SOURCE: Das, Kamala, and Eunice de Souza. “Kamala Das.” In Talking Poems: Conversations with Poets, pp. 29-40. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999.

[In the following interview, Das discusses her writings and her life.]

Kamala Das was born in 1934. Her collections of poetry include Summer in Calcutta (Delhi: Rajinder Paul, 1965), The Descendants (Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1967), The Old Playhouse and Other Poems (Madras: Orient Longman, 1975), Only the Soul Knows How to Sing (Kottayam: D.C. Books, 1966). With Pritish Nandy she published Tonight This Savage Rite: The Love Poems of Kamala Das and Pritish Nandy (New Delhi: Arnold Heinemann, 1979). Collected Poems was published in 1984 (Trivandrum: Nava Kerala Printers) and her autobiography My Story in 1976 (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers). She has published one major novel, several novelettes and volumes of short stories in Malayalam, under the pen-name Madhavikutty. She has also published short stories in English and in English translation. She was awarded the PEN Prize in 1964, the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for fiction in 1969, the Chaman Lal Award for Journalism in 1971, the Asian World Prize for Literature in 1985, the Indira Priyadarshini Vrikshamitra Award in 1988, and the Valayar Award and the Sahitya Parishad Award in 1998. In 1984, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the World Academy of Arts and Culture, Taiwan.

[de Souza]: I'm interested in knowing something about the influence of your mother on you as a writer. She's an icon in Kerala.

[Das]: My mother's writing did not ever generate any controversy. Her poetry was exactly what society prescribed for a respectable woman-poet of her time. She wrote of a mother's all-consuming love for her children. The women in her poetry called their husbands ‘master’. Although born a Nayar, that is, into a matrilinear and matriarchal community, she fell under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi whose background was unashamedly patriarchal. I sensed the hypocrisy so evident in my parents' marriage and decided never to emulate them. Although my mother wrote incessantly of her happy marriage, I heard her quarrel with my father every night. I used to wake up from sleep at midnight hearing the sounds of their quarrel and lie in my bed, trembling with unease. My mother had been ordered to wear khaddar a day after she married my Gandhian father. I disliked the austerity thrust upon people by Mahatma Gandhi. I yearned to wear coloured silks and jewellery.

Did you ever discuss your work with her?

No. I did not ever discuss my work with her. We belonged to two different worlds and the paths we trod were dissimilar.

But your first encounter with poetry was her work?

Yes. When we were in school in Calcutta, my father worked for a British firm. We had a number of servants, so my mother could spend a great deal of time writing. Every time I came home from school, I saw her lying on a four-poster bed, writing. I thought it was a woman's job to write. My mother didn't read her work to the children, but she used to read out lines or poems to my father who was an old-fashioned gentleman. I wrote my first poem when I was six and showed it to my mother. Recently I found my ninth-standard textbook in which I had written a love poem for my English teacher who was forty-eight years old. I was thrilled to find it. My mother wrote some poems about me, one of them about teaching me to walk. It's a well-known poem which people memorize. Then she turned to theosophy and her poems were not as simple as the earlier ones, and my father was not so thrilled with them.

The editor of a book of your short stories mentions that you did not want your grandmother to know about the kind of things you wrote about in Malayalam, adultery, for instance. She seems to have been a force in your life too.

I visited my grandmother during my summer vacations. Unlike my mother, she believed in demonstrating her fondness for me. She kissed me, plaited my hair, and slept beside me on the same bed. She was puritanical, so I wrote my stories using a pen-name, Madhavikutty.

A commentator has mentioned that your frankness is part of your upbringing as a Nayar woman. From what you have said, it doesn't seem to be an integral part of being a Nayar woman.

I was not brought up as a Nayar woman. My father was the family bread-winner and he treated us all like menials. The servants were paid salaries, we were not.

Even so, you write with great freedom, and without the protection of irony. I don't know if you think of yourself as a feminist, but I'd like to claim your poems for feminism.

Others see me as a feminist. I see myself as a feminine creature who loves the company of brilliant men and women. I am not very gender conscious. I don't believe in the feminist demand for abortion. The clergy here love me for that! And abroad they were shocked to hear me sound like Mother Theresa!

You and other women (including myself) who write ‘confessional’ poems have been frequently attacked for writing about the ‘self’. It's seen as personal rather than universal, restricted. But as feminists say, and I agree, ‘The personal is the political.’ When you write about yourself you are also evoking others who have known similar experiences of claustrophobia, alienation, devaluation.

