SOURCE: Manohar, D. Murali. “Man-Woman Relationship with Respect to the Treatment of Love in Kamala Das's Poetry.” In Kamala Das: Treatment of Love in Her Poetry, pp. 14-53. Gulbarga, India: Jiwe Publications, 1999.

[In the following essay, Manohar traces Das's depiction of the male-female dynamic in her verse.]

In the life of a woman or a man there are happy as well as sorrowful events. Neither the sorrowful events nor the happy events can be forgotten. In order to understand the man-woman relationship in terms of love in Kamala Das's poetry one could ask questions like:

a) What is man-woman relationship?

b) What is man's conception of his relationship with woman?

c) What is woman's conception of her relationship with man?

d) Is family/man/husband responsible for the woman's unhappy life?

e) What happens if there is no understanding between man and woman?

f) Is there any way to change the unhappy life to a happy relationship?

g) If there is one, what is it?

To answer the above questions I study Kamala Das's Poetry as a continuous whole concentrating on selected representative poems for close analysis, as it is not possible to analyse every poem or line that she has written during the long span of 1951-1993. For the sake of convenience I shall divide this chapter into four sections: Section I, poems written during 1951-60; Section II, poems written during 1961-70; Section III, poems written during 1971-80; Section IV, poems written during 1981-93.¹

SECTION I: POEMS WRITTEN DURING 1951-60

The main concerns of this section are the growth of the relationship between man and woman; sexual conception as well as expectations of man and woman's yearning for love; failure in marital relationship due to parents' fault, and seeking extra-marital relationships; thoughts of great-grandmother and grandmother in the absence of husband's love and repentance for having sought extra-marital relationships.

A man cannot live alone in his life. He has to marry a woman. In the same way a woman cannot live alone. She has to marry a man. When man and woman marry a relationship develops between the two. However one could ask: can't a man or woman lead a life without marriage? Anita Desai seems to feel it is possible as in the case of Bim in her novel entitled Clear Light of Day (1980). The central character Bim leads a fruitful life without marrying a man. She even wins the heart of the reader by sacrificing her life while looking after her younger handicapped brother, Baba. A man and a woman must be physically and mentally mature in order to understand each other. The Indian Government has stipulated a minimum age for marriage. For a man it is twenty-one years and for a woman it is eighteen years. But Kamala Das's woman is married at the age of sixteen as she says in a poem entitled “An Introduction”²:

I was child and later they
Told(3) me I grew … a youth of sixteen …
Dress in sarees … be wife, they said.

(Das 1973⁴: 26-7)

The woman tells that she is asked to dress in sarees as she has grown up. Now she is a youth of sixteen. And she is asked to be a wife. Thus she is married at the age of sixteen. Though the woman is married at the age of sixteen one can't raise the question of legality as the minimum age for girls during 1950's was sixteen. This date is important for us because we are looking at the poems written during 1950-61.

Man expects to make love to the woman he marries irrespective of her age. Traditionally a married man, just like this husband of a “youth of sixteen”, thinks of his wife as a sexual object, a person to look after their child(ren). Therefore, the wife says

he drew a youth of sixteen into the
[b]edroom and closed the door.

(26)

Notice the word “drew”. Is woman an object to draw? Unless the man's view of a woman is that of a sexual object. When he draws his wife into his bedroom he expects his wife to be an unquestioning thing.

The woman wants obviously love, not lust, from her husband. Let me make clear what I mean by “love” and “lust”. Love emerges when both are concerned about each other in a sexual affair whereas lust is something that one gets without the thought of the other. Here the woman says:

I asked for love when not knowing what else to ask
For, he drew a youth of sixteen into the
Bedroom and closed the door. He did not beat me
But my sad woman-body felt so beaten.

(26)

One can see that the wife is not mature enough, as a sixteen year girl cannot be physically and mentally mature and she “asked for love, not knowing what else to ask. …” However, she would expect love from her husband. On the contrary, the man draws his “wife” into the bedroom and closes the door and makes love. After the husband makes love to his wife how does the “woman-body” of sixteen feel? The wife says that the man did not beat her. But due to her innocent age the “woman-body” feels “beaten”. Thus the woman's expectations have been shattered. The wife is unhappy because of the man's lust. What the woman wants is love and not lust. One could ask: who is responsible for her early unhappy married life? Of course the parents. Let us see how parents are responsible. The woman says:

I was child and later they said I grew,
for, I became tall, my limbs swelled and
one or two places
Sprouted hair … Dress in sarees …
be wife, they cried.

(Das 1991: 12-13)

The word “they”, presumably, refers to her parents. The parents have asked the woman to wear sarees. They have asked her to be a wife, because parents those days believed that a girl has to be married soon after menstruation. One can't find fault with the parents of the older generation because most of them were uneducated. If a girl, with her teen age passion gets involved in a sexual affair and becomes pregnant, there will be very serious problems to her as well as to her parents. Owing to this kind of thinking the parents get the girl (in the poem) married at a very early age and so become responsible for her unhappy early married life. We have seen in the above poem that there is no understanding between the husband and the wife, because the husband has not offered love to his wife which she has expected from him. On the other hand, he is indifferent to his wife's body. Since there is no understanding between them, the wife seeks love and comfort in an extra-marital relationship. The woman says:

Later, I met a man. Loved him. Call him
not by any name, he is every man who wants his
woman, just as I am every woman who seeks love.

(13)

The word “later” means that after a few days of married life, the woman meets a man who has concern for her as opposed to her husband. As Sharma puts it: “What she wanted happened what she needed had not” (Sharma 1979: 24). The word “wanted” refers to the physical union with her husband. The word “needed” refers to “love”. The needed love is absent from her husband. So she loves the man whom she meets. Das's woman pleads with the reader no to look at him negatively because he also needs what she does. Both of them seek “love.” According to Devindra Kohli (1975), “[w]hen Kamala Das speaks for love outside marriage she is not really propagating adultery and infidelity, but merely searching for a relationship which gives both love and security” (27). Does the extra-marital relationship continue? No. Perhaps she thinks that it is not good for her to go on with the above relationship. What does she do? She thinks of her grandmother in a poem entitled “My Grandmother's House” and her great-grandmother in a poem entitled “Blood”:

My great grandmother
Touched my cheeks and smiled.
She was really simple.
She told us
That we had the oldest blood [.]

(Das 1991: 15)

Since she is not getting enough love from her husband she thinks of her great-grandmother who touched the woman's cheeks and smiled. One may ask: does the thought have any relevance here? It does have. The lack of love from her husband made her seek an extra-marital relationship. Therefore, the woman thinks that it is better to think of someone who had offered love to her. The woman also recalls her great-grandmother's simplicity and her tradition. Perhaps the oldest blood refers to purity, and chastity. Hence, the woman's family is not a family which seeks extra-marital relationships.

After the thought of her great-grandmother, she now thinks of her grandmother:

There is a house now far away where once
I received love … you cannot believe, darling,
Can you, that I lived in such a house and
Was proud, and loved. …

(Das 1973: 32)

Kamala Das's woman received love from her grandmother too during her childhood. She cannot forget the love of her grandmother although she is far away from her. The woman is also saying that a woman can't be either with her parents or with her grandmother forever (as she is sent to her husband to live separately); one day or the other, mostly after marriage, she has to be away from her family. It is a tradition in India, by and large, that a woman is sent to her husband's place after her marriage. However, the woman was and is proud of her grandmother who showered love on her.

After her thoughts go back to her great-grandmother and grandmother, she cannot escape from the harsh reality just as the speaker of Keats's poem entitled “Ode to Nightingale” cannot after going away into the world of imagination “on the viewless wings of poesy” (Keats 1856: 247). The woman says:

I who have lost
My way beg now at stranger's doors to
Receive love, at least in small change?

