Kamala Das is one of the bold contemporary Indian women writers.

Kamala Das
poetry is characterized by frankness clarity and openness. She reflects her
restlessness as a sensitive woman as moving in the male- dominated society. Her
poetry reflects the images of disease destruction, death loneliness, helplessness,
frustration and rejection. Love is a great tragedy which she has to face in her whole
life. In her poem we can see search for true love and of sexual relationship. She in
her poems confesses a number of things related to her own self.
Love, sex occupies a very important place in Kamala Das poetry and constitutes its
central motivating force. In fact, it is the search for true love which inspires her to
write and express her feelings and sufferings. Kamala Das poetry is a picture of her
own experience and observation, her own unfulfilled love and her own sexual
exploitation, frustration and disillusionment which she have to suffer after getting
married.
The Sunshine Cat' by Kamala Das: Summary and Analysis
The Personas Feeling of Complete Disillusionment
The persona in this poem describes her sexual experiences with her husband and
with other men, and expresses her feeling of complete disillusionment with all her
sexual partners. The persona is most probably Kamala Das herself; and she tells us
that, though she had originally loved her husband in the hope that he would love
her too, she no longer loves him because he proved to be a selfish man and a
coward. Her husband did not love her at all and did not even make use of her as a
sexual partner in the right manner. Her husband showed himself to be a keen and
relentless observer when, in sheer desperation, she acquired other lovers and went
to bed with them.
The Personas Failure to Win the Love of Any of Her Sexual Partners
It was her disgust with her husband which drove the poetess to have extra-marital
love affairs. But even these other men, with whom she slept, proved to be most
disappointing because of their selfish attitude towards love-making. She did her
utmost to excite some genuine feeling in those other lovers by clinging to their
bosoms on which there was a thick growth of hair; and she clung to their bosoms as
if wanting to hide her face in their hair. Those lovers were younger than she herself,
and she tried to make them forget everything expect the act of love-making. But
each of them told her that he could not love her though he could be kind
towards her. Thus even they provided her with no real satisfaction, and she could
only shed tears over her disappointment. She was not even able to enjoy any sound
sleep because of her disappointment with those lovers. She wept so profusely that
she could have built walls with her tears, walls to hold her like a prisoner.
Her Husbands Cruelty to Her
The poetesss husband was so cruel to her that he used to lock her in a room
containing books every morning and used to unlock the room only when he returned
home in the evenings. A ray of sunshine fell at the door of that room; and this ray of
sunshine was the only company she had. That ray of sunshine looked like a yellow-
coloured cat; and that was the poetesss only companion. Time passed; and, when
winter came, the suns ray lost its brightness because of the cloudy skies. The suns
ray was now reduced only to a thin line, as thin as a hair. And the poetess herself
had now become so emaciated and thin because of her chronic depression and
despondency that she felt herself to be half-dead and, therefore, no longer an object
of sexual desire on the part of any man.
The Freaks by Kamala Das
Summary:
'The Freaks', a short lyric written in the confessional manner, is written in the first
person point of view. The poem gives expression to the speaker's (the poetess)
feelings as she lies in bed with her husband, when both of them are waiting for the
commencement of their physical intimacy. Though they are waiting for their
physical union, the female partner is a bit disgusted and scared. She finds her
husband to be rather slow in moving his fingers over her body in order to enjoy the
sensation of his contact with her.

The poetess thinks that her partner is not passionate enough or not skillful enough
to be able to arouse in her a really intense desire for sexual union. She then realizes
that her marriage with this man had failed and that, even though they have lived
together for a long time, they vane not really been able to achieve any conjugal
happiness. She thinks herself unhappy and feels the 'coiling snakes of silence' or
emptiness in her heart. At the end, she calls herself a freak or abnormal person who
makes a show of being lustful in order that she may be regarded as a normal
person.
Analysis:
Kamala looks very determined to revolt against the conventional societys definition
of womanhood. Even she challenges the traditional sex roles. In many of her poems,
she brings out the emotional emptiness and sterility of married life and the intensity
of misery of the wife who surrenders to her husband who is repulsive, and with
whom she has no emotional contact at all.

