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Kamala Das The Pity of It
Kamala Das The Pity of It
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Kamala
Das:
The
Pity of it
R. Raphael
David
McCutchion
INDIAN
LITERATURE
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',
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
128
KAMALA
DAS:
THE
PITY
OF IT
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
attack on that
129
INDIAN
LITERATURE
know
one's
real
self,
one
wallows
in ignorance.
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
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
frontations.
quick
to
131
perceive
INDIAN
LITERATURE
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
KAMALA
DAS:
THE
PITY
OF
It
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
and
the
object
narrated
are
one
and
the
same.
Honest
133
Of
INDIAN
LITERATURE
honest
be
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."
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
and
My poor
but every
pleased
shallow
into my mouth,
cranny,
you poured
you embalmed
juices-
You
called
me wife.
134
KAM AL A DAS:
THE
PITY
OF IT
element
And
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
story. She
Das's
could
INDIAN
LITERATURE
unravel
the
mind
of
man
or
a woman.
Her
men
are
13$
KAMALA
DAS."
THE
PITY
OF
IT
137