Madhavikutty

The following article was initially published in The New York Times by  MARGALIT FOX ,  JUNE 9, 2009 Kamala Das, a prominent Indian poet, memoirist and short-story writer whose work was known for its open discussion of women’s sexual lives, a daring subject when she began publishing in midcentury, died on May 31 in Pune, India. She was 75. The cause was respiratory failure, her doctor told the news service United News of India. A prolific writer, Ms. Das composed most of her poetry in English. Most of her fiction, which appeared under the pen name Madhavikutty, was written in her native Malayalam, a non-Indo-European language spoken primarily in the South Indian state of Kerala. She wrote several memoirs, the most famous of them, “My Story,” written in English and published in 1976. In it, Ms. Das recounts her childhood in an artistic but emotionally distant family; her unfulfilling arranged marriage to an older man shortly before her 16th birthday; the em...

The following article was first published in theguardian.com Kamala Das, who has died aged 75, was a renowned Indian poet, novelist, short-story writer, essayist and memoirist. She was also known as Madhavikutty, the pseudonym she used when writing in the Malayalam language. Then there was Ami, the pet name with which she referred to herself in her memoirs. Much later in life, she gave herself yet another name, Suraiyya, to mark her conversion to Islam. Straddling many names was one way in which Das straddled multiple identities. She was born into a literary family. Her mother, Balamani Amma, was a well-known Malayalam poet and her great-uncle, Nalapat Narayana Menon, was a writer and translator. Das was home-schooled and most of her education came through extensive reading. Her childhood was divided between Punnayurkulam, her ancestral village in Kerala, in the south-west, and the north-eastern city of Calcutta (now Kolkata), where her parents lived. This early lesson in disloca...

Winter It smelt of new rains and of tender Shoots of plants- and its warmth was the warmth Of earth groping for roots… even my Soul, I thought, must send its roots somewhere And, I loved his body without shame, On winter evenings as cold winds Chuckled against the white window-panes. Krishna Your body is my prison, Krishna, I cannot see beyond it. Your darkness blinds me,Your love words shut out the wise world's din. [From Only The Soul Knows How To Sing]  Love Until I found you, I wrote verse, drew pictures, And, went out with friends For walks… Now that I love you, Curled like an old mongrel My life lies, content, In you…. [From Summer in Calcutta] 

All round me are words, and words and words, They grow on me like leaves, they never Seem to stop their slow growing From within... But I tell my self, words Are a nuisance, beware of them, they Can be so many things, a Chasm where running feet must pause, to Look, a sea with paralyzing waves, A blast of burning air or, A knife most willing to cut your best Friend's throat... Words are a nuisance, but. They grow on me like leaves ona tree, They never seem to stop their coming, From a silence, somewhere deep within... 

The night, dark-cloaked like a procuress, brought him to me, willing, light as a shadow, speaking words of love in some tender language I do not know ... With the crows came the morning, and my limbs warm of love, were once again so lonely... At my doorstep I saw a pock-marked face, a friendly smile and a rolleiflex. We will go for a drive, he said. Or go see the lakes. I have washed my face with soap and water, brushed my hair a dozen times, draped myself in six yards of printed voile. Ah... does it still show, my night of love? You look pale, he said. Not pale, not really pale. It's the lipstick's anemia. Out in the street, we heard The sirens go, and I paused in talk to weave their wail with the sound of his mirthless laughter. He said, they are testing the sirens today. I am happy. He really was lavish with words. I am happy, just being with you. But you . . . you love another, I know, he said, perhaps a handsome man, a young and handsome man. Not young, not handsome, I th...

He talks, turning a sun-stained Cheek to me, his mouth, a dark Cavern, where stalactites of Uneven teeth gleam, his right Hand on my knee, while our minds Are willed to race towards love; But, they only wander, tripping Idly over puddles of Desire. .... .Can this man with Nimble finger-tips unleash Nothing more alive than the Skin's lazy hungers? Who can Help us who have lived so long And have failed in love? The heart, An empty cistern, waiting Through long hours, fills itself With coiling snakes of silence. ..... I am a freak. It's only To save my face, I flaunt, at Times, a grand, flamboyant lust. 

What is this drink but The April sun, squeezed Like an orange in My glass? I sip the Fire, I drink and drink Again, I am drunk Yes, but on the gold of suns, What noble venom now flows through my veins and fills my mind with unhurried laughter? My worries doze. Wee bubblesring my glass, like a brides nervous smile, and meet my lips. Dear, forgive this moments lull in wanting you, the blur in memory. How brief the term of my devotion, how brief your reign when i with glass in hand, drink, drink, and drink again this Juice of April suns.