(Das 1973: 32)

The woman has lost the love of her husband; he is only interested in lust. Therefore, the woman says that she has “lost (her) way.” The word “way” refers to her great-grandmother and grandmother. At present she has to “beg” degrading herself at strangers' doors to receive love, after her grandmother has “died of fever” (Das 1991: 15) and because her husband is not capable of offering love. She wants love, at least in small change. The phrase “small change” reveals the woman's agony and desperate yearning for love. Does the thought of going back to her great-grandmother and grandmother change her unhappy life to a happy one? No, because the great-grandmother and grandmother are no more. Therefore, she seeks a happy relationship in future by accepting herself as both a sinner and a saint:

I am the sinner. I am the saint.

(27)

She is a “sinner” because she has had an extra-marital relationship with a man other than her husband which is against her family background, Indian culture and tradition. She is a “saint” because she is in search of love. Furthermore, she still adheres to Indian culture and tradition considering herself a sinner and believing in religious and philosophical ideas. Acceptance of the present, and repentance, make her look forward to the future.

SECTION II: POEMS WRITTEN DURING 1961-70

The main thrusts of this section are to show the importance of chastity at the time of marriage; the conceptions of the man of his wife's role as a housekeeper rather than (as in Section I) as a sexual object; and the woman's view of herself as Radha to Lord Krishna as opposed to the yearning (as in Section I) for love; the woman's failure (as in Section I) in having an ideal relationship due to her parents' fault and a lack of understanding (as in Section I) between the husband and the wife. Therefore, the wife seeks an ideal lover like Lord Krishna, and while in search of the ideal lover she gets involved in sexual relationships with lovers who (except a pock-marked man), only lust after her like her own husband. Having failed to find the ideal lover, she considers Lord Krishna as her ideal lover and accepts her sins and evaluates her life.

Now about the question of chastity in marriage. Kamala Das's woman says in a poem entitled “Radha”:

The long waiting
Had made their bond so chaste, and all the doubting
And the reasoning
So that in this first true embrace, she was girl
And virgin crying[.]

(Das 1991: 25)

The woman's “long waiting” is nothing but a waiting for marriage. Kamala Das declares that her woman is a “virgin” at the time of her husband's first true embrace. This is what Indian culture and tradition believes in. When the virgin has sex with her husband, either the man or the woman or both may experience some difficulty. Here in the following lines the wife is undergoing difficulty:

Everything in me
Is melting even the hardness at the core
O Krishna, I am melting, melting, melting
Nothing remains but
You.

(Das 1991: 25)

Perhaps, Das's woman is a worshipper of Lord Krishna as the above lines reveal. Therefore, she remembers Lord Krishna in the above poem to get solace from Him during her sex with her husband. The first time with her husband is painful. She cannot bear the pain, because she is “girl” and “virgin”. Therefore, she calls Lord Krishna to provide sufficient energy in order to bear the pain in the “melting” business. The repetition of the word “melting” heightens the sense of suffering (Rahman 1981: 27). By referring to Lord Krishna, and in the use of the word “melting” Das's woman expects not only physical love but also ideal love.

On the other hand, the woman complains of her man in a poem entitled “Composition”:

I must pose.
I must pretend
I must act the role
Of happy woman,
Happy wife.

(Das 1991: 28)

Is this what every man expects? Certainly not. But at least some married men expect a wife to be a happy house-keeper. There are men who do not belong to the above category and have changed their ideas about the role of a wife. This change may be due to the influence of the Women's Liberation Movement or due to their reading of feminist issues, to mention only two possible influences. Moving to the woman's complaint, the woman not only explains how she poses, pretends, and acts as a happy wife but also reacts against it and is critical of her husband. This marks a departure from the woman's behaviour in Section I:

Yet I can never forget
The only man who hurts,
The only one who seems to know
The only way to hurt.

(30)

The sorrowful event cannot be forgotten. So she is not able to forget the husband who knows only how to hurt her. The repetition of the words “only” and “hurt” lay emphasis on her torturing husband. In Jones' words to write “frankly about sexuality in a society which expects wom[a]n to be modest, submissive and unobtrusive is in itself an act of rebellion” (1986: 195)⁵ against her husband.

Let us see then what the woman expects from the man. The woman, as Jones points out, reveals her expectations with utmost frankness:

I want to be loved
And
If Love is not to be had,
I want to be dead; just dead.

(28)

Any woman, especially a married woman, expects “to be loved” just as Radha is loved by Lord Krishna rather than be lusted. Harish Raizada (1983) opines that “what [the] woman ‘hungers’ for is not lust but love, ‘simple love’, which she considers a necessity of her life” (130). If she does not get the necessary love in her relationship with the husband, what does she do? At first she thinks that it is not possible to have an extra-marital relationship in the Indian context. Therefore, she says “if love is not to be had” she wants to be dead, just dead. Instead of undergoing the torture of this relationship, she wants to be dead. K. R. Ramachandran Nair (1993) also views that the woman's “ideal relationship is based on mutual love without lust, passion without desire and possession and sympathy without condescension” (99).

Let us see what Kamala Das⁶ herself as a poet has to say about her views on the man-woman relationship:

A man, not loving a woman, but only feeling lust, has to right at all to touch her, and defile her. He should not enter her. I think it is like counterfeit money. The whole place is full of that. And that is precisely what I have written about, nothing else, nothing more shocking.

(Das 1990: 159-60)

Furthermore, the woman in the poem entitled “Vrindavan” says:

Vrindavan lives on in every woman's mind
and the flute luring. …

(Das 1991: 48)

The wife talks as a representative of married women and expects her husband to be like the flute luring Krishna who gives ideal love. The understanding arising out of an ideal love stays for some time as revealed in the following lines from “The Seashore”:

… the only face I remember
Then is yours, my darling, and the only words, your
Oft-repeated plea, give me time, more time and I
Shall learn to love. How often I wish, while you rest
In my arms that I could give you time, that this great,
All enveloping thing I offer you, calling
It meekly, love, can take us to worlds where life is
Evergreen, and you, just at those moments raise your
Red eyes at the smile, perhaps, at the folly
Of my thoughts.

(Das 1991: 33)

The wife remembers only her husband's “face” as he is her life partner. Hence, she says “my darling”. The husband has pleaded with his wife to give him time to learn how to love her in order to fulfil her expectations. The wife has “often” wished that she could give him time. Meanwhile, she wishes to give him the “all enveloping thing” which will take them to the “evergreen world”. Just when both of them seem to have an understanding, the husband, surprisingly, raises his “red eyes” at the wife and perhaps at her smile also, suggesting that her thoughts are foolish. Thus she says:

I see you go away from me
And feel the loss of love I never once received.

(Das 1991: 33)

The understanding between the two, thus, fails as she sees him going “away from” her. She feels the loss of “love” which she has been expecting from him. Her expectations, thus shattered, she feels troubled as in the poem entitled “In Love”:

While I walk
the verandah, sleepless,
a million questions awake in me
and all about him and this
skin-communicated thing
that I dare not yet in his
presence call our love.

(Das 1991: 36-7)

The wife undergoes sleepless nights as her husband does not have patience to understand her feelings and thoughts. Therefore, she walks around the verandah and asks herself a million questions. Questions about whom? About her husband. About “this skin-communicated thing.” It is not just this “skin-communicated thing” that he should be interested in, but also in understanding and fulfilling her love. Despite all this she has to put up with him as there is no alternative. Therefore, she says in a poem entitled “Convicts”:

We lay
on bed, glassy eyed, fatigued, just
the toys dead children leave behind,
and we asked each other, what is
the use, what is the bloody use?