What else is literature? Unless you have an experience to write about, your writing will become second-grade. It becomes like writing history about Akbar. You don't know their feelings. When you write about your own feelings, it is authentic. I like authenticity. I've written plenty of novellas, short stories, plays and essays in Malayalam. When I write about other people, I don't feel fulfilled as a writer. I don't find my face floating above the words. I could be clever like a carpenter who knows fretwork but cleverness was never my motive. I categorize people as people/clever people. Cleverness is not part of the human being. It's something you acquire. You don't write to impress an audience, but you have to get it out. It's attacked by people because it is not what they want to consume. It's for yourself to relieve the moments of pain which only a very young person can suffer. By being yourself you are helping society. My mother is now senile, but she graces the place. There she is. I can't imagine the house without her. She matters by being who she is. Because of my writing many people feel they can come and talk to me. That wouldn't have happened if I had written about fraudulent experiences. I think women make better writers because they don't feel they have to conceal their experiences. I have a number of social commitments but everyone thinks only about sex in relation to my writing.

The idea is we should write about myth and history.

There are so many historians writing history. The only myth that you will want to retain is: ‘I am different.’ I am an entity. It is only as that entity that you can write, produce art. I am innocent enough to think that what I write is new to others. You remind them, ‘This was love.’ I use my body in assessing my lines. If they give me goose-flesh I use them. If they do nothing to my skin I don't touch them. They will be dead lines, like dead skin.

There's the freedom to reinvent oneself too, isn't there? I'm thinking of your autobiography My Story. I'm also thinking of one of my early poems ‘Autobiographical’. It's an invention for a persona. I think of autobiography too as a form of fiction.

I'll not swear everything in that book happened to me. I exaggerated a little bit. You may not have had sex but it figured in the thoughts. If there was an opportunity, who knows? If it's red, make it redder. It's the artist's freedom to deepen the colour. I must have been a very bold young woman. I've been through so many avatars. I can barely remember the person who wrote those passionate poems. Sex I've forgotten. I don't need it. How can I talk about it? It's all of no consequence now. I wrote the book because I thought I was on my deathbed. I needed to be remembered as one who lived a spectacular life.

Your present avatar seems to be a very happy one. You are widely respected in Kerala, and have a popular following. And of course abroad your name is synonymous with Indian writing in English.

I used to think old age would be a terrible time. There are disabilities, but no frustrations. I've picked up strength. I've become very strong. I feel rooted in Kerala. I wasn't so comfy in Bombay. I belong to one of the oldest families in Kerala. In Bombay nobody knows this and Nalapat House [in Trichur district, Kerala] meant nothing. In Kerala you don't have to be rich to be respected, but you have to belong to certain families. People trust me here. They come here for comfort. All the griefs come to roost here. My life was bad at the beginning, but I changed my husband to suit my needs, and towards the end it was a good marriage. But until my husband died he kept me like a child. If I had remained in Nalapat House I would have remained powerful. Anyway, my husband had Parkinson's disease and I looked after him. I had always had this romantic longing to cook for a poor man I loved.

Did Bombay give you anything?

Well, I wouldn't have dreamt of having an affair here in Kerala. Bombay gave you the freedom. I did have some friends there, but not the way they come here. During Emergency Ayub Sayeed filed a suit against me. The Kerala government called me to Kerala as their state guest to report on feasible tourist sites, otherwise I might have ended up in jail. Later I went back to Bombay a triumphant woman, when the Emergency was lifted.

I'm told that among the young your following is tremendous.

They flock around me. They need me to speak the truth. It's their religion. No covering up.

What was the reaction to Summer in Calcutta, your first book in English?

Everyone reviewed it. They had not read such poetry from an orthodox Hindu background. It was unsettling for them. What if their wives started to write or think like Kamala Das? Now I'm fully accepted. They put me on committees. At the time some bitter critic said that I was not even good-looking! I'm not going to deny relationships. I couldn't have written without them. Of course, I wasn't having relationships to find writing material! I was trying to live a life with a little bit of love in it. Toast with a little jam! My marriage was dry toast. It didn't mean I stopped loving my husband. But I wanted someone to go walking with me, swimming with me, play badminton with me. My husband was not interested in these things. Why blame me for being happy? They ask me to deny these things. Why should I? I don't consider such to be a sin.

I'm not a physical person. I never wrote about women's lust because I never felt it. Women pretend, in order to be part of the game. I wrote about men's lust. Celibacy suits me. I like to be physically free and clean. Sex is a messy job but if you have to produce children you have to go through it. At the time I wrote it was necessary for women to write like that. Now it's no longer such a brave gesture. My husband used to like the fact that others found me attractive. I hated him for saying, when I wrote, ‘Make it hot!’ If I disappointed him, he disappointed me. It wasn't a good marriage, but it was a good relationship. We were friends. He was proud of my success, especially when I was called abroad. I was an emotional person. I wanted to be loved. No one told me even the facts of life. I was pushed into the murky waters. My husband never read my love poems. He thought my love was Sri Krishna.

