Interrogating the Male: A Reading of Kamala Das’s Poems

Abstract

Reared in the tradition of Kerala, Kamala Das, in her poems, is found boldly asserting her rights to assess man and point out his limitations. She regrets how her desire to learn and grow has been mischievously turned down by the male in the process of imparting the lesson about his own self. The monstrous male ego leads her to lose her will power and reasoning ability. But she continues questioning the use of the male in the long run of life. Her bold feminine sensibility enables her to articulate the hurts that it has received in an insensitive world which is largely man-made. She writes of her private experiences candidly, for example, how she has been, for years, obsessed with the idea of death. She has come to believe that life, despite all emotional involvements, is as ineffectual as a mere dream, death being the only reality. From such pre-occupation with cessation, there is in her a tremendous transformation to the substance of life later, whereby she asks not to throw her meat and bones away but pile them up to suggest, by their smell, what life is worth on the earth. But the engagements with the body do not detract her from asking questions about identity. Poem after poem, the man-woman relationship moots incessant questions before her and she shares this interrogating pose with her readers. Whereas, men have cast women only in relation to the male identity, women include the male without destroying their sense of self. The male comes to be defined more in terms of denial of connections and relationships but the feminine personality follows the principle of inclusiveness. The poems of Kamala Das seem to echo such dictum of her experience. The method used in the article is a close survey of a good number of poems of Kamala Das that either directly or, in an oblique way, posits the argument reflected in the title, ‘Interrogating the Male …’ While locating Das in the Indian English scenario as well as in the patriarchal set up, the article also purports to bring in the wider scope of feminism and takes up Das’s dealing with the issue. Though not over elaborative in inter-textual and inter-disciplinary studies, it, however, attempts to focus on certain interesting aspects of Das’s poems most of which are on man-woman relationship. A certain kind of narcissism seems to co-habit Kamala Das’s sensibility and this possibility may be a subject of further study on her. Another interesting area of research may be located in Das’s soft chords relating her to the family, the grandmother, particularly, whereas a contrast may be drawn to her love-hate relationship with its male members. Further study may also be conducted on her diction and versification, particularly the line and stanza structures she has employed and their significance. The article here points to the age-old man-woman nexus and how Kamala Das deals with it in her own way. From the repressed and submissive identity that the patriarchal society ascribes on womanhood there emerges a bold feminine sensibility with all its modes of interrogation at the male. Literature, which itself was a male-dominated area, is softly but decisively mulled over by the asserting feminine self of Das which obviously paves the way for other female writers, particularly, female poets to write on the issue which is always pertinent in our society.