(Das 1991: 38)

The husband and wife lie in bed mechanically and sleep off after they skin-communicate. They lie in fatigue. They lie just like toys. Then they ask each other whether there is any “use”, rather “bloody use”, in their relationship. Furthermore, she says:

When he and I were one we were neither male
nor female. There were no more words left,
all words lay imprisoned in the ageing
arms of night.

(Das 1991: 38)

They were “neither male nor female” leads us to think of their oneness in love which no longer exists. Look at the next line: “There were no more words”. She emphasises here the fact that the oneness they had felt then is a thing of the past.

Again the wife has a question to her husband with regard to his behaviour during their sexual act: “Can this man with / nimble finger tips unleash nothing more / alive than the skin's lazy hungers?” (Das 1991: 42) in a poem entitled “The Freaks”. In a way she is questioning every man who only lusts after his wife rather than loves her. How long will he take to come into the world of love? Shiv K. Kumar (1992) voices a similar view when he says that Kamala Das portrays her lover (I do not interpret the protagonist as Kamala Das but Das's woman throughout my argument) as someone who only arouses “the skin's lazy hungers” (6).

Furthermore, the wife asks her husband a direct question in the poem entitled “The End of Spring”:

… what is the use
Of love, all this love, if all it gives is
Fear, you the fear of storms asleep in you,
And the fear of hurting you?

(Das 1991: 26)

The wife questions the “use” of “love”, rather lust, if all that comes out of it is “fear”. The husband, as Kurup puts it, is obviously “uncomprehending and indifferent to his wife's emotional needs” (Kurup 1989: 19). What would a wife do when the husband is “indifferent” to her emotional needs? One of the answers she thinks of is dying in a poem entitled “The Suicide”:

I have enough courage to die,
But not enough.
Not enough to disobey him
Who said, do not die
And hurt me that certain way.

(Das 1991: 28)

Look at the conflict in her. At one time she has “courage to die” and at another she has “not enough” of it. Not enough, because she does not want to disobey her husband's words, which means she has concern for him, unlike him, who asks her not to “die” and thereby hurt him. The husband has realised that getting married is one thing and living without a wife is a terrible experience because he is still young. Therefore, he is able to stop her from the thought of dying.

Moving away from the thought of dying, she expresses how it is easier for her to hold the sea than her husband:

Holding you is easy
Clutching at moving water,
I tell you, sea,
This is easy
But to hold him for half a day
Was a difficult task.
It required drinks
To hold him down,
To make him love,
But, when he did love,
Believe me,
All I could do was sob like a fool.

(Das 1991: 30)

In the above lines the comparison between the husband and the sea reveals how crude and harsh her husband is. Notice how “to hold him and make him love” is a very difficult task as opposed to holding the sea. Moreover, she has to give him alcoholic drinks to enable her to hold him, and make him love. Making love is considered mostly a happy event. But the woman's condition is pathetic. All she can do, instead of experiencing ecstasy, is to sob like a fool.

Despite the husband's lust, the wife tries to secure love from him in the poem entitled “Substitute”:

Yet, I was thinking, lying beside him
That I loved, and was much loved.
It is physical thing, he said suddenly,
End it, I cried, end it, and let us be free.

(Das 1967: 7)

She tries to offer love to him, although he is interested in lust. The husband says “it is [a] physical thing” as he is only interested in physical union. The wife is disappointed. So she cries “end it.” Notice the word “cried.” She cries to him to end the physical thing so as to be “free.”

Since her husband has failed to provide love to her, she has tried to provide love for him but fails even in this as we have seen in the above lines. Therefore, she declares her state in a poem entitled “Captive”:

My love is an empty gift, a gilded empty
container; good for show, nothing else.

(Das 1967: 17)

Her own effort has proved to be “empty gift”, “an empty container.” There seems to be only a show of her love for outsiders to get an impression that the husband and the wife have a good relationship. She expresses her grief about her relationship with her husband:

Who can help us who have lived so long and
have failed in love?
.....I am
a freak.

(Das 1991: 42)

The above lines are relevant to any man or woman in their relationship. One could ask: who is then responsible for her present condition? The woman says: “The fault is neither his nor mine” (Das 1991: 53) in a poem entitled “Weeds.” When the woman accepts that neither she nor her husband is responsible for her present condition, one could surmise that the parents of both sides are responsible. I have already indicated in section I how the wife's narrow-minded parents married the girl off at a very early age, resulting in the absence of fruitful relationship between the two.

Now the wife considers herself a tragic figure as in a poem entitled “Drama”:

It was soon my turn to be the
Tragedienne, to take vague steps.
Black gowned, black veiled
And wail, and beat my breast
And speak of unrequited love
I am wronged, I am wronged,
I am so wronged … [.]

(Das 1965: 62)

Her tragic situation intensifies and heightens when she uses the repetitive sentences “I am wronged / I am so wronged”. I do not agree with Eunice de Souza (1977) who points out that this kind of repetitive phrases or words in Das's poems are “weak or pointless.” All the same she says that the “best poems display a strong feeling for rhythm” (62).

Now let us see what happens if there is no understanding between husband and wife. She goes in search of an ideal lover. During her search for an ideal lover like Lord Krishna she gets involved in various sexual relationships. But they also lust after her like her husband. But

she is not a [woman] of free love. On the contrary, she upholds the sanctity of domestic love and marital relationship. But she is disheartened when marital love degenerates into lust, when marital relationship turns into a domination by the male over the female.

(Nair: 98)

The woman says in a poem entitled “The Bangles:

When does a woman go who is
loved but finds love not enough,
To a flatlet away from town.

(Das 1965: 34)

In the above lines there is no question mark. But the lines suggest a question, and there is an answer to the question-like sentence. The answer is that woman goes to a flatlet away from the town to seek enough love which she could not get from her husband.

While in search of an ideal lover she has a sexual relationship as expressed in a poem entitled “An Apology to Goutama”:

[W]hen other eyes haunt my thought, I kiss your
Eyes and shut them, so that I need no longer
See them brood, or their naked, naked fear.
Another voice haunts my ears, another face
My dreams, but in your arms I must today
Lie and find an oasis where memories,
Sad winds do not so much blow, and I must
hear you say, I love, I love, I love. It was
Another who made me lonely, not you.
Your hands with bitten nails, never pain, never
Reject, Another's name brings tears, your's
A calm, and a smile, and yet Goutama,
The other owns me; while your arms hold
My woman-form, his hurting arms
Hold my very soul.

(Das 1965: 19)

The wife tells Goutama that she kisses his eyes and shuts them despite the “other eyes” (the husband's) haunting her thought. However, her husband's “voice,” “face,” haunt her. To get away from being haunted she must find an “Oasis.” One can imagine the lack of love from her husband. Moreover, she wants to hear from Goutama that he loves her. The repetition of the word “love” intensifies and heightens her “endless hunger” for love. She also confesses to Goutama, who is an outsider, that “another” was responsible for her loneliness (a theme in Kamala Das which deserves to be researched upon in depth). Instead of the pain in her husband's hands, she experiences calm and comfort in Goutama's arms. Nevertheless, she tells Goutama that she is owned by her husband. The woman can never ignore the roots of Indian culture and tradition. Therefore, she says that only the “woman-form,” that is the body of wife, is in Goutama's hands but her mind is in her husband's hurting arms.

