Something about Kamala Das' My Story

An autobiography was portrayed as a personal hysteria by Sigmund Freud. Some critics argue that it is actually a healing process. The process of looking back to one's past they say can produce a cathartic effect. For Kamala Das, writing an autobiography was similar to a confession. Something she did when she met death face to face.

       Kamala Das Surraiya born in Kerala on March 31st, 1934 was the daughter of V.M. Nair, a former managing editor of the Malayalam daily ‘Matrubhumi’ and Nalapat Balamani Amma, a renowned Malayali poet. Nalapat Narayana Menon, who was a prominent writer, was her great uncle. Such a literary background influenced her at a very young age.

       She spent most of her childhood at Calcutta and Kerala. At the age of 15 she was married to K. Madhava Das who worked at Reserve Bank of India. At the age of 16, her first son was born.  Her disappointment with life after marriage, displacement to a new city, sexual relationship with her husband and her other lovers and sudden motherhood experience pushed Kamala to write about her inner most feelings. This brought her under the limelight but also dragged her into many controversies. Many issues, stemmed out of the conservative society's urge to attack an upper class Hindu woman, who wrote openly about her sexuality. Her first book of poetry Summer in Calcutta gained her attention since the book handled many common yet unhandled themes of a domestic woman's sexuality and inner self. She wrote in Malayalam and English. Some of her better-known stories include Pakshiyude Manam, Neypayasam, Thanuppu, and Chandana Marangal. She wrote a few novels like the famous Neermathalam Pootha Kalam in Malayalam. It was at 1976; at the age of 42 she penned her autobiography My Story. It is the best selling woman's autobiography in India . It was first published in Malayalam as Ente Katha. It is also available in Hindi as Meri Kahaani. Her works are now available in French, Spanish, Russian, German and Japanese. Her conversion to Islam in 1992 created further controversies; some critics called it to be a part of her histrionics. She died in 2009 where her body was cremated at Palayam Jama Masjid at Thiruvanathapuram with full state honour.

       She has also held positions as Vice chairperson in Kerala Sahitya Akademi, President of the Kerala Children's Film Society and Poetry editor of Illustrated Weekly of India. She won many awards like Ezhuthachchan Puraskaram, Vayalar Award, Sahitya Akademi Award,  Asian Poetry Prize, Kent Award etc.

       She even launched a national political party, Lok Seva Party, aiming asylum to orphaned mothers and promotion of secularism. But she failed in 1984 when she contested for elections.

       Now let's focus on her autobiography My Story. I decided to read the Malayalam version since I felt her emotions would be a bit more raw in her mother tongue. She begins her autobiography with an anecdote of an injured sparrow clinging onto her window pane. Like its blood that spread on the glass she intends to write her autobiography with the blood that gushes out of her body. She believed in the quote of Nietzsche that the only words worth believing are the words written out of the author's blood. She wishes to call it poetry since she feels that calling it a prose would make it loose its charm and musicality of her words. She feels like an orphan though she has everyone; like being alone in a crowd. She says she always felt alone emotionally and spiritually. For her the hospital bed where she is writing her story is her home.  She yearns for love everywhere. She even wishes to kiss her doctor and hug him like a mother. Her desire for love even in such a critical stage is noteworthy. She says she has never met a man who knows how to love properly. When a woman leaves the bedside of her husband to the warmth of another man, she isn't blemished, instead such a situation is a tragedy since the husband couldn't satiate her needs. She is insulted and wounded who needs care and attention. The only time she felt that she wasn't an orphan was when her lover, whom she called "the king" uttered her name in sleep. She creates a parallel universe for her love life to exist. In reality when her lover visited her in hospital bed they didn't act like people who are in love. They were waiting to get out of this situation to go back to their fantasy world.

       She doesn't agree with the notion that you have to be very old to write an auto biography. For her even if you are 30, your life will have a specific beginning, middle and an end and will be complete in its own way. Such a medium allowed Kamala Das to open up much more than that she could do in poetry. She wants to rip her heart out and show it to her readers. She feels she will get the love she searched for, from her audience. Such a feeling of acceptance will bring her the same ecstasy of a traveller who found an oasis in a desert.  She feels she doesn't have much time to live and hence hastily begins her story.

       Though authors mention family and friends in their auto biographies, Kamala Das took extra care to mention about her servants. Such characters are very interesting too. The book is full of surprising and heart wrenching incidents. She mentions that she and her brother were fans of Hitler and Mussolini.  She also talks about racism in her school back in Calcutta and her dissatisfaction with the colour of her skin. One would say Kamala Das was obsessed with human body, male and female. She focused a lot on its shape, colour and size.

