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.