However, the woman consoles herself about her involvement in an affair with Goutama. She asks herself in the poem entitled “With Its Quiet Tongue”:

But, why cry? or, when even gloat
In solitude? what does a woman lose
or even gain from a love affair?
The passion dying is not a death
At all but a sleep …

(Das 1965: 32)

She seems to suggest that one need not “cry” for having a sexual relationship. A woman does not lose anything from a love affair when she is in search of ideal love. Kirpal Singh (1979) opines that Kamala Das's “frank utterances about sex, love and marriage leave the general reader quite baffled and even overwhelmed by her power to use words with pointed effect” (1). One could understand Singh's view when one considers the question the woman asks in the poem above: “[W]hat does a woman lose or even gloat from a love affair?” No other poet either pre-Independence or post-Independence has dared to articulate as openly as Kamala Das does in the words she makes her woman speak here. I agree with I. K. Sharma (1986) who views that

Kamala Das's chief contribution to modern Indian English poetry is not only the stunning frankness … but also in making public a vast fund of agonies and information regarding woman's psychic experience that lay hidden, for ages in the private female sector.

(43)

There is another man with a pock-marked face who shows interest in the woman. She describes him in the poem “The Testing of the Sirens”:

At my doorstep I saw a pock-marked face
a friendly smile and
a rolleiflex, will go for a drive,
he said. Or, go to see the lakes.

(Das 1991: 58)

Has her husband ever shown interest in taking her to the lakes? A mutual relationship can develop when they go out together. The pock-marked man, on the other hand, invites the woman to see the lake. The woman gets prepared:

I have
washed my face with soap and water, brushed my hair a dozen
times, draped myself in six yards of printed
Voile.

(58)

Look at the woman's interest in washing her face, “brushing” her hair and wearing a sari of six yards of printed voile. This kind of interest is not shown by the woman with her husband because he has never invited her nor has shown any interest.

Furthermore, in conversation with the pock-marked man:

I am
happy. He really was lavish with words.
I am happy, just being with you. But you …
you love another,
I know, he said, perhaps a handsome man,
A young and handsome man. Not young,
not handsome, I thought, just a filthy snob.
It's a one-sided love,
I said. What can I do for you? I smiled.
A smile is such a detached thing, I wear it
like a flower.

(Das 1991: 58-9)

Is she happy? Yes, she is, because

[t]here is a complete lack of rapport … between [the husband] and [the] woman. They have lived together like islands unto themselves. [The husband] is nothing but for his beastly hungers, shallowness, lip love. He can never go beyond the body.

(Singh 1993: 121)

The word “He” in the poem above refers to the lover. He is lavish in using sweet words. She is happy with her lover. The word “you” in Das's lines quoted above refers to the lover. He points out that she likes another. The word “another” refers to her husband. How can she not love her legal husband? The lover forgets the fact that he is just a lover and not a husband. The wife seems to believe in the Indian tradition. When the lover refers to her husband as “young” and “handsome”, the woman tells herself, that he is not, and that he is only a filthy snob. Moreover, she reveals that the husband had only one-sided love, i.e., lust. The husband wants, as Singh has pointed out, only lust. Her thoughts vanish as the lover asks whether he can do anything for her. In reply she smiles at him. Again she tells herself or the reader of the poem that she “wears” a “smile” which is a detached thing like a flower.

As she doesn't ask for anything, the lover himself asks:

I want your photo lying down, he said,
.....Will you? sure. Just arrange my limbs and tell
me when to smile.

(Das 1991: 59)

Has her husband ever though of taking his wife's photo? Here the lover asks her permission to take a snap of the woman. She readily agrees, therefore, the word “sure.” Look at her immediate response without any hesitation. It is this kind of involvement, the kind of ideal love between Lord Krishna and Radha, that she expects from her husband. Meanwhile she wonders:

Ah, why does love come to me like pain
again and again and again?

(59)

The “love” feels “like pain again and again and again” because she has not got it from her husband. The repetition of the word “again,” here like the word “love” in “An Apology of Goutama,” the expression “I am wronged” in “Drama,” and the word “only” in “The Suicide,” intensifies and heightens the “love” that she expects from her husband which unfortunately she could not get.

At last the husband shows concern for his wife, in a poem entitled “Vrindavan”:

[H]er husband
who later asks her of the long scratch
on the brown aureola of her breast
and she shyly replies
hiding flushed cheeks, it was so dark
outside, I tripped over the brambles in woods … [.]

(Das 1991: 48)

After the wife comes home from the pock-marked face man the husband sees the “scratch” on the brown aureola of her breast. Incidentally, it is the first time that the husband is concerned for his wife. But it is too late. She has crossed the line of marital relationship. When asked about the scratch, she lies that due to the darkness outside she tripped over the brambles in the woods. One has to notice that the wife has started concealing things from her husband.

After the pock-marked face lover the wife thinks back on her early married days in comparison with her present situation in which she seeks sexual relationships in search of an ideal lover like Lord Krishna and in the process has become a kind of a whore. She declares her becoming whorish in the poem “The Proud One”:

Perhaps it had begun as a young man's most
Normal desire to subjugate a girl
But when she, being silly, spurred him, he took
the country as his bride and rode her
For thirty years. It is any wonder that
He felt hurt when the old wife turned whorish and
Withdrew from under him? I saw him that day
Lying nailed to his bed, in imitation
Of the great crucifixion, but, loving him,
I found no courage then even to be kind.(7)

(Das 1967: 18)

In the early days of her marriage her husband had subjugated her as though his was the “most normal desire”. The word “most” here can be extended to indicate the behaviour of most men. She expected love from him, but only found lust. She criticizes her husband for having dominated and controlled her for thirty years as is the case with women of Kamala Das's generation. She wonders why such a husband should feel hurt at his wife becoming whorish and no longer being under his control.

When they have failed to understand each other the wife has become whorish as she says in the poem “Substitute”:

After that love became a swivel-door
When one went out, another came in
Then I lost count, for always in my arms
was a substitute for a substitute.

(Das 1967: 7)

Since the understanding between the two has become hopeless, she becomes whorish in order to find an ideal lover. Instead of finding one, she finds only men who lust her. She has even lost count of the men. There is substitute after substitute. What a pitiful and pathetic condition for a wife!

With utmost agony the wife addresses a serious question to men and women in the poem “The Conflagration”:

Women, is this happiness, this lying buried
Beneath a man?

(Das 1967: 20)

Thus she asks men implicitly and women explicitly. In most extra-marital relationships, the man is only interested in the body of the woman. There is no one like Lord Krishna.

It is not only in reality but in dreams also that she looks at strange doorways to seek the ideal lover as she says in the poem “The Corridors”:

Why do I so often in
Dreams linger at strange doorways
Lonely an imposter, watching
The crowd who welcome me—and
know, deep inside, the truth that
They know one by another
Name—a well loved name I am
powerless to recollect?

(Das 1965: 36-7)

One could imagine a brothel house by reading the above lines. What could this convey? Could we say it conveys that in the dream she has become a whore if not in reality? In her case, it is not for a livelihood but for personal satisfaction. The above lines also indirectly point out to her irresponsible and incomprehensible husband and to her emotional and physical desires. Had she been given the physical and emotional desire by her husband she would not have come to the present situation.

However, she talks of her present situation in the poem “Substitute”:

Life is quite simple now …
Love, blackmail and sorrow.(8)

One could see her ironic tone. How could a wife's life of unfulfilled love be “quite simple”? The phrase and the word “quite simple” and “love” are used in an ironic sense. How could one find love in “blackmail” and “sorrow”? Furthermore, she says in the poem “Gino”:

This body that I wear without joy, this body
burdened with lenience, slender toy owned
by man of substance … [.]

(Das 1991: 57)

She feels no joy in her life because of lack of love, only lust. Kamala Das seems to suggest that in any relationship the woman's body becomes an easy target. The body is looked upon as a “slender toy” by men. Most of the men feel as though they have bought the body as one purchases a toy. In fact it is the woman who buys her bridegroom, mostly, by giving him/his parents dowry.

