Postmodern
Kamala Das
1934 – 2009
Indian author and poet (1934–2009)
- India · British Raj · Dominion of India
- Indian Writing in English
- Confessional Poetry
About
Kamala Surayya , also 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 fame in Kerala primarily stems from her short stories and autobiography, My Story, whereas her body of work in English, penned under the pseudonym Kamala Das, is renowned for its poems and candid autobiography. Her works are known for originality, versatility and indigenous flavour of the soil. 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.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).
Life on the Timeline
Major Works
Exam Dossier
Most-asked topics
- Kamala Das as a confessional poet
- Female sexuality and body in Das's poetry
- My Story as autobiography and its controversy
- Post-colonial female identity in "An Introduction"
- Marriage and gender politics in "The Old Playhouse"
- Nostalgia and childhood in "My Grandmother's House"
- Kamala Das and the Indian English poetry movement of the 1960s-70s
- Bilingual authorship: Malayalam (Madhavikutty) vs English (Kamala Das)
Previous-year themes
- Das's place in Indian English confessional poetry alongside Nissim Ezekiel and A.K. Ramanujan
- Identification of famous opening/closing lines from "An Introduction"
- Treatment of female body and desire as feminist assertion
- My Story as a landmark confessional autobiography
- Themes of alienation, identity and language in Das's poetry
- Symbolism of the house/playhouse as marital confinement
- Das's pen names and religious conversion (Kamala Surayya)
Common confusions
- Confusing Kamala Das (English poetry pen name) with Madhavikutty (her Malayalam fiction pen name) as two different writers
- Mixing up My Story's Malayalam-language links with its 1977 English publication date
- Confusing "An Introduction" with "The Old Playhouse" when identifying famous opening lines about identity versus marriage
- Treating Kamala Das as part of the Romantic or Victorian confessional tradition rather than 20th-century Indian English confessional poetry
- Confusing her religious conversion name Kamala Surayya with her married name Kamala Das
- Attributing poems by Sarojini Naidu or Toru Dutt to Kamala Das due to shared Indian women-poet grouping in NET syllabi
Memory tricks
"Das = Daring" — remember her poetry for its daring, confessional candour about the female body and desire
Madhavikutty (Malayalam fiction) vs Kamala Das (English poetry) vs Kamala Surayya (post-conversion identity) — three names, three phases of one writer
"Introduction" = Identity — the poem "An Introduction" is about asserting identity
"Playhouse" = Prison — remember The Old Playhouse critiques marriage as a cage, not play
1965-67-73-77: Summer, Descendants, Playhouse, Story — recall the near-decade run of her major works
Surayya (the Arabic name for the Pleiades star cluster) — her adopted Islamic name Kamala Surayya marks her final self-reinvention
