WIZCRAFT JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE: VOL.

I: ISSUE: IIII ISSN: 2319-4952 (Print)

043

LOVE, LUST AND FRUSTRATION IN THE POETRY OF KAMALA DAS AND R.

PARTHASARATHY
Sayantan Pal Chowdhury, Assistant Teacher, Siliguri Baradakanta Vidyapith (HS)
Abstract:
Love, the very theme in the poems of Kamala Das and R. Parthasarathy, often leads towards frustration.
In Dass poems her unfulfilled desire for love leads to lust that finds its way in frustration. Her poems deal with
the clear distinction of body and soul. Her soul remains thirsty for love as well as her body for the true
assimilation with her male partner. Though a feminine voice, she prefers submission in the hands of her male
partner in the dark bedroom. She plays with love. But, Parthasarathys love is quite different form that of
Kamala Das. Born in the same year in which Das was born, Parthasarathys love was for his motherland, his
own language and his relations that he lost many years back since his visit to the foreign land. While frustration
comes to Das through her unfulfilled love and thirst for a physical togetherness, it comes to Parthasarathy in
various ways, through love for his country, his language and his past relations. In this paper I have dealt with
this various treatment of love, lust and frustration in the poems of Das and Parthasarathy.
Key-words: Love; lust; frustration; relations; language; family; body; soul; feminine; unfulfilment; colonial
depression.
pointed out: .the subject matter of the women
With the growth of Indian poetry in English
poets was often limited to well-meaning platitudes
the attitude to poetry also changed in the hands of the
about romantic love, which were treated with depth,
Indian poets. From secular it became personal. Love
complexity, interest or even the projection of much
for the omnipotent and omnipresent soul in the poetry
emotion (King, 147). Das began her writing career
of Tagore or Aurobindo is shifted to love for relations
at an early age. Her poems were first published in
and the beloved ones. Everyday experiences or the
P.E.N. edited by Sophia Wadia in 1948. Her poems
memories of the past were revived in the very
mainly deal with her personal experiences, telling a
personal poems. The old familiar faces peeped
tale of the mind of an Indian housewife who sought
through the lines. And as there are remembrances of
love from husband. She writes in her autobiography
the past, nostalgia broods over their poetry. Not only
My Story (1976, reprinted 1977) how the paralyzed
there was the shift and change in the subject matters,
sister of her great-grandmother influenced her in
but there was a huge change in the language also.
writing verse. But when she died, Das missed the
English was much Indianized by the young poets
evenings with her monologues in front of that
who felt the necessity for Indian English or Babu
woman. Born in 1934 she had seen in school the
Angrezi. Most of the poets visited England for
cruelty of the white boys (My Story, p. 2) which
higher studies or to know the then trend of poetry
she protested but with vain attempts. Life was very
there (King, 1) and became acquainted with the
pleasant in her grandmothers house in Malabar
modern trends of contemporary poetry outside India.
where she was treated with love and affection.
Some of them settled abroad, while some of them
There is a house now far away where once
returned India. Instead of the metaphysical conceit
I received love. (My Grandmothers
they are more inclined to the dualism of body and
House, Lines 1-2)
soul. They perfectly mingled emotion with intellect,
though emotion set in the higher position.
But the death of her grandmother brought
Kamala Das and Rajagopal Parthasarathy
another mournful experience to her. In The Suicide
came on the stage of Indian poetry in English at the
she recalls her upbringing there under the shadow of
time when Indian poetry had already changed its
her grandmother.
route from the early to the modern period. Women
I had a house in Malabar
voices were limited to certain themes as King has
And a pale green pond.
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WIZCRAFT JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE: VOL. I: ISSUE: IIII ISSN: 2319-4952 (Print)
.
I swam about and floated,
I lay speckled green and gold
In all the hours of the sun,
Until
My grandmother cried,
Darling, you must stop this bathing now.
You are much too big to play
Naked in the pond. (lines 70-85)
There is a pang for the sudden loss of
girlhood at which Das looked when she was much
older and has learned to look at life from a
kaleidoscopic view. This shift from girlhood to
womanhood was so abrupt that she could have hardly
felt that at the time. Again in An Introduction she
repeats,
.I was a child, and later they
Told me I grew, for I became tall, my limbs
Swelled, and one two places sprouted hair. (lines
23-25)
Personal was the poetry of Parthasarathy
also, but certainly with some difference. He presents
Rough Passage in three different sections, Exile,
Trial and Homecoming that differently contain his
personal experiences. A sense of loss and pain
pervades in his poems. He looks at his past through
holes in a wall (Exile 2, line 1). As a British Council
Scholar at University of Leeds he went to England
during 1963-4. But foreign country could hardly
satisfy his nostalgic feelings for his land. Love for his
motherland, especially the Tamilnadu he left behind
and the past relation lagged him from behind. In
Exile the two cultures of the two nations, India and
Europe, collide. Loss of identity gripped the minds of
the colonized people. Love is more realistic in Trial
while Homecoming deals with the phenomenon of
his return to his home. But love is very different in
Parthasarathy than that we find in Das poems. While
Das celebrates her love, Parthasarathy is silent
enough. In Trial 2 he looks at the past in his albums
where his beloved whom he could not get in his life
as a partner is standing:
Over family album, the other night
I shared your childhood:
The unruly hair silenced by bobpins