       The book is filled with a lot of elements. It includes her joy of staying at Nalapat house and her transition to a village girl; her grief of returning back to Calcutta, relationship with her brother, contempt to the Gandhian ways of her parent's lifestyle, days at the convent school, friendships, early stages of sexual awakening, exposure to lesbian relationships, battle with poverty and depression, attraction to debauchery and debonair characters; first love, death of her grandmother, pregnancy and its complications in village, getting intimate with literature etc. Another element is the matriarchy of her Nair community. Both Kamala and her mother were dragged into the city life of Calcutta and Bombay like dolls from their powerful stature back in Nalapat Home of Kerala. This caused them to be timid which other people mistook for domestic bliss and harmony.  The entire work is filled with conflicts; sex vs. love, modern outlook vs. traditional upbringing, literary creativity vs. biological creativity, morality vs. physical hunger, suicide vs. urge for love and life, literature vs. hysteria , sexuality vs. spirituality, acceptance vs. honesty, monogamy vs. infidelity. It was Das' courage to mix sexuality with feminine identity that infused power into her work. She calls morality an ugly old woman who actually protects the evil. Loving outside the social boundaries for Kamala isn't evil; it's a search for one's true identity. She doesn't believe in principles of morality that is based on a temporal substance like body. She believes only in the cleanliness of the soul that is beyond the grasp of the ugly old hag. In a world where women are taught to be ashamed about their body and sexuality, Kamala thwarts all fetters that bind feminine identity and openly declares her craving for physical intimacy, love and a beautiful naked body. She went to a great extend to satisfy her soul and body; outside legal fetter of marriage, motherhood and biological fetter of illness. Some say that most of the attention, interest and even attacks against her work were not for its literary merit but only for its raw, explicit and tantalising nature of handling sex and love. Even her courage faltered at times when she agreed that some parts of her autobiography are fictitious ,when she drew so mach flack from society.

       As a reader we feel that the present Kamala Das sees the old Kamala as a separate person. She sketches her growth from a small kid to a woman who faces sexual advances from both men and women and possessing an urge to chase any man she finds attractive. Kamala Das admits that her jilted feeling only lasted for weeks for a particular lover and that she moved on quickly. She had so many affairs that one would feel whether some were created out her fantasies. Some men were so holy that they never demanded sex from her. Her suicidal tendencies often brought her in comparison to Sylvia Plath.

       A presentation about her auto biography wouldn't be complete without mentioning her husband K Madhav Das. He was her relative and when they met he used to quote Huxley and Bertrand Russell which faded away eventually. Kamala couldn't accept her husband fully because of various reasons. She knew him personally before getting married as a relative. She expected love from him and he expected lust. According to her, Madhav Das was an insensitive husband who ignored her wishes for love and care. He only approached her when he wanted to fulfil his sexual fantasies. She accuses that like every slim person he too handled things roughly and countered unanswerable questions with exaggerated display of love. At those times he wished to touch her and she mistook touch for love. He supported her literary pursuits very much and didn't end their relationship with a divorce even though he knew about the extra marital affairs. He even mocked the silly love letter Kamala used to receive from her lovers regarding its cheesiness. Kamala expected so much from her husband. She wished to love Lord Krishna that resided within her man. In My Story she writes:

“I had expected him to take me in his arms and stroke my face, my

hair, my hands and whisper loving words. I had expected him to be all

that I wanted my father to be and my mother. I wanted

conversation, companionship and warmth. Sex was far from my thoughts.

I had hoped that he would remove with one sweep of his

benign arms, the loneliness of my life”. (85)

Her frustration with the married life even forced her to think about suicide many times. About the first sexual encounter with her husband she writes:

 “The rape was unsuccessful but he comforted me when I expressed

my fear that I was perhaps not equipped for sexual progress. Perhaps I am

not normal, perhaps I am only a eunuch, I said…. Again and again

throughout that unhappy night he hurt me and all the while the Kathakali

drums throbbed dully against our window and the singers sang of

Damyanti's plight in the jungle”. (90)

She even writes that her husband had sex with maids and had a homosexual affair with a buddy at YMCA. She felt hurt when her husband was upset around their child and showed no interest and care towards the baby either.

Was Kamala dreaming too much? Was she so much dependent on her dream fantasies that she failed to realise reality?

       Kamala Das was accused of being self assertive and self centred. She had unrealistic expectations about love but can one blame her for dreaming and yearning so much for love? Even the lesbian advances made to her by some girls don't evoke any different feeling from her. May be she had to create some of her lovers out imagination to calm down her turbulent mind. The escape routes she searched like alcohol, sex and imagination was the things that kept her back from committing suicide. She admits openly to her readers that she had all the "bad" qualities of a woman: the desire to dress up, admiring good looking men, dependency on security from a man, need to be desired and to enjoy and be arrogant in a public space. She confesses that when she was a kid she silently hated the Gandhi teachings that taught her parents to lead a simple life. At the same time she felt ashamed for being born to such well respected parents.. Kamala Das says

“One’s real world is not what is outside him. It is the immeasurable world

inside him that is real. Only the one, who has decided to travel inwards,

will realize that his route has no end”. (129)

       Her work My Story can be well explained as a narrative of Kamala Das' inner journey. She writes that writing such an autobiography is equal to a strip tease. But it's what beneath her skin, bones and flesh that she wishes to show around. Through this autobiography, she is conversing with herself as well as the future readers.

       Kamala faced death many times; hospitals and doctors were part of her regular life. That's what prompted her begin her story but she still allowed love to reign at the end. She ends her autobiography with a satisfaction of finding a true lover whom she called the king. He was a popular personality in the society and wished to keep their relationship a secret; but Kamala says that she found a true man at last. She says that his love restored her purity and grace. She entered into his room like a bride every single time and  when they kissed it reflected in every single mirror of that room. When we read her poems now we realise that nothing can stand between Kamala and her search for love, not illness, poverty, death or time.