Furthermore, she says:

It will be all right if I join clubs
And flirt a little over telephone

(Das 1967: 6)

When does a wife “join clubs” and “flirt a little over telephone?” It is only when the husband is not able to fulfil her expectations. Even if he knows of his wife's joining the club and flirting a little he will not object, because he has not done justice to her. Therefore, she wants to make her husband grieve when she dies, in a poem “I Shall Some Day”:

I shall some day leave, leave cocoon
You built around me with morning tea,
Love-words flung from doorways and of course,
Your tired lust. I shall someday take
Wings, fly around, as often petals
Do when free in air, and you dear one,
Just the sad remnant of a root, must
Lie behind, sans pride, on double-beds
And grieve. But, I shall someday return, losing
Nearly all, hurt by wings sun and rain,
Too hurt by fierce happiness to want
A further jaunt of a further spell
Of freedom, and I shall someday see
My world, de-fleshed, de-veined, de-blooded,
Just a skeletal thing, then shut my
Eyes and take refuge, in nowhere else,
Here in your nest of familiar scorn. …

(Das 1965: 52)

The wife is addressing, in the above lines, her husband. She tells him that she shall some day leave the cocoon which he has built around her. More specifically, she wants to escape from his “tired lust.” She wishes to leave him, so that he grieves over his loneliness, sans pride. Look at the phrase “your dear one”. It is biting irony. Not only does she prefer to die in the future but also to see her world, which is her body, “defleshed,” “de-veined,” and “de-blooded.” She wants to return just as a skeletal thing in order to show her husband that lust has no value. But why does she want to return to her husband after her death? She wants to come to him because he is the familiar scorner. No wife thinks of returning to her husband “de-fleshed,” “de-veined” and “de-blooded” like a skeletal thing. No man-woman relationship should be like this. She develops her anger over her husband on three counts as K. N. Daruwalla (1989) points out: a) the husband's “skin's lazy hungers” (b) “indifference” towards his wife and (c) “the wife's need for ideal love” which he can't provide (10-11).

Having failed in her search for the ideal lover, the woman turns to Lord Krishna and accepts him as her ideal lover. Anisur Rahman (1981) has rightly said: “Her disgust in failures led her to frantic search for the mythic Krishna, the ideal lover, in whom she has established her eternal bond: (11). Therefore, she says in the poem “Krishna”:

Your body is my prison, Krishna,
I can't see beyond it.
Your darkness binds me,
Your love words shut out the wise world's din.

(Das 1991: 54)

Furthermore, the woman wants to escape the snares of sexual relationship with the lovers, because she says in the poem entitled “The Prisoner”:

I must some day find
an escape from its snare.

(Das 1991: 55)

The word “snare” refers to lust which is found in the sexual relationships with the lovers; therefore, she wants to escape it.

After considering Lord Krishna as her ideal lover, she accepts her sins in the poem entitled “The Descendants”:

We have spent our youth in gentle sinning
Exchanging some insubstantial love [.]

(Das 1973: 33)

The wife only says that she has sinned in her youth. She is conscious of the traditional Indian context. She knows that having a sexual relationship with lovers is nothing but “sin.” Since she is a worshipper of Lord Krishna, she confesses her sins to Him:

We are not going to be
ever redeemed or made new.

(Das 1991: 43)

She still believes in tradition. According to Hindu philosophy and religion a man or a woman who commits a sin, in whatever form it may be, (here it is sexual relationships with the lovers) can't be “redeemed” or “made new”. According to Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita in text 14, 15, 16:

When one dies in the mode of goodness,
he attains to the pure higher planets [.] (14)
When one dies in the mode of passion
he takes birth among those engaged in
fruitive activities, and when he dies
in the mode of ignorance, he takes
birth in the animal kingdom [.] (15)
When the embodied being is able to
transcend these three modes, he can
become free from birth, death, old age
and their distresses and can enjoy
nectar even in this life [.] [16]

[Bhaktivedanta and Prabhupada 1970: 677-684]

Since sexual relationship with the lovers is also part of the “mode of passion”, she can't be free from birth; she has to have a rebirth, therefore, the woman in the poem says “we are not going to be / ever redeemed or made new.”

To sum up Section II, the wife initially in order to justify her sexual relationships uses the Radha-Krishna myth. She moves beyond this to consider Lord Krishna as her ideal lover, and seeks salvation through him for her sins.

In Section I the wife's thoughts go back to her great-grandmother and grandmother in the absence of her husband's love for her, whereas in Section II, the thoughts go back to her early married days where she was subjugated by her husband as though it was his most normal desire. In Section I the extra-marital relationship is only with one person as the poems written during 1951-60 show, whereas in Section II the sexual relationship with the lovers is shown in an aggressive manner where she is in search of the ideal Lord Krishna like lover. In Section I there are no friendly figures, like the pock-marked face man, who resemble the ideal lover, Lord Krishna as in Section II. In Section I, the repentance is only for having committed the sin of seeking an extra-marital relationship in search of love, whereas in Section II it is not just repentance. There is some consciousness of divinity as she considers Lord Krishna as her ideal lover.

SECTION III: POEMS WRITTEN DURING 1971-80

The main emphasis in this section is on the importance of mutual understanding between the husband and the wife, and its failure. Unlike in Section II where the wife has to “pose,” “pretend” and “act as a happy wife,” she is given freedom by the man who is at the same time crude during sex. Finally both the husband and the wife, becoming conscious of their age, forgive each other in order to lead a satisfactory life.

Kamala Das's woman answers the question: “What is man-woman relationship” in the poem entitled “Composition” which she considers one of her favourite poems⁹:

Husbands and wives,
here is my advice to you
Obey each other's crazy commands(10)
ignore the sane.

(Das 1973: 8)

Before analysing the above lines I need to disagree with Sunil Kumar (1992) when he reads the above lines as “she ironically pleads to all women to surrender to the male ego” (61). Kumar ignores the words “each other's”. Kamala Das's woman doesn't advise women to obey their husbands' commands. For that matter one could read it as if she ironically pleads with all men to surrender to the female ego. It has to be understood that Kamala Das's woman has come to realise that when the husband and wife do not obey each other's commands, it would result only in frustrating extra-marital experiences. The woman has learnt that in extra-marital relationship what a woman gets is more useless lust than what she gets from her husband. The body of the woman is looked upon as a slender toy (in “Gino”) owned by the outsider, temporarily. Therefore, she says “obey each other's crazy commands.” The word “crazy” may tempt us to read it in an ironic sense. But it is not irony that I see here because sometimes either the husband or the wife can be illogical. That is why the concept of mutual love is propagated by Kamala Das's woman. T. N. Dhar (1989) views that “understanding and mutual respect,” rather than ignoring of each other's commands, is what Das's woman “regards as the basis of love” (24). Vrinda Nabar (1994) also views that the man-woman relationship is in terms of “mutually fulfilling relationship” (87).

Now let us go back to the poem “Composition”:

When I got married
my husband said,
you may have freedom
as much as you want.

(4)

The woman talks of her early married days again in order to reveal her husband's relationship with her. The husband assures her as the word “said” indicates, that she could have as much freedom as she wants. However, he has not stated what kind of freedom he has in mind. Bruce King (1987) interprets the word “freedom” in terms of sexual experiences and says that her “husband's willingness to let her have her sexual experiences [is] a further blow to her ego” (148). One could agree with King's interpretation as the wife has been involved in extra-marital relationship in search of a lover, an ideal lover like Lord Krishna in the previous sections.

On the one hand he gives freedom to his wife, on the other hand he is rude with his wife during sex. The woman says in the poem entitled “Glass”:

He drew me to him rudely with a lover's haste,
an armful of splinters, designed to hurt and pregnant
with pain.

