An Introduction by Kamaladas

 Hello everyone,

This blog is response to the task assigned by Yesha Bhatt Ma'am as part of thinking activity. In this blog I will going to write about my own written poem or i can say not poem but something like prose or idea. This task is related to the poem An Introduction by Kamala das.

Who is Kamala das:- 

Kamala Surayya popularly known by her one-time pen name Madhavikutty and married name Kamala Das, was an Indian poet in English as well as an author in Malayalam from Kerala, India. Her popularity in Kerala is based chiefly on her short stories and autobiography, while her oeuvre in English, written under the name Kamala Das, is noted for the poems and explicit autobiography. She was also a widely read columnist and wrote on diverse topics including women's issues, child care, politics, etc. Her liberal treatment of female sexuality, marked her as an iconoclast in popular culture of her generation. On 31 May 2009, aged 75, she died at Jehangir Hospital in Pune.

 

About poem An Introduction:-

I don't know politics but I know the names

Of those in power, and can repeat them like

Days of week, or names of months, beginning with Nehru.

I amIndian, very brown, born inMalabar,

I speak three languages, write in

Two, dream in one.

Don't write in English, they said, English is

Not your mother-tongue. Why not leave

Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,

Every one of you? Why not let me speak in

Any language I like? The language I speak,

Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses

All mine, mine alone.

It is half English, halfIndian, funny perhaps, but it is honest,

It is as human as I am human, don't

You see? It voices my joys, my longings, my

Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing

Is to crows or roaring to the lions, it

Is human speech, the speech of the mind that is

Here and not there, a mind that sees and hears and

Is aware. Not the deaf, blind speech

Of trees in storm or of monsoon clouds or of rain or the

Incoherent mutterings of the blazing

Funeral pyre. I was child, and later they

Told me I grew, for I became tall, my limbs

Swelled and one or two places sprouted hair.

WhenI asked for love, 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.

The weight of my breasts and womb crushed me.

I shrank Pitifully.

Then … I wore a shirt and my

Brother's trousers, cut my hair short and ignored

My womanliness. Dress in sarees, be girl

Be wife, they said. Be embroiderer, be cook,

Be a quarreller with servants. Fit in. Oh,

Belong, cried the categorizers. Don't sit

On walls or peep in through our lace-draped windows.

Be Amy, or be Kamala. Or, better

Still, be Madhavikutty. It is time to

Choose a name, a role. Don't play pretending games.

Don't play at schizophrenia or be a

Nympho. Don't cry embarrassingly loud when

Jilted in love … I met a man, loved him. Call

Him not by any name, he is every man

Who wants. a woman, just as I am every

Woman who seeks love. In him . . . the hungry haste

Of rivers, in me . . . the oceans' tireless

Waiting. Who are you, I ask each and everyone,

The answer is, it is I. Anywhere and,

Everywhere, I see the one who calls himself I

In this world, he is tightly packed like the

Sword in its sheath. It is I who drink lonely

Drinks at twelve, midnight, in hotels of strange towns,

It is I who laugh, it is I who make love

And then, feel shame, it is I who lie dying

With a rattle in my throat. I am sinner,

I am saint. I am the beloved and the

Betrayed. I have no joys that are not yours, no

Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I.

Brief introduction of poem:-

In 'An introduction' poem Kamala das  wrote about her own experience and life. She also talked about other women who faces the gender problems and kind of complexity problems. She start her poem as she knows the all the male leaders of the India and power they have then she talked about when she got married and how she overpowered the Idea and concept of ideal wife and female. As society have special parameters for the women as how she should live or behave specially as wife there are many responsibility wife has to fulfill. In this poem she explore the Idea of language she says that she know three languages but speak in one, languages but dreamt in one as everyone do. Further she said that through the English she feel joy, grief and hope. At end she talked about her individual life and identity whatever she feels it is only limited for her own self nobody is responsible for that.  she further talked about feminist point of view that every women has a free choice to live a life as they want to live. Its not only about married women but about every aspect of women life, but she specifically focus on marriage.   She compares and contrasts the roles of men and women in society and explains for the reader how her life, the rules she’s forced to obey, infringe on her freedom. 

Kamala Das is concerned with herself as victim. What a confessional poet gives us is the psychological equality for his or her mental state, and it is such ‘psychological equivalents’ that we get in this poetry of Kamala Das and in this respect she is to be compared to such confessional poets. In this poem she struggles to keep her to “fit in”. Having refused to choose a name and a role she feels it necessary to define her identity.

           “I am saint. I am the beloved and the

            Betrayed. I have no joys which are not

          Your, No Aches which are not yours.

                    I too call myself I…

My version of poetry:-

Sometimes I get lonely, 

In the process of thinking...

Sometimes I get lonely,

In the path I am walking,

There are people but not for me.

Sometimes I get lonely,

In the waiting of....

But nobody comes, nobody goes

It's move on...

Just waiting .... Always waiting...

from the poem 'An introduction '  I choose a word 'Lonely' with the using of it i tried to make a poem or kind of prose.

 Explanation :- 

In the poem i tried to put what I feel everyday as lonely not outside with the world but inside about mental peace. Nothing can make someone happy of the pers6is not happy from inside the waiting of happiness or i can say peace is just waiting it's not change because we are greedy or we never satisfied ourselves from the materialistic fame and lifestyle so this is what I understand and tried to make an kind of poem.

We all have some plans regarding future and we all are waiting for something to came in our life to give us happiness and in some way our this happiness is related to people or i can say to things but whenever we got this we never feel satisfaction because we never get the thing as we demanded or wish for, it is always something twisted so in this poem i just trying to say is that we all are waiting but for what we also don't know.

Thank you for visiting:-)

Words Count:-1507