The poem 'The Freaks' begins with a slow movement, representing her indifference
to sex and ends on
an impulsive note, in keeping with the compromise. She must not only surrender
herself to his love making however she hates it, she must also pretend to like it. Her
self-respect insists it; the social customs require it. This is a male dominated world.

A married woman cannot articulate her voice to the filth of her experience. She
must follow the social rules which man has made in a world. She is his subordinate,
his property, an object; she has no right to raise her voice. Kamala Das`s poetry
proves that Indian woman has irritated the typical male sense of courtesy and
modesty. Kamala Das initiates a new age for woman poets by accepting new idiom,
a new standard and new way of expression which reflects a entire denial of the
conventional form of poetic expression of the male dominant culture.

Kamala Das is honest and at times full of anger when she projects and attacks on
male domination. She is a poet of the modern Indian woman, giving expression to it
more openly than any other Indian woman poet.

The motivating force of her notion is love that is frustrating experience. All her
efforts to establish meaningful relations with other show to be fruitless. In Freaks,
poet depicts the disappointment, senselessness and the torment of a woman who
longs for true love but it is denied by her husband who is insensible to her
psychological desires. She is revolted by cruelty of her companion. She feels
trapped by her male ego. Therefore she refused to play the traditional role as a wife.
It is natural that her poems represent a rebellion against male dominated social
system .It shows that in a male dominated world she has courage to emphasis her
feminine sensibility and to revolt against the system. She is proud of her femininity
and does not fail to claim it.

She is conscious of a primary need for true love, psychological need and a desire for
liberty within the family system. In this sense, she is truly liberated woman and a
representative of modern woman who identify her right to sexual fulfillment and
psychological security.
2) "The Freaks," by Kamala Das, is a poem about a couple (presumably a man and a
woman) who cannot arouse much sexual desire for each other, and perhaps not for
anyone.
The man has his hand on the woman's knee, which, the narrator says, should cause
them "to race towards love." Instead, their minds "only wander, tripping/Idly over
puddles of/Desire."
She wonders:
Can this man with
Nimble finger-tips unleash
Nothing more alive than the
Skin's lazy hungers?

My Grandmother's House' by Kamala Das: Summary and Analysis

The Poetesss Recollection of Her Childhood in Her Grandmothers House
The poetess recalls the house where she once used to live with her grandmother
who was quite fond of her and from whom she used to receive a lot of love. The
grandmother had died; and the house had then ceased to be inhabited by anybody.
The poetess was in those days a little girl and did not even know how to read the
books which lay in the house. The death of her grandmother had robbed the little
girl of her capacity to feel. It had seemed to her that the blood in her veins was no
longer warm but had turned cold, as cold as the moon.
The Deserted House After the Grandmothers Death
The poetess now often thinks of going to that house in order to look at the things
inside it through the windows; but the windows being closed she would not be able
to see anything lying inside, and would be able only to experience a feeling of utter
hopeless, and then to gather some of the darkness from that place and bring it with
her to her bedroom where she would merely lie down to meditate upon her
memories of the past.
The poetesss Desperate Need of Love
Addressing her husband, Kamala Das says that he would perhaps not be able to
believe that she had lived in such a house, had felt proud of herself, and had
received the love of someone (namely her grandmother). She tells her life and
because she no longer receives any love from anybody. Now she seeks love like a
beggar from strangers; and she would feel consoled even if she gets a small
measure of love from somebody.
A Hot Noon in Malabar' by Kamala Das: Summary and Analysis
The poetess recalls some of her experiences in her home in Malabar. She thinks of
the hot noon-time when all sorts of persons used to pass her home and to pause
and to stop there in order to sell the wares which they carried from place to place.
She first thinks of the beggars who used to come to her house to beg alms in their
characteristic voices expressive of their discontent with life and their need for
charity.
Then she thinks of the men who came from the hills with parrots in a cage and
fortune-cards, all stained because of the long time during which those cards had
been used again and again. She thinks of the brown-complexioned girls who
belonged to the class of basket-makers and manufacturers of bird-catching traps.
These girls were palm-readers who offered, in their monotonous voices, to read the
palms of those who wanted their fortunes told on the basis of the lines on their
palms.
The poetess then recalls the bangle-sellers who had walked miles and miles of the
dusty roads in order to sell their bangles of various colours (red, green and blue).
Next, she thinks of the strangers who used to come and peep into her house
through the window-curtains but were unable to see anything because the rooms of
the house were dark while their eyes carried the heat and the brightness of sunlight
in them. The strangers were suspicious about how they might be received and what
treatment they might get from the inmates of the house. These strangers remained
silent most of the time but, when they spoke, they did so in voices which were wild
like the sounds that are heard in a jungle.
The poetess then expresses the view that noon-time in Malabar was not only a time
for the visits of wild men but also for wild thoughts to enter her mind, and for a wild
desire for love-making to arise in her mind. The poetess laments the fact that she is
now living so far away from her Malabar home. She experiences an intense longing
to go back there and to look at all those men at whom she used to look during her
life there. The feeling that she is now so far away from that home is a torture to her.
The Invitation "by Kamala Das: Summary and Analysis
The Personas Bitter-Sweet Memory of a Sexual Experience