044

And ribbons, eyes half-shut

Before the fierce glass,
A ripple of arms round Suneetis neck,
And in the distance, squatting
On fabulous haunches
Of all things, the Taj. (Trial 2, line 1)
In My Story Das confesses how early
relations she had (as she tells her love relationships in
My Story, chapter 21) before her marriage, how she
got involved in a silent affair with the eighteen-year
old boy of one of the family friends who came to visit
them. At the age of fifteen she was married to a
cousin with whom she had hardly a mental affection
and who was much older than she. Though it was an
unmatched marriage in respect of the age difference
between the two, Das started to love the man who
supposed to introduce the essence of the word love
and to redeem her from her inner loneliness. She was
nothing but a housewife who did all her duties, and at
night fulfilled her husbands lustful love. In many of
her poems she has said about this love and its failure.
In The Suicide she wrote,
I want to be simple
I want to be loved
And
If love is not to be had,
I want to be dead, just dead. (lines 51-55)
But it is the realization of quite mature
Kamala Das, not the words of a girl of only fifteen.
In An Introduction she universalizes her
experience of a newly married girl who got nothing
but an epiphany when she tried to find out love:
.Dont cry embarrassingly loud when
Jilted in love, I met a man, loved him. Call
Him not by any name, he is every man
Who wants a woman, just as I am every
Woman who seeks love. In me the hungry haste
Of rivers, in me the oceans tireless
Waiting.( 49-55)
Jilted in love she spent many years with
the man till his death and whom she missed till her
death not because of his love, but because he inspired
her to continue her writing even after doing her
household chores, feeding him and caring the
children. In India where it was very tough for a

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WIZCRAFT JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE: VOL. I: ISSUE: IIII ISSN: 2319-4952 (Print)
woman to continue her job after her marriage, Das
was quite blessed that her husband took pride in her
writing and so she got the opportunity to continue her
writing. When she asks,
Who are you, I ask each and everyone,
The answer is, it is I. Anywhere and
Everywhere, I see the one who calls himself
I (An Introduction, 55-57),
this is the Hegelian I, a legal being, for which it is
more concrete than the real existence of the person.
The I is everyman who seeks love in the form of
body. But if body is only welcomed, where should
the soul go? The struggle between the body and the
soul is prevalent in many of Dass poems.
In Parthasarathy body merges with soul to
create a concrete being. There was a merger of body
and soul, not separation. His love is not limited to a
person of body and soul; rather, his love is deeper
when it is for his motherland. He is more nostalgic,
and his nostalgia leads him to be personal. He felt for
the need of being in his country when he was in
Exile:
There is something to be said for exile:
You learn roots are deep.
That language is a tree, loses colour
Under another sky. (Exile 2, lines 9-12)
Out of his utter disgust and with a sense of
failure he dislikes spending his youth whoring after
English gods (Exile 2, line 7-8). And so, after
whoring after English gods (ibid.) throughout his
whole life, he felt his indomitable urge for coming
back to his motherland. He wanted to give quality to
the other half (Exile 8, line 25). In Homecoming
14 he writes:
I return home, tired,
My face pressed against the window
Of expectation. (lines 4-6)
Coming home back his past memories were
revived. Old familiar faces of his father, his beloved
Sundari and some friends and relatives crowded over
the family album.
Over the family-album, the other night,
I shared your childhood.. (Trial 2, lines 1-2)
Bruce King summarizes the Trial section
as: The Trial section expresses the attempt to

