Kamala Das
Encyclopedia
Kamala Suraiyya (Malayalam കമലാ സുരയ്യ / മാധവിക്കുട്ടി) (31 March 1934 – 31 May 2009) was a major Indian English
poet and literateur and at the same time a leading Malayalam author from Kerala state, South 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 fiery poems and explicit autobiography.
Her open and honest treatment of female sexuality, free from any sense of guilt, infused her writing with power, but also marked her as an iconoclast
in her generation. On 31 May 2009, aged 75, she died at a hospital in Pune
, but has earned considerable respect in recent years.
, Thrissur District
in Kerala
, on March 31, 1934, to V. M. Nair, a former managing editor
of the widely-circulated Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi
, and Nalappatt Balamani Amma
, a renowned Malayali
poetess.
She spent her childhood between Calcutta, where her father was employed as a senior officer in the Walford Transport Company that sold Bentley
and Rolls Royce
automobiles, and the Nalappatt ancestral home in Punnayurkulam
.
Like her mother, Kamala Das also excelled in writing. Her love of poetry began at an early age through the influence of her great uncle, Nalappatt Narayana Menon, a prominent writer.
At the age of
15, she got married to bank officer Madhava Das, who encouraged her writing interests, and she started writing and publishing both in English and in Malayalam. Calcutta in the 1960s was a tumultous time for the arts, and Kamala Das was one of the many voices that came up and started appearing in cult anthologies along with a generation of Indian English poets.
. She once claimed that
"poetry does not sell in this country [India]", but her forthright columns, which sounded off on everything from women's issues and child care to politics, were popular.
Das' first book of poetry, Summer In Calcutta was a breath of fresh air in Indian English poetry. She wrote chiefly of love, its betrayal, and the consequent anguish. Ms. Das abandoned the certainties offered by an archaic, and somewhat sterile, aestheticism for an independence of mind and body at a time when Indian poets were still governed by "19th-century diction, sentiment and romanticised love."
Her second book of poetry, The descendants was even more explicit, urging women to:
This directness of her voice led to comparisons with Marguerite Duras
and Sylvia Plath
At the age of 42, she published a daring autobiography, My Story; it was originally written in Malayalam and later she translated it into English. Later she admitted that much of the autobiography had fictional elements.
Kamala Das wrote on a diverse range of topics, often disparate- from the story of a poor old servant, about the sexual disposition of upper middle class women living near a metropolitan city or in the middle of the ghetto. Some of her better-known stories include Pakshiyude Manam, Neypayasam, Thanuppu, and Chandana Marangal.
She wrote a few novels, out of which Neermathalam Pootha Kalam, which was received favourably by the reading public as well as the critics, stands out.
She travelled extensively to read poetry to Germany's University of Duisburg-Essen
, University of Bonn
and University of Duisburg
universities, Adelaide Writer's Festival , Frankfurt Book Fair
, University of Kingston, Jamaica
, Singapore
, and South Bank Festival (London), Concordia University (Montreal, Canada), etc. Her works are available in French, Spanish, Russian, German and Japanese.
She has also held positions as Vice chairperson in Kerala Sahitya Academy, chairperson in Kerala forestry Board, President of the Kerala Children's Film Society, editor of Poet magazine and Poetry editor of Illustrated Weekly of India.
Although occasionally seen as an attention-grabber in her early years, she is now seen as one of the most formative influences on Indian English poetry. In 2009, The Times
called her "the mother of modern English Indian poetry".
(Nallappattu) family having royal ancestry, she embraced Islam in 1999 at the age of 65 and assumed the name Kamala Surayya. Her conversion was rather controversial, among social and literary circles, with The Hindu
calling it part of her "histrionics". She said she liked being behind the protective veil of the purdah. Later, she said it was not worth it to change one's religion.
, the eldest, is married to Princess Lakshmi Bayi (daughter of M.R.Ry. Sri Chembrol Raja Raja Varma Avargal) from the Travancore
Royal House. He holds the UNESCO
Peace Chair and Professor of geopolitics
at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education
. He was formerly a resident editor of the Times of India.