The persona in the poem recalls her experience of the sexual act with a lover. (The
persona is most probably the poetess herself). On a certain day, she felt as if a
mans fist was alternately tightening itself and then loosening its muscles. It
seemed to her that the man were forming some firm resolve and then becoming
somewhat uncertain. In other words, the poetess was feeling tortured by her
memory of her experience of love-making with a lover of hers. The lover had gone
away after making love to her, and had not returned. The woman (who, as we have
already indicated, could be the poetess herself) knew that her lover would not come
back, but she could not forget her experience of love-making with that man because
the experience had been a most delicious one. The bitter-sweet of the memory of
her sexual experience continued to haunt her.
The Seas Suggestion to the Woman to Jump into its Waters and Perish
there.
Standing on the seashore, the woman got the feeling that the sea was inviting her
to jump into its waters in order to perish there and thus put an end to her life. The
sea seemed to say to her that she would lose nothing except her miserable life
while it would certainly gain something by swallowing her body and thus adding to
its conquests. The woman, however, told the sea to mind its own business and to go
its own way, leaving her to go her way.
The Womans Effort to Dismiss Her Memories from Her Mind
The woman then recalled how her lover used to come to her in the intervals of his
office-work in order to make love to her. He used to come to her to refresh himself
after his tiring office-work, and he felt warmed in her embraces, remaining silent all
the time. The woman then tried to dismiss this memory from her mind by telling
herself that her lover had gone for good, and that it would be foolish on her part to
entertain any hope that he would return.
The Seas Repetition of its Invitation to the Woman
The sea seemed to repeat its invitation to the woman to enter its waters in order to
put an end to her life. But the woman replied that she wanted to be left alone, and
not to be pestered by the sea. Her thoughts again turned to her lover; and she
realized that she wanted no other lover but the same who had been sleeping with
her and who had now gone away. In bed with him, she used to feel as if she was in
paradise. The bed, six feet in length and two feet in width, was heaven for them;
and, it was only when they left the bed-room and walked together in the open that
they exposed themselves to the much wider space outside where the city was
situated.
The Seas Invitation, Made to Appear More Attractive
The sea spoke to the woman again, urging her to end her life in its waters. The sea
told her that, if she waited for her death to come naturally to her, she would have to
be cremated; and her dead body would then be placed on a funeral pyre to be
consumed by the fire. The sea said that, if she jumped into its waters, she would
meet a cool death, and that she would be able to stretch her limbs on the cool sand
at its bottom and would be able to rest her head on the flowers growing there.
The Woman, Unable to Shed Her Memories of Her Lover
The woman, turning away from the sea, thought again of her experience of love-
making with that lover of hers. Throughout the summer they had been meeting in
the afternoons to make love to each other, and, at the end of the sexual act, their
bodies would lie listlessly on the bed, with their minds rendered incapable of
thinking by the heat of the sun.
The Womans Rejection of the Seas Invitation
The sea spoke once more, urging the woman to put an end to her memories of her
past love-making and the heartache which those memories were causing her. The
sea went on to say that it had waited for a long time for the right person, who would
also be a bright person, like her, to come and enter its blue waters. But this time the
woman replied to the sea that she was still young, and that she still needed that
lover of hers to reconstruct her life and then to destroy it. In other words, she had a
vague hope that her lover might come back to her even though he might again
forsake her. So she told the sea to leave her to herself.
The Womans Final Decision
Then, once more turning away from the sea, the woman said that the sea could wait
and that she was not yet prepared to drown herself in it. And next she spoke in her
imagination to her absent lover and told him that the sea-waves were rushing
violently towards the seashore, wanting to drown her. She had been resisting the
seas invitation but she could not go on resisting it forever. Thus, the womans
monologue ends with her intention soon to give a practical shape to her desire to
commit suicide.