045

overcome feelings of exile through love and the new

responsibilities that began with marriage (King,
240). Here, love is more towards his past relations,
the fleeting images, than the love for his motherland.
He has overcome somehow the sense of loss that he
felt in exile. Body comes closer. Touch brings the
body into focus (Trial 7, line 8). But union is hardly
possible. King comments, In contrast to the union in
love there are words no more than ripples/ in the
deep well of the throat (King, 240). In Trial 1 he
grieves, Love, I havent the key
To unlock His gates. (lines 10-11)
Frustration broods over his night sky. Night
is the time on which he set his poems. It is night
alone helps/ to achieve a lucid exclusiveness (Trial
7, lines 1-2). Fleshly existence of his beloved is
revived at night:
I have put aside the past
In a corner, an umbrella
Now poor in the ribs. The touch
Of your breasts is ripe
In my arms. (Trial 9, lines 7-11).
Whereas Das experienced the physical and
mental involvement with a number of men in her life,
Parthasarathy was more associated with the
memories of his past. He has only the lost memories
revived in lonely nights. Remiscences are more
important for him to feel their existence. But Das is
not contented with the memories. She requests,
Please end this whiplash/ of memories.. (The
Invitation, lines 33-34). Lust is vigorous in Das
sometimes. Tossing in the waves of physical union
she realized mens fist in her head. She was busier in
getting the ladykillers on her way. To satisfy her
thirst for true love, she went to a number of men. She
advised women to do everything for their beloved.
There is a clear-cut distinction between a man and a
woman. Both are proud for their belongings. No one
should erase the boundary of their existence. In The
Looking Glass she writes:
Getting a man to love you is easy
Only be honest about your wants as
Woman. Stand nude before the glass with him
So that he sees himself the stronger one
And believes it so, and you so much more

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WIZCRAFT JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE: VOL. I: ISSUE: IIII ISSN: 2319-4952 (Print)
Softer, younger, lovelierAdmit your
Admiration. (lines 1-7)
Parthasarathy is quite hard in this game of body and
soul:
A knock on the door:
You entered.
Undressed quietly before the mirror
Of my hands, eyes
Drowned in the skull
As flesh hardened to stone. (Trial 9, lines 1-6).
But the aftermath is much more painful to
Das as living/ without him afterwards may have to
be/ faced. True union is never possible. Love is
seldom or sometimes never associated with the
physical union.
Cant this man with
Nimble finger-tips unleash
Nothing more alive than the
Skins lazy hungers? Who can
Help us who have lived so long
And have falied in love? (The Freaks, lines 9-14).
To love someone is easy, but to unite with
a man without loving him is nothing but freaking.
Neither Das nor Parthasarathy find true union with
their beloveds. Love and physical union, though both
are necessary for a true relation, never mingle in
them. Failure is the ultimate result. While to Das it
comes only from love affairs, to Parthasarathy it
comes from various ways. His exile was a failure as
well as his love affair was.
From this sense of failure comes frustration.
Unquenched thirst for true love haunted the two poets
differently. Unsatisfied by her male lovers, Das went
on searching for it to different men. But the ultimate
result was zero. Love was like a something
unattainable. Rather, she was humiliated and from
this utter humiliation she achieved optimistic outlook.
In An Introduction she recalls:
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 bit me
But my sad woman-body felt so beaten. (lines 2831)
And soon she withdrew:

046

.I wore a shirt and my

Brothers trousers, cut my hair short and ignored
My womanliness.(lines 34-36)
And soon as she turned outside, she found
everyone enmeshed in the web of I. She found the
universal I within her and identified herself with
everyman.
On the other hand, Parthasarathy went to
England, and when in exile he felt frustrated, he came
back to his motherland. But his birth-place could not
soothe his frustrated heart. Rather, he also remained
caged within the monads of his mind and only
revived the past glorious days with relatives, his
father whom he lost in a November and Sundari over
the pages of the family album. The journey from
life to death is inevitable. Its realization is more
pathetic. Standing at the burning ghat he seemed to
accept the inevitable truths of life. At the burning
ghat/ relations stood like exclamation points
(Homecoming 4, lines 6-7). Everywhere he found his
childhood scattered: in his room, at the river Vaikai,
on the streets, on his desk. A gloomy atmosphere
prevailed. The frustration that Das could overcame
by her rejection of her womanliness and by
accepting her own way, Parthasarathy was lost in the
labyrinth of past. All his expectations turned into
frustration as if he had lost his energy to live any
more. Though he searched for his old days and
relations, all his attempts went in vain. I returned
home, tired,/ my face pressed against the window/ of
expectation (Homecoming 14, lines 4-6).
Frustration not only remained limited to this
boundary of relations only, but it was with the
language also. English was used by the Indian
authors from many years before the time Das and
Parthasarathy started writing. Whether to write in
ones mother tongue or in English became a huge
question to the modern Indian writers. Ezekiels
Babu Angrezi became a vogue and popular also.
The silly grammatical mistakes were overlooked. The
message had to be sent to all. Das was quite free in
writing in this Babu Angrezi, but hindrances were
so common with her that she sought freedom and
wanted to remain alone:
Dont write in English, they said, English is

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WIZCRAFT JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE: VOL. I: ISSUE: IIII ISSN: 2319-4952 (Print)
Not your mother-tongue. Why not leave
Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,
Every one of you? Why not let me speak in
Any language I like? The language I speak,
Becomes mine, its distortions, its queerness
All mine, mine alone.
It is half-English, half-Indian, funny
Perhaps, but it is honest,
It is as human as I am human, dont
You see? (An Introduction, lines 7-18)
But Parthasarathy felt nostalgic for his
mother-tongue. Being utterly disheartened, he wanted
to leave the language in which he stumbled.
My tongue in English chains,
I return, after a generation, to you.
I am at the end
Of my Dravidic tether,
Hunger for you unassuaged.
I falter, stumble. (Homecoming 1, lines 1-6).
He was tired speaking a tired language. In
the symbolic world of language Das and

047

Parthasarathy found themselves illusioned and

frustrated. Though Das had found a new language for
her, Parthasarathy felt trapped in the net of
languages.
To conclude, the two contemporary Indian
poets experienced love in its different shades and had
found it lost in the midst of their journey as a river in
desert. Lust became a medium for Das in her search
for true love, whereas for Parthasarathy lust was also
a frustrated form of love. It humiliated Das and
frustrated Parthasarathy. And besides all these,
frustration was peeping from the background. A void
reigned in the subconscious of them. Their
experiences of what was personal emancipated
through their pens and enriched modern Indian poetry
in English towards a greater and newer route. From
An Introduction to the Homecoming via Rough
Passage the tiresome journey of these poets through
love, lust and frustration has made them romantic not
for turning to Nature but for turning to their inner
self.

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Bhatnagar, M. K. Encyclopaedia of Literature in English, vol. II, New Delhi, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors
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Das, Kamala. Summer in Calcutta, New Delhi, Everest Press, 1965.
------The Old Playhouse and Other Poems (1973), Madras, Orient Longman (India), 1986.
------My Story, New Delhi, Harper Collins Publishers India and a joint venture with The India Today Group, D.
C. Books, 2004.
------Only the Soul Knows How to Sing, Kottayam, D. C. Books, 1996.
Dodiya, Jaydipsingh, Critical Essays on Indian Writing in English, New Delhi, Sarup & Sons Publications, 2006.
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revised edition 2001.
Kohli, Devindra, Kamala Das, New Delhi, Arnold-Heineman Publishers (India), 1975.
Parthasarathy, R. Rough Passage, Delhi: Oxford University Press (India), 1977.
Parthasarathy, R. (Ed.), Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets, New Delhi: Oxford University Press (India), 1991.
Prasad, Amarnath. Women Empowerment in Indian Writers in English, New Delhi, Sarup Book Publications,
2009.
Prasad, Amarnath and Bithika Sarkar (Ed.), Critical Response to Indian Poetry in English, New Delhi, Sarup &
Sons Publications, 2008.
Ramamurthy, K. S. (Ed.), Twenty-five Indian Poets in English, New Delhi, Macmillan India Ltd., reprinted 1996.

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