On 31 May 2009, aged 75, she died at a hospital in Pune
. Her body was flown to her home state of Kerala. She was buried at the Palayam
Juma Masjid at Thiruvanathapuram with full state honour.
She was a longtime friend of Canadian
writer Merrily Weisbord
, who published a memoir of their friendship, The Love Queen of Malabar, in 2010.
Indian English
Indian English is an umbrella term used to describe dialects of the English language spoken primarily in the Republic of India.As a result of British colonial rule until Indian independence in 1947 English is an official language of India and is widely used in both spoken and literary contexts...
poet and literateur and at the same time a leading Malayalam author from Kerala state, South India
South India
South India is the area encompassing India's states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu as well as the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry, occupying 19.31% of India's area...
. Her popularity in Kerala
Kerala
or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
is based chiefly on her short stories and autobiography, while her oeuvre in English, written under the name Kamala Das, is noted for the fiery poems and explicit autobiography.
Her open and honest treatment of female sexuality, free from any sense of guilt, infused her writing with power, but also marked her as an iconoclast
Iconoclasm
Iconoclasm is the deliberate destruction of religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually with religious or political motives. It is a frequent component of major political or religious changes...
in her generation. On 31 May 2009, aged 75, she died at a hospital in Pune
Pune
Pune , is the eighth largest metropolis in India, the second largest in the state of Maharashtra after Mumbai, and the largest city in the Western Ghats. Once the centre of power of the Maratha Empire, it is situated 560 metres above sea level on the Deccan plateau at the confluence of the Mula ...
, but has earned considerable respect in recent years.
Early life
Kamala Das was born in PunnayurkulamPunnayurkulam
Punnyurkulam is a village in Thrissur district of Kerala, the southwestern state of India. The village is located 10 km north west to the world famous temple town Guruvayur along the Guruvayur-Ponnani state highway...
, Thrissur District
Thrissur district
Thrissur is a revenue district of Kerala situated in the central part of that state. Spanning an area of about 3,032 km2, Thrissur district is home to over 10% of Kerala’s population. Thrissur district was formed on July 1, 1949, with the headquarters at Thrissur City. Thrissur is known as...
in Kerala
Kerala
or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
, on March 31, 1934, to V. M. Nair, a former managing editor
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
of the widely-circulated Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi
Mathrubhumi
Mathrubhumi is a Malayalam language newspaper that is published from Kerala, India. Mathrubhumi was founded by K. P. Kesava Menon, an active volunteer in the Indian freedom struggle against the British.-History:...
, and Nalappatt Balamani Amma
Balamani Amma
Nalappat Balamani Amma was an Indian poetess who wrote in Malayalam. She was a prolific writer and was known as the Poetess of Motherhood. Amma , Muthassi , and Mazhuvinte Katha were some of her well known works...
, a renowned Malayali
Malayali
Malayali is the term used to refer to the native speakers of Malayalam, originating from the Indian state of Kerala...
poetess.
She spent her childhood between Calcutta, where her father was employed as a senior officer in the Walford Transport Company that sold Bentley
Bentley
Bentley Motors Limited is a British manufacturer of automobiles founded on 18 January 1919 by Walter Owen Bentley known as W.O. Bentley or just "W O". Bentley had been previously known for his range of rotary aero-engines in World War I, the most famous being the Bentley BR1 as used in later...
and Rolls Royce
Rolls-Royce (car)
This a list of Rolls-Royce motor cars and includes vehicles produced by:*Rolls-Royce Limited *Rolls-Royce Motors , which was owned by Vickers between 1980 and 1998, and after that by Volkswagen...
automobiles, and the Nalappatt ancestral home in Punnayurkulam
Punnayurkulam
Punnyurkulam is a village in Thrissur district of Kerala, the southwestern state of India. The village is located 10 km north west to the world famous temple town Guruvayur along the Guruvayur-Ponnani state highway...
