intensive hunger for voluptuous love & freedom in kamala das poetry

Research Paper—English
INTENSIVE HUNGER FOR VOLUPTUOUS
LOVE & FREEDOM IN KAMALA DAS POETRY
* Dr. A. Ramesh Babu
* Asst. Professor in English, KITS, Huzurabad, Andra Pradesh
Postcolonial Indian English Poetry has been
developed by the awe-inspiring talent of Kamala
Das. Her writings absorb the cause of feminism. Kamala
Das has a great personality which is the source of the
strength of her poetry. Credited as the most outspoken
and even controversial writer, Kamala Das earned
fame as the ‘voice of women’s sexuality.’ (Rajdeep
Pathak, 2009:1) She denigrated the tradition-bound,
conservative society which was always harsh on her
conventional life style. Love and sex are the leitmotif
of her poetry. The article focuses on her quenchless
quest for true love for women from the men. She has
intensive hunger for voluptuous love and freedom
from her husband. The article seriously tries to
mention how she ponders her feelings in her poetry.
She searched for love and affection from her husband.
She has defined the complexity of man- woman
relationship, and its physical aspects. Her love
experience does not revolve round the traditional
ideal of womanhood; instead it revolves round the
extra-marital sexual relationship which is unfulfilled
and chaotic. As K.R.S. Iyengar points out the subject
of her poetry, “Love is crucified in sex, and sex defiles
itself again and again.” (K.R.S. Iyengar, 1983: 677).
As a poet of love and sex, Kamala Das looks most
native, honest, and frank. She in her quest for freedom
and identity in her poetry “reflects the artistic identity.
It reflects the artistic movement between utopia and
authenticity.” (Seshadri, 1995: 124). She has frankly
interpreted love in terms of sex. She has emotions and
the profuseness of deep feelings in her. Her poems
show us her emotional temper, which makes her feel
ill at ease with the present day materialistic world
trying to lay a siege around her. During her childhood,
she was completely neglected. She tells in her
autobiography, My Story:
He (her father) was not of an affectionate
nature. So we grew up more or less neglected and
because we were aware of ourselves as neglected
children in a social circle that pampered the young,
the developed between us a strong relationship of
love, the kind a leper may feel for his mate who pushed
him on a hand-cart when they went on their begging
November, 2010
rounds. (Kamala Das, 1976: 2) Kamala Das poems
including her prose writings give a wonderful picture
about her marriage floundered on the rocks of ruin
right from the start. Her husband was very busy with
his office works and he had no time to spend with
Kamala Das, who used to hanker for a fulfillment in
love. He had earned for her security and money but
that alone could not satisfy an extraordinary woman.
About her husband, she says:
My husband was immersed in his office work, and
after work was the dinner followed by sex where was
there any time left for him to want to see the sea or the
dark buffaloes the slopes? (Kamala Das, 1975: 41)
As a poet of love and sex, Kamala Das is hardly ever
conventional or conservative. Summer in Calcutta
has a fairly good number of poems on love and sex.
Some of the poems are about the poetess pure love.
She expresses her happiness and contentment in
love:
Until I found you
I write 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…. (Kamla Das, 1965, 31)
Most of the poems from her two volumes The
Descendants and The Old Playhouse and other poems
are filled with warmth and passion, with love and sex.
In The Descendants, we have some poetic on the
subject of love and lust as “A Request”, “Substitute”,
“The Invitation”, “Captive” and “Convicts.” In her
each poem, she points out hard at her husband and
wants to escape from him to get freedom. Her feminine
self finds the man emotionally deficient and incapable
of possessing a passionate regard for concrete reality.
She says: It is not the physical love that Das longs
for. What she craves for is an emotional bonding with
her man. But, to her surprise, she receives the carnal
pleasures from him: That was the only kind of love,
(Kamla Das, 1967: 26) Kamla Das’ view of the world
of reality is shaped by her own view that positive

male indifference in attributing to women a capacity
for individualism is condemned in her poems of selfexploration.
Her feminine self is an example of the
cruelty, tyranny and indifferent attitude of man. Like
Tslima, Kamala Das subjected too much humiliation
by her own husband as well as by other men. She
loses her feminine identity when she is forced on to
the bed against her desires. One can easily says that
love for her has become a mechanical affair and lovers
a series of substitutes.Kamala Das says that she
remained a virgin for a fortnight after marriage is an
example of triumph won by her poetic-self or ego-self
over her feminine self. A woman always longs for love
and this love can not be one sided. It should be
mutual. But instead of the juice of love Kamla Das
finds an ‘empty cistern’ in her life. As Saleem Peeradina
has discoursed: She writes about love with the
obsessive ness of a woman who can realize her being
fully only through love. Not surprisingly, given the
subject, the writing is some-times week and selfindulgent.
(Peeradina Saleem, 1972: 86). I conclude
that the interest of Kamala Das’s poetry deals with
not only about the story of sex outside marriage but
also the instability of her feelings. Her words in her
poetry enact her quest, an exploration into her self
and seeking of her identity. Her poems are situated
neither in the act of sex nor in the feeling of love, they
are instead ,involved with the self and it is varied
often conflicting emotions ranging from the desire
for security and intimacy to the assertion of ego, selfdramatization
and feeling of shame and depression.
R E F E R E N C E
A.N. Dwivedi, Kamala Das and Her Poetry, New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 2000. Kamala Das, My Story, New Delhi: Sterling
Publishers, 1988. Kamla Das, The Descendants, Calcutta writers work shop, 1967. Kamla Das, Summer in Calcutta, New
Delhi: Everest Press, 1965.K.R.S. Iyengar, Indian Writing in English, New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1983. Om Prakash
Dwivedi, “Quest for True Love in Kamala Das’s Poetry” Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences, 1:
3 (2009): 943-950. Peeradina Saleem, Contemporary Indian Poetry in English, Madras: Macmillian, 1972. Rajeshwar
Mittapalli and Pier Paolo Piciucco, Kamla Das: A Critical Spectrum, New Delhi : Atlantic Publications, 2001. Rajdeep Pathak
, Indian Writing in English and Kamala Das: A Tribute to the Writer and Poet http://www.boloji.com/literature/00143.htm
Seshadri Vijaylakshmi, The New Woman in Indian–English to man continues Since the 1970s. Delhi: B.R. Publishing
Corporation, 1995.