Kamla Das Poem Analysis

CHAPTER-1

INTRODUCTION

Kamla das is one of the major writer of Indian English Poetry. She has been seen as most influencing writer. She is the greatest women poet in contemporary Indian literature. As a confessional poet, she displays in her poem the feminism and man-woman relationships she faced in her life.

Kamla das also known by her nick name, Madhavikutty, was an Indian English poet and a leading Malayalam author from Kerala. Her popularity in Kerala was based on short stories and autobiography. Das was also a columnist.She spent her childhood in Calcutta and Nalapat(ancestral home). Like her mother, Kamla Das was excelled in poetry. Her love of poetry began in her very early age. At age of 15, she got married to bank officer, Madhava

Her writings are centered on her personal experiences rather than colonial experience. Many poets at that time used to write about Indo-Anglicans. But she was of different kind and she raised patriarchal norms of society which are suppressing the rights of woman. She grew up primarily in Calcutta in a family of writers, where she felt ignored and unloved. As a teenager she married an older man, and the emotional and sexual problems arising from that unsatisfying relationship and her young motherhood provided material for her many writings. She is referred to as iconoclast who has established her identity in Indian English Poetry with honesty. Her poems display man-woman relationship in society. Her poetry is a universal experience of self, love-despair, anguish, failure in love and disgust against the norms of gender

Her poems have an intelligent, self-aware, confident personality who live her life on her own terms. Never before had anyone in India described these sexual desires or longing of woman as Kamla Das did. Her poems are known for its open expressions for sexual desire, frustration, and suffocation of being in a loveless marriage. The prime concerns of her poems has been a loveless relationships of man and woman leading only unrest in life. She has no liking for all those man who does not give that love to her which she desired for. Her poetry mostly begins from dark end. It has no hope. There are only struggles and failures. She has never found love in any of her relationships. Relationships have only brought complexities and problems to her life. According to her, all bonds of man-woman relationship are based on love but if love is not present then that relation leads to failure. Das’ search for love and her cry has been seen in her all the poems. Woman are more emotional and sentimental by nature as compared to man. At first, Kamla Das searches for love at her parental home but she was failed to get it. After her marriage she tries to unlock her mind and soul to her husband but he does not cared for her sentiments. Her poems has brought a disgustful picture of her husband and her soreness of being in a loveless marriage. To fulfill her sexual desires she break all the bonds of society and get into