Kamala Das: A Glimpse of Her Writings

I am very happy to write on Kamala Das, once again, as she is only much remembered for her poems and not for her open and daring views in the stories of hers. I believe she was the one who wrote with tremendous understanding of life and also with a fine balance and equipoise of venturing into good and bad. I would like to recommend her collection of short stories, "'Padmavati, the Harlot' and Other Stories", a myriad representation of life with nearly fifteen stories, all are very small ones running only to four or five pages, but for two lengthy stories, for a better appreciation and understanding of Kamala Das. In this article I give a glimpse of her writing by discussing four of her stories.

'The Princess of Avanti' is a sad tale of an old, abandoned, mentally ill woman, who believes herself the princess of Avanti. An old woman in rags spends time in a park in her customary place with a lunch pack, prepared by her daughter-in-law. One day three young men approach in ugly clothes, probably a symbol of amoral behaviour. They introduce themselves as kings of Vangarajya, Kalinga and Kerala and have come to greet her on her birthday. They want her to stay in the park even after the closure of the park and so they can celebrate her birthday. The old woman believes in them and stays after dark and feeds her flesh to their animalistic hunger. A revelation of a startling society that is ridden with lust and power mongers. The three young men turn out to be sheer exploiters of situation to molest a poor old, mentally deranged woman.

'Padmavati, the Harlot' is a poignant experience of a prostitute, who shares her name with the consort of Lord Venkateshwara, a Hindu deity who abodes the sacred, seven-hill town of 'Tirumala', Andhra Pradesh, India. Padmavati had spent her entire life for others. She took care of her ailing mother until she attained the feet of God and devoted her service to her brothers who found better jobs and forgot all about their sister and were much ashamed of her 'profession', conveniently ignoring that that was which gave them life and then she worked for the garnering of dowry for her sister to marry her as the bridegrooms demanded a lump-sum. She was forty now and ever since she was seven she had been thinking of visiting Lord Venkateshwara. She managed to find time and with great difficulty climbed the seven hills on foot to find that the temple was closed for the night. Though she was forty, she had a lovely figure to attract lewd youth, who grabbed her fruit offering to God from her and wanted her to entertain them for the night as she could not worship the God at night. She requested them to remove evil thoughts off their mind as she had come on a pilgrimage. Bewildered Padmavati banged on the entrance to the temple and doors let her in. The great God was there as she recognised Him only looking at bejeweled feet. The God was very much happy to have 'her' as offering an answer to the dismayed question of the harlot, that run as what could she offer now and if the God were a man, she would offer her body but the hooligans had snatched away the fruits and flowers. The next day, she was seen coming out with bruises and with ecstasy of having spent a night with God and was being referred to as 'God Mother' by the same lewd youth.

The wife of a recently married couple, in the story 'Little Kitten', wants her husband to get her a cute little kitten as she finds herself very much alone between nine in the morning and six in the evening, as her husband busies himself in the city's top insurance company. For which the enamoured husband replies that he is her little kitten. Things change after three months, as the husband begins coming late and mostly boozier. He has been dating his secretary Miss Nadkar. Things started when Miss Nadkar revealed her decision to quit office as her marriage had been fixed with a business man who had to come back to India from Canada. The husband spent an evening with her and continued that. This has brought vexing to his wife, who lost much of her physical charm and grew pale and weak. She has become very dark and hysterical. One day the husband wants her to have a break by insisting that she would go to her parents and spend some time there. She wants him to accompany her. He is very busy and denies her request. Things begin to worsen and the relationship begins to strain much. All of a sudden, in one fine evening, he finds his wife getting back all her charm and she explains the reason be her acquiring a cute kitten but the cat is not found anywhere in the house. The writer concludes the story there, as the readers are led to believe that the wife has found solace in extra-marital affair. One tends to pity the wife here, rather than being angered as she badly needs an outlet to get back her composure.