(Das 1991: 103)

The husband's aim is nothing but to become a father. Therefore, he draws her into his room in order to make his wife pregnant. Kamala Das does not portray any change in the attitude of the husband since her poems of the 1950's. She experiences hurt rather than ecstasy with her husband. The adverb “rudely” shows how rude he is with his wife in the sexual act. He is not concerned about his wife's happiness.

Hence, the wife proposes mutual understanding between any husband and wife as the only way out. She clarifies her position to the reader in the poem “Composition”:

Reader,
You may say,
now here is a girl with vast
sexual hungers,
a bitch after my own heart.
But,
I am not yours for the asking.

(6)

She explains further in the poem entitled “The Stone Age”:

Fond husband, ancient settler in the mind, …
Be kind … you build around me a shabby drawing room,
And stroke my pitted face absent-mindedly while
You read.

(Das 1973: 51)

She pleads with her husband to be kind with her and not be indifferent to her needs, for he only “stroke[s] absent mindedly” while he reads.

While the wife strives for mutual understanding, she reveals her problems and failure in the poem entitled “The Old Playhouse”:

I came to you but to learn
What I was and by learning, to learn to grow but every
Lesson you gave was about yourself. You were pleased
With my response, its weather its usual shallow
Convulsions. You dribbled spittle into my mouth you poured
Yourself into every nook and cranny, you embalmed
My poor lust with your bitter-sweet juices. You called me wife,
I was taught to break saccharine into your tea and
To offer at the right moment the vitamins cowering
Beneath your monstrous ego I ate the magic loaf and,
Became a dwarf. I lost my will and reason, to all your
Questions I mumbled incoherent replies. …
There is
No more singing, no more a dance, my mind is an old
Playhouse with all its lights put out.

(Das 1973: 1)

The wife's expectations of learning about herself are not realized. She is made to learn only about man's lust. She is called as wife by her husband, only a woman who looks after his needs and not a life partner. His “monstrous ego” would not allow him to treat her in any other fashion. She loses her will and reasoning ability and becomes a “dwarf”. She just mumbles incoherently. She says she can no more “sing,” or “dance.” She likens her mind to an old playhouse with “lights put out”. Obviously in any old playhouse there will not be lights to put on. The “lights” refer to the wife's mind. She has no new ideas.

In her continued effort to gain mutual understanding, the woman in the poem entitled “The Sunshine Cat” says:

[T]he men who knew her, the man
She loved, who loved her not enough, being selfish
And a coward, the husband who neither loved nor
Used her, but was a ruthless watcher … [.]

(Das 1979: 22)

The man she loves only lusts after her. Being selfish and cowardly, he simply watches her suffer. Her husband ruthlessly watching her reminds us of what she asks him about her own self in the poem “Composition”:

I asked my husband,
am I hetero
am I lesbian
or am I just plain frigid?

(Das 1973: 4-5)

It is natural for her to pose these questions because her husband neither loves her nor has concern for her desires.

Instead of answering her questions, the woman says:

He only laughed.
For such questions
probably there are no answers
or else
the answer must emerge
from within.

(5)

She is frank in expressing her doubts to her husband, which is unusual. On the contrary, her husband only laughs at her doubts. Since the husband shows no understanding the wife says in despair:

I tell myself
and all of you …
fall in love,
fall in love with an unsuitable
person,
flying yourself on him
like a moth on a flame.
Let there be despair in every move.

(9)

The wife not only tells herself but also women in general. She remarks that a mutually satisfying relationship is not possible. The repetition of “fall in love” emphasises her appeal to the female readers. One can notice the sarcasm in her words.

The wife is disappointed with her failure in having a satisfying relationship. She reveals her condition when she is with her friends in the poem entitled “Sunset, Blue Bird”:

When i am with my friends and talking i remember him
and suddenly i can no longer talk they ask me what is wrong
Why have you turned pale and i weakly shake my head nothing
nothing. …

(Das 1973: 54)

The wife's mind goes back to her husband. She cannot continue her talk as she remembers her unhappy experiences with her husband. She has no intention of revealing to them her despair.

Having experienced failure in her efforts towards an understanding between the two, she makes a general statement about men lusting the woman, whether she is a wife or a whore in the poem entitled “A Losing Battle”:

Men are worthless, to trap them
Use the cheapest bail on all but never
Love, which in a woman must mean tears
And a silence in the blood.

(Das 1979: 12)

Look at the word “bail”, a legal term. The word “all” is important here. She can bail them all, not with the power of love, but only with the body.

In another poem entitled “Ethics” the wife shows her husband's concern with physical lust rather than love:

This night
he smiles at me, on my verandah
under a rash of winter-stars, he smiles,
the busy man must always smile at love;
his eyes window shop, idly they caress
my brow, my lips, my breast, ethically
he can't afford more.

(Das 1991: 70)

The wife observes her husband's gestures which reveal that he is only interested in physical lust. Therefore, ethically he cannot afford more.

Furthermore, in the poem entitled “Ganashyam” the wife says:

His body needing mine,
His ageing body in its pride needing the need mine
And each time his lust was quietened
And he turned his back on me.
In panic I asked don't you want me any longer
Don't you want me
Don't you don't you[?]

(Das 1979: 18)

After the husband's lust is “quietened”, he turns his back to her. Therefore, the wife panics and asks: “Don't you want me / Don't you don't you.” Again the repetition of “Don't you” intensifies and heightens her agony. Therefore, she has to seek extra-marital relationship to find love in the poem entitled “The Stone Age”:

When you leave,
I drive my blue battered car
along the bluer sea,
I run up the forty noisy steps
to knock at another's door.
Through peepholes the neighbours watch,
They watch me come and go like rain.
Ask me, everybody, ask me what he sees in me,
a libertine,
ask me the flavour of his mouth. …
Ask me why like
a great tree, felled, he slumps against my breasts
and sleeps. Ask me why life is short and love is
shorter still, ask me what is bliss and what
its price[.]

(Das 1991: 97-8)

The wife in the first half of the lines above addresses her husband. When the husband leaves, perhaps to the office, the wife drives her battered car; the word “battered” reveals that she is in need of love. She is even conscious of the number of steps she climbs. Why does she have to come to another's door to receive love? It is because the husband doesn't understand her and doesn't have concern for her feelings. The wife asks what does the lover see in her? Why does the man, like a great tree, fall on her breast and sleep? Why is love shorter than life? What is bliss and its price? Perhaps, the wife wants to say that since her husband is not able to understand her feelings and concerns, she is justifying her act; she also refers to the short-lived lust of her lover.

One is reminded of the poem “A Man Is a Season” in which she seeks love in another's arms during her youth:

A man is a season …
To teach me this, you let me toss my youth like coins
Into various hands, you let me mate with shadows,
You let me sing … in others' arms. But I saw each
shadow cast your blurred image in my glass, somehow
The words and gestures seemed familiar. …
I went astray. How would a blind wife trace her lost
Husband, how would a deaf wife hear her husband call?

