one must be absolutely
towards it as towards everything else. But I do not
believe that sex is the only important element in human life.
I said that the dominant notes in My Story are sex and
erotic self-pity. This is also true of her short stories. Under the

honest

pretext of giving expression to her intimate experiences, Kamala

Das indulges in pathetic exhibitionism and subtle eroticism. On
account of her sexual frankness, some people have thought her
to
a liberated woman. The truth, however, is that she appears
a prisoner to her own passions and prejudices, and a single
impulse reigns supreme, suppressing right reason, good sense
and delicacy.
I feel that the theme of her autobiography and most of her
poems is the failure to get satisfaction in physical union. Eunice

be

says that the theme of her two collections of poems

entitled Summer in Calcutta (1965) and The Descendants (1967)
De Souza

or rather,

is "love,

the

failure

of love

or

the

of

absence

love."

She feels that Kamala Das treats her theme "with the obsessive
ness of a woman who can realize her being fully only through
love."

For Kamala Das the word 'love' is an euphemism for sex.

In her interview with Atma Ram (New Quest, No. 2, August
Das says that she regards 'The Old
1977, p. 42), Kamala
An Analysis of this poem will
her
best
as
poem.
Playhouse'
show how sex-charged her imagery is:

to hold her
to tame a swallow,
You planned
In the long summer of your love so that she would forget
Not the raw seasons
alone, and the homes left behind, but
her nature, the urge to fly, and the endless
of the sky. It was not to gather knowledge
Of yet another man that I came to you but to learn
Also

Pathways

I was,

What
Lesson
With

and

you gave
my body's

Convulsions.

You

to learn to grow,

by learning,
was

about

response,
dribbled

yourself. You were

its weather, its usual
spittle

Yourself

into every nook

and

My poor

lust with your bitter-sweet

but every
pleased
shallow

into my mouth,

cranny,

you poured

you embalmed
juices-

You

called

me wife.

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KAM AL A DAS:

THE

PITY

OF IT

agree that in the creation of a work of art, the

of the unconscious
plays a decisive role. It often
determines the symbolic thought-structure of the work of art.
Critics

element
And

that there are certain stock symbols

with the genitals. Anything that has the
of acting as a
property of enclosing a space or is capable
receptacle, such as pits, hollows, caves, jars, bottles, boxes,
chests, coffers and pockets, is used as a symbol of the female
sex organ. Thus, in the poem cited above, expressions like
Freud

commonly

tells

us

associated

'shallow convulsions',
'dribble spittle into
'body's response',
into
nook
and cranny', and
my mouth', 'poured yourself
every
all
create
'bitter-sweet juices',
an atmosphere of abnormal sex.
The poem says that she went from man to man in order to
discover herself, hoping that these men would talk only of her.
It is a selfish desire on her part, because the way to self-know
ledge is self-surrender. Ironically enough, she accuses every
one of them of having talked only about themselves.
It is my firm belief that Kamala
narrates her Story

with a
to capture the young. In no other way can I understand
why she narrates so minutely the physical changes of puberty.
It may have been an important stage in the biological develop
view

ment

of

her

personality,

but

it

contributes

nothing

to

her

literary self nor to our understanding of her: "My frock had

I am of the opinion that the
large spots of blood on it. .
passage which starts with this sentence is in poor taste.

poems and short stories are part of her own

never go beyond herself and view things
objectively. She was not able to distinguish between the normal
self and the creative self. Most of her stories, as a result, are
nothing more than a reworking of her autobiography. This is
Kamala

story. She

Das's

could

Man with the Pitted Face'.

very much true of her 'The Young
and short stories
A careful study of her autobiography
not
reveals that her life is motivated
by love, not by sacrifice,
not by sympathy, but by a hunger for power.
Kamala Das is a passionate but careless writer. She wrote
her Story in haste and did not give her imagination sufficient
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INDIAN

LITERATURE

time to crystallize her themes. True, she observed other people's

lives: but she could write only on those, aspects which she lived
and suffered. The world does not matter much, but the world of
her mind does. It is a limited world, a sadly diseased world, the
disease being physical, mental and spiritual. Most of her short
stories, which invariably suffer from stylistic and structural
flaws, deal with some sick women. Sita in 'A Doll for the
the heroine of 'The
Child Prostitute' dies of haemorrage;
Young Man with the Pitted Face' has-undergone two operations
and suffers from cardiac condition when the story opens; the
heroine of 'December'
collapses with a sudden heart attack.
With Kamala Das love is a disease, being mixed with an
overdose of sex. There is no rationality in the sex-tangles of
Alphabet of Lust; the sexual atmosphere of 'Kalyani' is too
fantastic to be true. We never meet with genuine love anywhere
in her writing. The reason may be that Kamala Das never loved
anyone in her life genuinely. There is no tenderness in her,
little sympathy but only an unhealthy pity. She is not able to
present true marital relationship: either the husband or the wife
or both are disloyal to each other. This is true of the heroine of
'A Little Kitten' and Alphabet of Lust. Kamala , Das could
never

unravel

the

mind

of

man

or

a woman.

Her

men

are

contemptible and morally weak; sexually they are always above

average like the hero of 'The Sign of the Lion'. Truth, beauty,
eternal
goodness, justice, love, charity, death, compassionthese
themes have no hold on her. She is a subjective writer not a
romantic transcendentalist. There is no element of the sublime
in her writing but only the ordinary and the contemptuous. .
Kamala Das's writings lack intellectual content and even
intellectual justification. They are the products of uncontrollable
emotions, though she says: "Poets, even the most insignificant
of them, are different from other people. They cannot close
their shops like shopmen and return home. Their shop is their
mind and as long as they carry it with them they feel the
pressures and the torments. A poet's raw material is not stone
or clay; it is her personality."

13$

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KAMALA

DAS."

THE

PITY

OF

IT

Clearly, with Kamala Das, writing is a way of easing herself

of her pent up emotions, a sort of mental purgative. 'Each time
I have wept, the readers have wept with me. Each time I walked
to my lover's house dressed like a bride, my readers have
walked with me.'
Kamala Das's

stories and poems are disguised autobiogra

I
am
certainly not against a writer's making a creative
phies.
of
his
use
personal experiences. But one's marriage is not the
same as one's experience of marriage. The one is a temporal
event while the other is an eternal aspect of human situation.
Thus, one's sufferings are not the same as one's experience of
them. An experience can be an experience only when there is
Kamala
Das's failure to make this distinction has
detachment.
proved to be disastrous to her poetic art.

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