'A Doll for the Child Prostitute' is the longest of stories in the collection. It begins with a poor woman 'Anasuya' selling her daughter to a female pimp, who runs a brothel house. This woman had been a slut once and married a man, who was kind to both his wife and daughter. The slut wanted her fire of passion to be quenched with water from a much younger hose or through a man younger than she. He started molesting the teenage (not even a teenager, a child of twelve) 'Rukmani', when her mother was not at home. This forced the woman to sell her child in a whorehouse, that is run by the pimp 'Ayee'. In the brothel house, Rukmani befriends another teenager 'Sita', who becomes pregnant 'before attaining puberty' and loses her life in the forcible abortion performed on her by the quack hag 'Sindhuthai'. Rukmani has her own nightmares there as she is picked up by grandfather like police inspector who considers her as his 'moppet'. 'Mira' a popular prostitute among visitors, runs away with a city-slicking youth who cheats on her by making tall claims. Her re-entry to the brothel house is forcibly done by the inspector and so is her disillusionment on the city slicker.

Sita's death makes Rukmani suffer a lot and for the first time the protesting Rukmani finds 'Papa-like' comfort in the inspector. The inspector, who does so much to cover the death of Sita, forgets about his promise to Rukmani, of a foreign doll, that cries 'mummy, mummy', when its tummy is pressed. The inspector in the end fulfills his promise and equates Rukmani with his grand daughter, who writes 'sweet letters from a far-off place'. The pimp's son has chosen to come back to his mother ignoring the dis-respect to her profession and also following a strong advice from his employer. All ends well in the end as new lives dawn on The Inspector, Ayee and Rukmani.

One of my old students once said that the story was prescribed for Seventh Standard students in their English subject, when he was doing his seventh class. However, the teachers concluded to 'ignore' the story as that might 'pollute' the mind of the students as it deals with prostitution. I partially agree with their 'doing away with the text or not doing the text' on the context that, such a tender age is not ripen to understand grave themes, the intention, probably, for including the story in the syllabus is the age of the protagonist: twelve, matched with the students of seventh class.

What's wrong in being a Meat-eater?

An American cardiologist once visited our institution. The purpose of his visit was to promote Yoga exercises. His son is living in India and heading a foundation that promotes Yoga for a better living. The cardiologist did a lot of research on patients who took to yoga exercises, both aerobic and anaerobic (exercises that do not involve breathing techniques) in the US. Those patients who suffer from heart ailment did show a lot of improvement in the functioning of the heart after they had taken to yoga. The doctor after having shown all statistical details wanted the listeners to adopt to yoga exercises and to switch to Vegetarian diet for a healthy living. One of the participants posed a question to the doctor. His question was that the elephant and hippo both feed on only plants and are therefore absolute vegetarians and they both happen to be the strongest in animal kingdom; hence how come that vegetarian diet does not contribute to the accumulation of fat and lead to stenosis? Unfortunately the doctor could not understand the question (probably due to the very poor microphone) and therefore he gave an answer that was only intended to promote vegetarian diet.


There has been a lot of heated arguments going on between those who consume meat and those who gloat at being vegetarians. I know a person who once commented or rather justified his being a meat-eater that if all the humans were vegetarians then there would not be much food for all to consume, as such there is not much vegetation left out. That was why so many had been fond of meat eating and in turn contributing to the life cycle to go on by not venturing themselves into the food of others. His point is absolutely wrong but there is nothing wrong in his being a meat-eater. Most humans consume goat's meat, veal, venison and beef. All these animals depend primarily on vegetation for their survival. For a meat-eater too, vegetation is essential. If you are lover of fish, then also does come the concept of vegetation as fish consume agar-agar and other under-water plantation.


I know of a few personalities who try to do out of the ordinary to promote vegetarianism. One practitioner of indigenous medicine once threatened the meat-eaters with the ideology that one's stomach was not a burial ground to put flesh in it. He would say, 'Think what happens to flesh that is left out. It rots and germinates bacteria causing stench and diseases. Similar thing will happen to those who consume flesh as that does the same in there'. To this man and to all others who try their best in converting meat-eaters into vegetarians, the humble plea of mine is that please do not make use of such threatening stories to make people stop a habit of theirs. Meat is prepared with a lot of spices, that take care in removing the unwanted from the flesh.

The word 'eskimo' literally means 'one who consumes raw meat'. In Canada and Alaska (a territory of the US), there live Inuits and Eskimos who feed on raw flesh. It is a habit that they have acquired due to their ambiance. It is a white desert where nothing germinates and it is impossible for them to obtain oil to burn stoves and also to heat anything. They extract oil from seal fat and that is used only to burn lamps. There is a vigorous training programme that the American troopers are subjected to. In it, the aim is to survive in any hostile environment; for which the soldiers are trained to feed on insects as they are found everywhere in the world in larger numbers (as the world only belongs to them if one goes by the strength of one species' population). Insects are the source of one hundred percent protein with absolutely no source for any fat. In the two illustrations food habit has been an outcome of the environment and not one of ethics.