(Das 1979: 21)

The wife is made to seek men in extra-marital relationships, considering each man a season. She has been led to toss her youth like a coin changing hands. She complains that she has been made to mate even with shadows as he is not capable of mating with her. He lets her have affairs, therefore, the word “sing” is used as a metaphor. However, in each extra-marital relationship she finds the “blurred” image of her husband's lust. The word “glass” refers to her sexual vision. She sees the same gestures in the men as she does in her husband. There is nothing new, rather nothing of love, but only lust. She also claims, perhaps, she has lost her way. The men have only used her body just as one smokes a cigarette without any satisfaction and throws it into an ash tray. Therefore, the wife asks her husband, “how would a blind wife trace her lost husband”? Furthermore, she asks her husband: How would a deaf wife hear her husband's call? Who is responsible for her present condition? The husband. However, S. D. Sharma (1982) doesn't read the questions from the wife's point of view. He interprets them as “the husband['s] outcry: How could a blind wife trace her lost husband, how could a deaf wife hear her husband's call?” (46). Moreover, he also reads the poem as though a man is the speaker of the poem which is not the case. “You are eternity” refers to the legal husband and “the man is a season” refers to the lovers. She says the legal husband is “eternity” although he has treated her unfairly. She calls him this because she yearns for mutual understanding between her and her husband. She is in search of love with various men but constantly finds lust in them. She even reveals the lovers' intention during her relationship with them in the poem “The Sunshine Cat”:

[T]hey said each of
Them, I do not love. I can not love, it is not
In my nature to love, but I can be kind to you …
They let her glide from pegs of sanity into
A bed made soft with tears and she lay there weeping [.]

(Das 1979: 22)

The wife turns to the lovers to seek love. When she asks each of the lovers whether he loves her, he makes it clear to her that he is not interested in love but only in taking her to bed. They are not capable of loving her because they want to marry in the traditional manner, and therefore, they “cannot love.” Furthermore, it is not in their nature. They only take advantage of married women who are themselves in search of love which they don't get from their husbands. Doesn't it happen in contemporary society? Don't we see in newspapers or magazines under the caption “Crime Stories.” These men are kind to her until their aim is fulfilled, that is till they have an affair with her. On the whole, what happens to the wife? Tears fall on her soft bed and she weeps for she has been once again cheated and exploited. Monika Varma's (1973) contention is that “these men do not satisfy [and] they might even be symbolically that which she is given, against what she needs, and gropes for, but can't find” (25). S. C. Dwivedi (1992) views that the woman “longs for love” from them “but she gets lust instead” (68).

Having failed to get love from the lovers she calls them selfish people. She says in the poem “The Millionaires at Marine Drive”:

… no longer was
There someone to put an arm around my
Shoulders without a purpose, all the hands,
The great brown thieving hands groped beneath my
Clothes, their fire was that of an arsonist's,
Warmth was not their arm, they burnt my cities,
Down, it was not blood but acid that flowed,
Through my arteries [.]

(Das 1991: 71)

No one including her husband is there to put an arm around her shoulder, to console her. They are selfish, fulfilling only their lust. They have not worried about her desire for love from them. All the hands including those of her husband's, thieve beneath her “clothes,” i.e., invade her body. They have fixed their aim on her body like arsonists and not like those providing warmth. She identifies her body with cities. They burnt her body. However, why does the poet use the word acid here? In any man or woman blood flows through arteries but the wife thinks that it is not the life-sustaining blood but the life-corroding acid that flows in her arteries.

At last she has stopped seeking fulfilment through extra-marital relationships for she has turned towards them but then has failed in her endeavour. Therefore, she says in the poem “The Wild Bouganvillae”:

… even my bed gave
No rest, but like a troubled sea, tossed me on
Its waves, and how I groaned.
And moaned, and constantly yearned for a man from
Another town. … Then, by
And by, my love wilted, for I took long walks,
Walked roads I had never
Seen before [.]

(Das 1973: 30)

It is not only the lover who has made her suffer. Her own bed has also not given her solace. Her bed instead of giving rest, tosses her up like a troubled sea. The word “waves” refers to the lovers. The wife in Barche's words “groaned” and “moaned” and constantly “yearned for a man loving and a healing touch” (Barche 1991: 11). She has even gone to another town to find a suitable man who can offer love to her. Since she cannot find the lover even in another town, she says, “by and by” her love wilts, therefore, she takes long walks, to places she has not been to in order to forget her failure.

However, her mind changes from the search for love to a search for mutual adjustment. Let us see how the wife changes her attitude towards love so that it leads to a happy relationship. She says in the poem “Composition”:

It may be
that in my heart
I have replaced love with guilt
and discovered
that both love and hate are
involvements.

(Das 1991: 77)

She feels guilty and she repents. It's only through this process that she can arrive at a meaningful relationship. It is not just replacing love with guilt but also discovering that both “love” and “hate” are involved in the seeking of extra-marital relationship, “love” because she is in search of it, and “hate” when this search fails. Hence, a change in the wife's heart. Furthermore, she says:

But this only signifies growth
and, growth is natural.
The tragedy of life
is not death but growth[.]

(Das 1991: 77)

The wife starts philosophising about life. She sees the seeking of love as the first stage in the growth of a human being. The growth of a human being is natural. She realises that tragedy of life is not the death of an individual but the individual growing into an adult. She suggests that when an individual grows from a child into an adult he/she will go through tragic events just as the wife has gone through the process of seeking love and ecstasy in “other's arms.” She adds:

I have reached the age in which
one forgives all.
I am ready to forgive friends
their loving,
forgive those who ruined friendships
and those who forgave
and stayed on to love.

(Das 1991: 82-3)

The process of ageing enters here in the mind of the woman. She tells us that she has reached the “age,” i.e., she is no longer attracted by lovers, and she forgives all, all those who have had friendship with her although with the intention of fulfilling their lust. She also forgives those who have ruined her friendship. It is her husband who is responsible for her looking for love outside marriage, whereas her parents hold the responsibility for the problems in her marriage as discussed in Section I and II. However, at this point the wife forgives her husband and the husband his wife, and therefore, the words, “those who forgave and stayed on to love.” Both of them forgive each other and stick on, rather stay in love.

.....

In Section I the wife seeks extra-marital relationship to fulfil her yearning for love; in Section II she seeks an ideal lover like Lord Krishna; in Section III initially she tries to lead a life of mutual adjustment, but fails due to the husband's non-cooperation. Therefore, she once again seeks extra-marital relationships. However, she feels guilty and gives up her search; instead she seeks companionship with her husband. Here, the wife feels the need to address the readers for the purposes of clarifying her behaviour. Repentance is not seen in terms of Hindu religion and philosophy. Rather, there is a stress on mutual forgiveness between the husband and the wife, a special feature in the development of man-woman relationship.

SECTION IV: POEMS WRITTEN DURING 1981-1993

The main thrust of this section is to show the success of a mutually fulfilling relationship between husband and wife; man's providing love to his wife unlike in previous sections; woman's non-acceptance of her husband's love and her seeking death as a possibility of self-emergence; the wife's recalling the mistakes of the parents and the husband for her unhappy relationship even at her later age; husband's and wife's forgiving each other for their mistakes so as to have a happy relationship, and finally the husband dying.

The successful man-woman relationship in terms of love with mutual understanding is achieved only at her later age. The wife has been yearning for love ever since her marriage. In the absence of love from her husband, she had to seek extra-marital relationships in search of love. Ultimately the wife achieves love from her husband. The wife says in the poem entitled “Flotsam”:

[S]o together we stumbled so clumsily
Into lust, But pushing his urgent limbs away
I fought to regain my body's poise till he cried
I love you, you've no need to be afraid of me.
When at last he left, scolded, sent away, alone
On the white deserts of my sheets I wondered if
I should have fought at all to save
my aloneness, my terrible aloneness[.]

(Das 1984: 91)

Although the relationship starts clumsily with lust between the two, she regains poise and her husband utters “I love you” to her. This is the first time the husband “loves” the wife rather than lusts for her. The words “I love you” take the wife to an “evergreen world.” Furthermore, the husband assures her that she need not be afraid of his love turning into lust. The wife at last, succeeds in making her husband give up lust. The wife wonders whether she should have fought at all with her husband to save “aloneness”.

The man wants to provide love to his wife at her later age, rather old age. In the poem entitled “Age”, she says:

Love is youth time's magic; am I still entitled to its lure?
Don't call on me, fastening your eyes on mine.