An Introduction is Kamala Dass most famous poem in the confessional mode.

Writing to her, always served as a sort of spiritual therapy: If I had been a loved
person, I wouldnt have become a writer. I would have been a happy human being.
Kamala Das begins by self-assertion: I am what I am. The poetess claims that she is
not interested in politics, but claims to know the names of all in power beginning
from Nehru. She seems to state that these are involuntarily ingrained in her. By
challenging us that she can repeat these as easily as days of the week, or the
names of months she echoes that they these politicians were caught in a repetitive
cycle of time, irrespective of any individuality. They did not define time; rather time
defined them.
Subsequently, she comes down to her roots. She declares that by default she is an
Indian. Other considerations follow this factor. She says that she is born in Malabar;
she does not say that she belongs to Malabar. She is far from regional prejudices.
She first defines herself in terms of her nationality, and second by her colour.
I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar,
And she is very proud to exclaim that she is very brown. She goes on to articulate
that she speaks in three languages, writes in two and dreams in one; as though
dreams require a medium. Kamala Das echoes that the medium is not as significant
as is the comfort level that one requires. The essence of ones thinking is the
prerequisite to writing. Hence she implores with all-critics, friends, visiting cousins
to leave her alone. Kamal aDas reflects the main theme of Girish Karnads Broken
Images-the conflict between writing in ones regional language and utilizing a
foreign language. The language that she speaks is essentially hers; the primary
ideas are not a reflection but an individual impression. It is the distortions and
queerness that makes it individual, in keeping with Chomskys notion of
performance. And it is these imperfections that render it human. It is the language
of her expression and emotion as it voices her joys, sorrows and hopes. It comes to
her as cawing comes to the crows and roaring to the lions, and is therefore
impulsive and instinctive. It is not the deaf, blind speech: though it has its own
defects, it cannot be seen as her handicap. It is not unpredictable like the trees on
storm or the clouds of rain. Neither does it echo the incoherent mutterings of the
blazing fire. It possesses a coherence of its own: an emotional coherence.
She was child-like or innocent; and she knew she grew up only because according to
others her size had grown. The emotional frame of mind was essentially the same.
Married at the early age of sixteen, her husband confined her to a single room. She
was ashamed of her feminity that came before time, and brought her to this
predicament. This explains her claim that she was crushed by the weight of her
breast and womb. She tries too overcome it by seeming tomboyish. So she cuts her
hair short and adorns boyish clothes. People criticize her and tell her to conform to
the various womanly roles. They accuse her of being schizophrenic; and a nympho.
They confuse her want of love and attention for insatiable sexual craving.
She explains her encounter with a man. She attributes to him not a proper noun, but
a common noun-every man to reflect his universality. He defined himself by the
I, the supreme male ego. He is tightly compartmentalized as the sword in its
sheath. It portrays the power politics of the patriarchal society that we thrive in
that is all about control.It is this I that stays long away without any restrictions, is
free to laugh at his own will, succumbs to a woman only out of lust and later feels
ashamed of his own weakness that lets himself to lose to a woman. Towards the end
of the poem, a role-reversal occurs as this I gradually transitions to the poetess
herself. She pronounces how this I is also sinner and saint, beloved and betrayed.
As the role-reversal occurs, the woman too becomes the I reaching the pinnacle of
self-assertion.