There are people who consider meat-eaters as criminals. There are people who look down on those feed on animal flesh. Similarly, there are meat-eaters who could never bear to see the killing of the goats, deer, cows and leghorns but gourmands in meat dishes. For these people, meat has been introduced at a very tender age and they have been addicted to the taste of these dishes having never known the method of preparation of them. There are meat-eaters who do not consider the fellow meat-eaters as humans and consider them cannibals if they consume meat on auspicious days (like Fridays, Tuesdays). There are some devout meat-eaters who choose to abstain from meat on certain days; For example on Mondays (not of course for any valid reason for the temporary relinquishment).

In China, people consume everything on the earth. There are dogs caught, slaughtered and consumed. In famous Chinese cities, road side night stalls are hugely popular that that have a very 'wild' culinary taste. They sell fried snakes, scorpions, lizards and what not!

There are two types of vegetarians: vegetarian by birth; the communities in which they are born or religions that they follow preach vegetarianism; and vegetarian by choice. In the second type, the individuals have opted out of meat food. Among these it branches out that there are ovo-vegetarians and lacto-vegetarians or ovo-lacto-vegetarians ( it also includes vegetarians by birth; as many of them are fond of milk and eggs). Among the later type, people who are born in traditional meat-eating families choose to become vegetarians. Among the first type, there are individuals who love to taste meat covertly, since an open gobbling would attract much criticism. Vegetarianism should come after much rumination and fore thought as the choice of opting out should never be one of aversion towards animal flesh or the stench associated with it. If one happens to be a vegetarian by choice (it also includes those who are vegetarians by birth, whether they abdicate meat because of their forcible up-bringing or a realisation of ideology associated with non-consumption of meat), if it has dawned on him or her after much consideration of life on earth, then that individual never preaches vegetarianism, though a devout vegetarian, and never be 'meatogynist', if i am allowed to use this word in the sense that one who hates meat-eaters. There is no criminality in being a meat-eater and there is no speciality in being a vegetarian, unless one has realised that a human being can survive without meat not unlike a tiger; There is a saying in Tamil, 'a tiger would never consume grass even if it were on the death bed because of lack of food'.

A Bookworm

Reading has never been my cup of tea, though I read a lot. Then why do I spend a lot of time in reading? What do I read? These questions of self contradictory features may be posted on the net for 'guess an answer competition'. I do not know for sure whether that I am unconsciously taken to Bacon's statement 'reading maketh a full man'. I was young then when I read Bacon and imagined converting myself a full man, not being happy with half-man or a moron. I am still not happy with what i am now. I would like to dabble in writing now; one more stop in making myself an exact man to quote Bacon. What do these things mean really?

I read for the sake of donning the mask of a teacher. My commitment spurs me to choose things and proceed with them. I do not want to fool around on campuses with a big face (a face grown out of shape for the everyday addition of the burden of books to it) with a 'much read man' written all over it. I assume the existence of such a face, one that gives a gloat to me and makes me look down on others, as the unread swarm around me and make me different or 'indifferent' among or from them. When I was a child, I was fond of books. I always was the first one or one among the first to grab copies of magazines meant for children adorning the 'petty shops'. I remember that the trips with my father to various shops for buying grocery or things required to run one's family always excited me with the idea of looking for the arrival of those magazines; for the sheer pleasure of buying them I agreed to accompany my father. My father was partially responsible for introducing me to those books in an age of dependence when I relied on either my father or my mother to read them to me.


I kept accumulating the magazines that i subscribed to to a greater degree that once my father felt bad about the introduction. It took me a lot of time to come out of that addiction to 'make believe and adventurous' stuff. I hardly recollect how I came out of them. The fad continued only till the age of thirteen as I was confined to a small town where it was a rarity to get access to those 'make believe and adventurous stuff'. Perhaps this too much of reading in an early age generated a hatred towards reading that I stopped reading, which I thought I had done with reading once and for all. The jinx came back to me as I chose to do a post graduate course in literature. I earlier thought of quitting studies, as you know i am not very much fond of reading. I strongly believe in the theory of predestined universe and may be my tryst (not at all secretive) with reading would go on till cutting a stone for me.