(Das 1984: 34)

The wife tells her husband that love is only youth time's magic. Notice she uses the word “magic” for love. She asks her husband whether she is still entitled to the lure of love. Furthermore, she requests her husband not to entice her. Not that she wants to take revenge on her husband by negating his call for love, but because she is no longer young. Presumably, there is a lot of difference in age between the two. However, by the time the husband realises how unconcerned he has been towards his wife and intends to give love, an ideal love like that of Krishna, she only seeks her death because of her self-realisation. The wife says:

I walked along the streets at dusk,
Holding his hand in mine and sipped coffee
In South Indian cafes where each waiter
Who served us looked like another Jiddoo
Krishnamurthy, and, lay against him all
Through the winter nights; like a flag hoisted
On a mountain range till then unclaimed,
Unseen, was my cheek against his,
And my heart against his, yes, I kept him
Yours for a spell and now I return
Longing for home and rest.

(Das 1984: 35)

The wife and the husband go to the “South Indian cafes,” she holding her husband's hand, to sip coffee. When the husband and the wife go to the cafes, each waiter looks like another Jiddu Krishnamurthy. However, they even spend their time lying against each other not in terms of lust but in love. The relationship seems to have reached its peak “like a flag hoisted on a mountain range.” They are content for a while, after which she realises her self. She longs to return home and to rest. The words “home and rest” refer to her seeking death.

The emergence of the wife's self is once again evident in the poem “Life's Obscure Parallel”:

Life's obscure parallel is death. Quite often
I wonder if what I seem to do is living
Or dying.

(Das 1991: 110)

The wife considers death life's obscure parallel. She wonders whether she is living or dying. She has undergone many difficulties in her life. The wife makes a profound statement about death in a poem entitled “Death Is So Mediocre”:

Death is
So mediocre, any fool can achieve
It effortlessly.

(Das 1991: 111)

The wife says death is inevitable to any being. She has become mature enough to realise this profound truth.

After this realisation, although she goes back to her past life, she does so with a deeper understanding about life. The wife thinks back on her past relationship in “Larger than Life Was He”:

There are no memories that enthrall
no fond phrase capsuled in thought,
It was never a husband and wife bond
we were such a mismatched pair
Yet there were adventures, I admit,
he was free to exploit and I was free
to be exploited.
We were quits at every game we played
I could have been Sita to his poem
Had I been given half a chance. …

(Das 1993: 163)

While attributing the failure of the past relationship to her parents, the wife regrets the past. She regrets the lack of warmth between her husband and her. Furthermore, she feels it was not like a husband and wife bond between the two. They were mismatched. Despite all, the wife says that they had their adventures because her husband was free to exploit his lust and she was free to be exploited by her lover. The word “game” refers to their life. The phrase “[h]ad I been given half a chance” seems to suggest that she blames her parents for not giving her a chance to become a “Sita”.

The wife not only blames her parents but also her husband for having had no understanding. In the poem entitled “Cat in the Gutter”:

Cowardice was his favourite diet
So who would tell him that when he made love,
Grunting, groaning, sighing,
with no sound to overpower me
Only his limbs and his robust lust,
I was just a high bred kitten,
Rolling for fun in the gutter.

(Das 1984: 99)

The husband, says the wife, had been a coward. While he made love to her “grunting” “groaning” and “sighing”, there was no sound to overpower her. The word “sound” refers to her expectations of love, which never materialised. He either lusted after her or ignored her:

He peered into his office files
till the supper turned cold …
I cannot recollect a film,
a play or a concert he took us to
or a joke which together we shared[.]

(Das 1993: 62)

These lines from “Stock Tacking” show his total lack of interest, how he was busy with his office files without thinking about his wife's needs, be they going to a film, a concert or a play or be it light-hearted conversation.

Now, at a later age, both the husband and wife forgive each other so as to lead a contented life together. In the poem entitled “A Souvenir of Bone” the husband at first apologises to his wife:

If I an innocent forgive my innocence[.]

(Das 1984: 33)

The husband accepts his limitations. He has been unaware of her concerns, rather has ignored her concerns for love and mutual understanding. He now pleads with his wife to forgive him. Seeing the husband apologise, the wife also apologises to the husband:

If I am a sinner, please
Forgive my sins.

(Das 1984: 33)

The wife asks her husband to forgive her because she has had many affairs.

To add to all her unhappiness, there is another one, i.e., her husband's death. In “Stock Tacking”, she says:

I have seen terror twist
my husband's face to have heard
the awesome rattle of his final breath[.]

(Das 1993: 162)

.....

Mutual understanding, absent in Section III, is achieved in Section IV. The woman begins by blaming not only her husband (as in Section III) but also her parents for her plight. Her way out here is not through extra-marital relationships as in Sections I, II and III, but through questioning both her self and her husband. The woman emerges as a mature person here unlike in Sections I, II and III. She is even able to seek and confront death.

Notes

1. Based on The Best of Kamala Das (1991) I have divided the dates of the poems. This has made things easy for me and, I am therefore thankful to Kamala Das and the publishers of this book.

2. Bijay Kumar Das (1993) says that to his mind “An Introduction” had already achieved the status of a minor classic” (38).

3. I quote these lines of the poem from The Old Playhouse and Other Poems (New Delhi: Orient, 1973, Rpt. 1986), because in The Best of Kamala Das (1991) the verb is “said” whereas in the The Old … it is “told”. I use the later published by the author herself since it is authentic, whereas the former is edited by P. P. Raveendran.

4. One may wonder that the section says “Poems written during 1951-60” but the poems quoted in the text are from 1991 collection. In this book the poems have been dated. So one need not confuse between the collection of the book and dates of the poems.

5. P. K. J. Kurup in his article entitled “Portrait of a Tortured Woman as a Religious Rebel—The Poetry of Kamala Das” published in The Rajasthan Journal of English Studies X (1989): 16-22., borrows the lines from Dorothy Jones's article entitled “‘Freedom Became My Dancing Shoe’: Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness in the work of Kamala Das” published in the book entitled Kamala Das: A Selection with Essays on Her Work (Adelaide: CRNLE, 1986) and doesn't acknowledge this. I quote Kurup's lines: “The crux of Das's rebellion is continued in this very recognition and in her felt need to write frankly about the sexual politics in a society which expects woman to be modest, submissive and unobtrusive” (19). Even the quotation marks have not been used.

6. Kamala Das spoke at Meet the Author Programme, organised by the Sahitya Akademi and the India International Centre, at New Delhi on 19 July 1990. The words are quoted from this speech which is “Transcribed from Tape by Renu Mohan Bhan” and is published in Indian Literature. See Select Bibliography for the details of the article and dates.

7. In The Best of Kamala Das this poem is put along with the poems written during 1971-80. As opposed to this, I quote the poem from The Descendants (1967) because it is an authentic book.

8. S. C. Dwivedi in his article entitled “Kamala Das: My World Defleshed, Deblooded” published in Creative Forum (January-December 1992): 65-72, quotes these lines in his substantiation and says these lines are from the poem “The Suicide” which is incorrect. These lines are from the poem entitled “Substitute” published in the book entitled Kamala Das, The Descendants (Calcutta: Writers Workshop 1967): 6.

9. In an interview with P. P. Raveendran, she says: “[T]here are certain poems which are my favourites. One of them is “Composition” and this is the poem which I read everywhere” (Indian Literature 36.3 (May-June 1993): 146).

10. Sunil Kumar in his article entitled “The Poetry of Kamala Das: A Woman's Quest for Identity” quotes these lines and gives the title of the poem as “The Descendants” which is incorrect. In fact these lines are from the poem entitled “Composition”.