Krishna and Radha appear in your poetry and your stories.

My grandmother would say Krishna is your greatest friend. I thought nobody would be as good as Krishna. I believed that until ten years ago, until I realized Krishna too could be a myth. I've moved away from temples and religions. No edifice can contain God. Religions have an expiry date. If you move away from religion, you go closer to God. The myths are like costumes. You don't need them. Religion is not relevant. I love the character Radha. I've written plenty about her in my stories in Malayalam as well. I always think of her waiting for him who never came back. I don't think any love is completely reciprocated. In one of my stories Radha smeared sandalwood paste on her breasts. She fell asleep, and when she woke up, he still hadn't come and the sandalwood paste was dry. She felt it was such a waste of sandalwood. I understand her. I see her as a human being.

The theme of adultery in the Radha-Krishna stories?

Adultery has always thrilled me. My favourite reading was Anna Karenina. I liked Madame Bovary. I would have been satisfied if I had been punished like them. If I committed a sin it was in a sinless way. I gravitate to wicked men. I come from a house of virtue. My uncles, my brothers are all very ‘good’ people.

Are there any other Malayali women writers who were outspoken?

Lalithambika. She belonged to the priestly Namboodiri caste. She wrote stories against such customs as keeping women virtual prisoners in the house, marrying young women off to very old men. Nayar women were different. A wife could just leave the husband's clogs outside the door if she no longer wanted him. I am fully aware of a woman's privileges. But some families went out to patriarchal areas and learnt bad habits. My mother became the most respected of the women writers, a cult figure, but she didn't shock anyone. One day Ismat Chugtai came to our home at Bank House in Bombay, and when she heard a line of my mother's ‘O master at your feet …’ she said, ‘Balamanni Amma, why did you do this to us?’ But my mother was not following any fads.

Do you have much contact with writers in Kerala?

Here in Cochin where I am based now, writers meet at my home on the first Sunday and read their new work. They like to say, ‘Our ideas are lofty.’ The loftier you get, the more artificial the poetry. They are completely out of touch with reality. I've tried translating Malayalam poetry. But the translated poems can't stand international scrutiny. Internationally, the tone that is appreciated is a casual tone, even if one is speaking about death. Malayali poets read a lot but I can't hear any original voices. They don't write from their own lives, but from what they've picked up. The novel is better. We are influenced by Latin American writers. Twenty years ago we fell under the spell of Kafka, Dostoevsky. Latin American writers are very fashionable just now. Everything has to be political to get an award here. The literature is so muddied. I can't hear an authentic voice.

But Kerala is a good place for writers. It's a good place in the sense that it brings them money. Novelists do well, and columnists. For some writers there is a strong sense of audience—M. T. Vasudevan Nair who makes all the women cry. There's Thakazhi Shivashankara Pillai's Cheemeen. I'm not fond of such superstitions as the ones that appear in his book. If the woman is unfaithful the husband's boat will sink. But Pillai is a cult figure, like my mother.

We are always told that significant things are happening only in the languages, and not in English.

I think they are not referring to poetry but to the novel. But I think of culture as a river. There is even the River Saraswati which disappeared. Perhaps it disappeared into ourselves and we have to find the source within ourselves if we are going to write.

You've read abroad many times. What was it like?

When I was going to read at Columbia I was told to be careful not to be politically incorrect. India is free but the U.S. is not, I discovered. I was so scared. I have some friends there, Ted Ricardi and his wife. They told me to look at them if I was nervous. If they felt I was a politically incorrect person they should not have brought me over. I'll never change. My poem ‘Composition’ is politically incorrect because it contains the phrase ‘lesbians hiss’. I was told to delete such references as it would hurt people. When I was in Germany, one of the professors said to the audience that I would interpret my own poems. I asked him to interpret them. He made the poem he read some kind of post-colonial thing. I didn't understand a word. I'm not political. Another professor said I was a deeply religious poet when he was reading a simple love poem. I whispered to his wife that he was making a mistake. Then I realized that one poem can be interpreted in many ways. The poem is out of your control once it is published. A teacher can give the poem strength or weaken it.

You're an activist now? In the two days I have been here, you've had so many requests to attend functions, give speeches about children's rights, pose with orphans.

I'm a part-time activist. It should not become chronic, the everyday climate of my life. Garnish with misery. Don't make it a meal. I like fun. I want to be able to help too.

You say you are not political. But you have stood for elections.

Yes, in 1984 and I lost. Recently I was asked by Ajay Bharat, a new party formed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, to be their candidate in Kerala. I was to be the only candidate. But I don't feel up to it. I would have enjoyed campaigning. In 1984 I campaigned for a month. I would have done so now if I had the health.