It is for these reasons I believe I still read. One, it has possessed me. Two, I do not know how to get rid of it. An additional reason may be that the jinx brings me money and knowledge (must be put only in this order as the first one happens to be more realistic and true and the second one is seldom realised).

Three Cheers for Kathryn Bigelow

Hip Hip Hurrah

The Hurt Locker, one more film about Iraqi war, probably most would have thought, including the writer of this article. Bigelow and Boal have set out to prove they make a different film not just another film on Iraq. The film begins with the American Army's Explosive Ordnance Disposal team at a busy market place in a town of Iraq trying to grapple with the situation of dismantling a bomb. The crew employs a robotic device to go near the explosive bag, that is covered with kemp material. As the robotic device fails in executing the command the person in charge risks his life to go near and trying to place the bomb under some heavy material. A desperate local- man tries to contact somebody over his mobile phone and triggers the detonator of the bomb, is absolutely unaware of the kind of bomb that has been planted there (any technical device that receives and sends signals could detonate the bomb), bringing the technical expert down to the earth. It is only a glimpse of what the army personnel experience day by day not only in Iraq but anywhere in the world in case there is a war.

The tag in the beginning shows that the crew has to remain as the defusing squad for only for forty more days. However, as the new party takes over from the existing one at the end of the film, it shows four hundred days, a multiplication by ten. It brings with it the ennui of staying in the place for more than a year with the mental stress of facing death minute by minute. The film features five great scenes of struggle starting from the beginning. The first scene ends in disaster and the subsequent scenes never fail to elicit heart-throb and finally all end well.

The new bomb expert is passionate about bombs that he even risks his life in finding the kind of fuse that is connected to some eight thousand odd bombs planted in a car. James, the person replaces the dead expert, along with two personnel who are posted to give protection to him, snatches away all credits as they carve a mark in everyone's hearts. James develops friendship with a boy named Beckham, 'named after the famous English foot-ball player', who sells dvds. The boy is killed and a bomb is placed in his viscera. James suspects the owner of the shop of dvds, as the boy is soon replaced by another one, as the one who prompts the terrorists and James forcibly enters into his car and demands him to show the killers of the boy. The Iraqi drops him at a professor's house and cheats on him. The professor's wife is violent towards the American soldier though the professor is warm in getting him acquainted with the situation.

James and Sanborn are the two who stay till the end of the expiration of the crew's term, as Eldrige is injured in an exchange of fire between the planters of bomb and the crew. The film achieves its finale with a terrible scene. The crew is summoned to another market place to defuse a bomb that has been attached to an alive Iraqi. Though James feels pity for the victim he is not sure whether the victim is genuine or an imposter in the guise of a common man. Notwithstanding to his hunch, he tries to break the iron clamp with a wrench. As it is a time bomb, he seeks pardon from the local man and runs away for his life. The destined man accepts his fate and resolves himself to flames. There are some wonderful scene sequences with fantastic camera angles. The cameramen have done a lot of hard work in trying to bring things at the war site to viewers. In some scenes the cameras shiver to conform themselves with the place of action.

The crew of the film finished shooting by 2008 itself. It waited for over a year to find distributors as no one was ready to come forward. No body knew what prevented them from coming forward but the film has received much praise and appreciation after its release and has done well in the academy awards event too.

Paramours and Concubines

Not an Adult-only Subject

An interesting thing came to my mind, when i was reading a short story by Kamala Das, a famous South Indian writer, who wrote both in Malayalam in the soubriquet, Madhavikutty, and in English. The name of the story is 'That Woman', a very small story running only to one and a half pages. The thing that struck me was why not have a say about concubines and illicit lovers also illicit wives of people. The story took me to a far-off place McLean, Virginia, where lives the royal descendent Eleanor Hermon, who published a very beautiful and much researched book SEX WITH KINGS. Titilating title, isn't it. As a matter of fact the book did not deal with how kings had sex and not even about postures and alluring costumes (or costumes-less). The book deals with poignant stories of famous courtesans and concubines of kings. Due to several political reasons, kings were often forced to marry princesses of neighbouring kingdoms. One can enjoy reading Shakespeare's Henry V's, in it the king marries the French princess to bring reconciliation between warring French and English armies, scenes of hilarity involving the conversation between Henry V and his newly wedded princess, who does not know English and the king does not know French and they both make love in bed-room with an interpreter. In this case it had a positive effect.

