'Crossing Thresholds': Radical Notes in Women's Writings ... - JPCS

Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and SocietiesISSN No. 1948-1845 (Print); 1948-1853 (Electronic)Woman who seeks love. In him . . . the hungry hasteOf rivers, in me . . . the oceans‘ tirelessWaiting. Who are you, I ask each and everyone,The answer is, it is I. Anywhere and,Everywhere, I see the one who calls himself IIn this world, he is tightly packed like theSword in its sheath.Going against the social imagination of a woman as sexually passive, gentle, selfsacrificing, monogamous and as the repository of the honour of the family, the poetnarratornarrates in a tone that is unambiguous, forthright, assertive yet somewhat tingedwith despair:It is I who drink lonelyDrinks at twelve, midnight, in hotels of strange towns,It is I who laugh, it is I who make loveAnd then, feel shame, it is I who lie dyingWith a rattle in my throat. I am sinner,I am saint. I am the beloved and theBetrayed. I have no joys that are not yours, noAches which are not yours. I too call myself I.Kamala Das‗s poetry, thus, pulsates with an urgent and compelling need to breakthrough the conventional barriers and establish a new tradition. Helene Cixous oncewrote:Women must write through their bodies, they must invent the impregnablelanguage that will wreck partitions, classes, and rhetorics, regulations and codes,they must submerge, cut through, get beyond the ultimate reserve discourse.(Cixous, 256)In the light of the above statement, it may be argued that Kamala Das‘s non conformistpoetry is a befitting example of feminist discourse on woman‘s body.‘Crossing thresholds: Radical notes in women’s writings from contemporary South Asia,’Madhu SinghJPCS Vol 2 No 4, December 201188