Kings needed not a physical companion but an intellectual consort who could give solace to the exhausted king, who comes after a lot of mental stress, that he is subjected to in his parlor. Herman makes use of the marriage between King Charles and Diana and Charles' association with Kameela Parker. If beauty is taken into account Kameela is no match to Diana (according to Herman), but still there is something more than outward appearance that makes people fall for concubines. SEX WITH KINGS deals also with what happens to those concubines as they lose their beauty due to old age, or they lose their position on the sudden demise of their lover-king, as they usually incur a lot of wrath from the legal, crown-queens. In the book Herman notes down sorry tales of those concubines who have been driven out of kingdoms, berated at and even jostled up or sometimes even burnt alive. There is also reference about some people turning to churches and prayer-houses for help by becoming nuns and spend their remaining lives doing service to humanity to make amends for their life as paramours.

Kamala Das' 'That Woman' is an Indian representation of such an angle. It has the first person narration and the gender of the narrator is not revealed to the readers. The forcible utterance of words and the exhibition of anger may make people come to a conclusion that the narrator must be a young man. The narrator's father left the family to live with another woman. The news of his death was reported to the family through a barber. No sooner the narrator's mother did listen to the news than she swooned, probably an inherent, unexhibited love for a ditcher finding an outlet in this fashion. The immediate reaction of the narrator was to reach the place of the other woman's and secure from her any will or testament, had the father left any in her. The person sounded cruel in treating the father's concubine. She was much upset and in tears bereaving her husband (too). The narrator gave only thirty minutes to her to leave and she obeyed without taking anything from home. Her reaction even moved the narrator who expected her to turn once again to see the corpse for the last time, while she was on the corner of the street. The story ends there but it makes the readers emotional as there is none to support the woman, who, though a prostitute, to the first and legal wife, was also loved by the dead soul, and she had nowhere to go, as she revealed that in the form of question put to the corpse.

Dog's Philosophy

Animal Life


Philosophy, a subject much discussed, mused over, contemplated deeply and ruminated long for a better understanding of life, branches out Metaphysics, a discipline that regulates ideas of life and physical existence, that provides scope for reaching beneath and up one's material existence. The word meta acts as prefix in loan words having several meanings. A few are 'along with', 'beyond', 'behind' and 'among'. When it is prefixed 'physic', it tends to describe a possibility of overreaching one's presence on the earth. Humans make much fuss over their life and trouble things a lot. Edward Fitzgerald's translation of Omar Khayyam' s 'Rubaiyat' is often quoted for Fitzgerald's faulty understanding of the oriental custom and living methods. In one such 'Rubaiyat', Khayyam openly orders people to make the most use of the moment of their lives. Yesterday is dead and tomorrow is not born and one is not sure of its birth at least for oneself, hence think about enjoying life in all possible means not worrying about committing sins, falling prey to diseases and succumbing to emaciation.

I was much worried about some of the imaginative translations of Fitzgerald, though his is the best of Persian translations. I read Khayyam for the first time some ten years ago. However now I would like to endorse Fitzgerald's translation as worthy and to the point because of having observed the life of a female dog that lives on our street. This dog may be six or seven years old and one of the beneficiaries of food from my house. I have been observing its life style ever since it became deflowered and subsequently pregnant. It would have delivered some thirty to thirty- five puppies so far. It is one of the healthy dogs and survives with fine health though some of its sons and daughters kicked the bucket due to illness (not including those that died in accident and faced pre-mature death thanks to grateful humans), after attaining puberty. Due to its old age (a dog is expected to live for only ten years, either a year or two less or more, but street dogs do not sustain long thanks to 'serene' environs of their livelihood), the last three deliveries had been burdensome to it. Nothing deterred it from enjoying life fully. There was a litter of seven in its last engendering and due to lack of nutrition three died in birth and the remaining four (all male puppies) developed rashes on their skin, that alienated public from adopting them (they are usually fond of male ones). It usually allows its puppies to feed first and then eats the remaining. Whereas during pregnancy, it growls at their fight to get food and amasses as much as it could, though the puppies are less than a year old. There was a time when I thought that another pregnancy would be fatal to it. Who is to stop all these things? Nothing is on our hands. Another mating season approached and things went as usual and the dog was very much at them as they were seasonal and honoured with divine respect.

To digress to the subject that was discussed five lines above, the puppies survived but one of them was fatally run over by a motor-cyclist and another one breathed its last due to some mysterious illness (no vet is ready to treat non-volunteered patients and no mongrel is ready to take the ailing to vets) a month ago. The ten year old bitch's progeny are everywhere in the town now and they at times mate with their mother (there is such a scarcity of bitches in places that male dogs have to fight for a small space of 'cock- pit'). In this world of high chaos of human life, no one is bothered by a simple existence of dogs. The protagonist of our story lives with much ease doing what it needs to do each day and doing that with utmost sincerity unminding any consequence and not spending much time in reverie of what could happen to their species in future (may be in immediate future as the threat is imminent). This small piece is worth a lot of much researched out philosophy. Hope the readers are in concurrence with the writer.

Silent sufferings

Silent Sufferings


There are two short stories that i would like to share with others. One is Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour' and the other one is by James Grover Thurber's 'The Unicorn in the Garden'. In the first story the wife Mrs Mallard, has a brittle heart that could never take either rapture or disconcert. It is informed to her brother in law that her husband died in a rail road accident and he manages to convey the shocking news to Mrs Mallard in a way that is malleable to her heart. The terrible shock makes her shut herself in a room alone awhile and rue over the life of hers with her husband. She is much grieved and looks into the bleak future with the bereaved husband. As she is sitting in a chair, her mind slowly thinks about a life without her husband; the possible free time that she would get and the freedom she would enjoy in her all walks, a life of inner comfort and struggle-free living, all these things bring fresh air to her. She comes out of the room as a recovered and rejuvenated wife who is parted with the news of the arrival of her husband unhurt, not being scathed to their residence. She swoons immediately and looses her breath in what according to the physician 'ecstasy kills'.

In the second story, a sleeping wife is woken up by her husband to inform her about a unicorn gracing in their garden. A Unicorn is a mythical horse with a horn at the centre of its muzzle. She shushes her husband and resumes her sleep. The husband is overwhelmed by the unicorn eating tulips and roses and he is at great rapture to part the same with his wife. The wife becomes concerned and dials police and psychiatrist. They are informed what has happened which the husband connivingly denies and allows the wife to be taken to an institution. Both stories discuss husbands who have done some silent harm to their wives. One story is written by a male writer and the other one is by a woman. The gender point has no effect in conveying the ills done to the 'weaker sex'.

Women's Reservation Bill

March 8th International Women's Day, a special day for Indian women as the ruling Congress Government have decided to table the Women's Reservation Policy Bill on that day or a day after to concur with the spirit of the global populace. A statistics says that after the successful clearance of the bill into a law, India would be a nation with a maximum representation in both central as well as state houses of people's representatives. In both Europe and the Americas the representation is only closer to twenty-five percent, that is a way much shorter than the prospective strength of Indian representatives. A good news to hear. However a closer observation will make things difficult to digest. It has been six decades since India was declared an independent state. Gandhi's dreams of liberating and uplifting women have yet to be realised. India has had a lot of reservations over these years and no one has done any stock taking so far. Yet another reservation in these times of high crisis and uproar would not make things any better. Do these reservations help in any way progress towards any better environs? I have not got any statistical data to substantiate my views. How ever, what I personally feel, having seen the functioning of the reservation policy in local body executions over the past ten years, that it does not augur well. Male politicians, who are powerful functionaries of a political party would win a seat for his wife, sister, cousin-sister or would be wife and continue to dominate in the arena of decision making and governance. Women would not act as mere endorsers of the views of men of power, be it at home or without home. What i personally believe that that would have a chance of transforming society is a continuous, committed approach in educating women about life around them and life outside their home bringing them out of their cocoons to visualise a myriad world of vice and virtue co-existing and pulling each other down in the process of climbing to superiority. I am not against the development of women. What i suggest is a holistic approach that strongly commits itself to see to it that one achieves what one visualises and intends to achieve.