.
Like her mother, Kamala Das also excelled in writing. Her love of poetry began at an early age through the influence of her great uncle, Nalappatt Narayana Menon, a prominent writer.
At the age of
15, she got married to bank officer Madhava Das, who encouraged her writing interests, and she started writing and publishing both in English and in Malayalam. Calcutta in the 1960s was a tumultous time for the arts, and Kamala Das was one of the many voices that came up and started appearing in cult anthologies along with a generation of Indian English poets.
Literary career
She was noted for her many Malayalam short stories as well as many poems written in English. Das was also a syndicated columnistSyndicated columnist
This list of syndicated columnists comprises columnists whose recurring columns are published in multiple periodical publications .*Ghaith Abdul-Ahad*Yasmin Alibhai-Brown*Timothy Garton Ash*Lucius Beebe*Max Boot...
. She once claimed that
"poetry does not sell in this country [India]", but her forthright columns, which sounded off on everything from women's issues and child care to politics, were popular.
Das' first book of poetry, Summer In Calcutta was a breath of fresh air in Indian English poetry. She wrote chiefly of love, its betrayal, and the consequent anguish. Ms. Das abandoned the certainties offered by an archaic, and somewhat sterile, aestheticism for an independence of mind and body at a time when Indian poets were still governed by "19th-century diction, sentiment and romanticised love."
Her second book of poetry, The descendants was even more explicit, urging women to:
- Gift him what makes you woman, the scent of
- Long hair, the musk of sweat between the breasts,
- The warm shock of menstrual blood, and all your
- Endless female hungers ..." - The Looking Glass
This directness of her voice led to comparisons with Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Donnadieu, better known as Marguerite Duras was a French writer and film director.-Background:...
and Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
At the age of 42, she published a daring autobiography, My Story; it was originally written in Malayalam and later she translated it into English. Later she admitted that much of the autobiography had fictional elements.
Kamala Das wrote on a diverse range of topics, often disparate- from the story of a poor old servant, about the sexual disposition of upper middle class women living near a metropolitan city or in the middle of the ghetto. Some of her better-known stories include Pakshiyude Manam, Neypayasam, Thanuppu, and Chandana Marangal.
She wrote a few novels, out of which Neermathalam Pootha Kalam, which was received favourably by the reading public as well as the critics, stands out.
She travelled extensively to read poetry to Germany's University of Duisburg-Essen
University of Duisburg-Essen
The University Duisburg-Essen is a public university in Duisburg and Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany and a member of the new founded University Alliance Metropolis Ruhr....
, University of Bonn
University of Bonn
The University of Bonn is a public research university located in Bonn, Germany. Founded in its present form in 1818, as the linear successor of earlier academic institutions, the University of Bonn is today one of the leading universities in Germany. The University of Bonn offers a large number...
and University of Duisburg
University of Duisburg
-History:Its origins date back to the 1555 decision to create a university for the unified duchies at the Lower Rhine that were later to be merged into Prussia. After the foundation of an academic college in 1559, a university was founded in 1655 by Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, the...
universities, Adelaide Writer's Festival , Frankfurt Book Fair
Frankfurt Book Fair
The Frankfurt Book Fair is the world's largest trade fair for books, based on the number of publishing companies represented. As to the number of visitors, the Turin Book Fair attracts about as many visitors, viz. some 300,000....
, University of Kingston, Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
, Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
, and South Bank Festival (London), Concordia University (Montreal, Canada), etc. Her works are available in French, Spanish, Russian, German and Japanese.
She has also held positions as Vice chairperson in Kerala Sahitya Academy, chairperson in Kerala forestry Board, President of the Kerala Children's Film Society, editor of Poet magazine and Poetry editor of Illustrated Weekly of India.
Although occasionally seen as an attention-grabber in her early years, she is now seen as one of the most formative influences on Indian English poetry. In 2009, The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
called her "the mother of modern English Indian poetry".
Conversion to Islam
She was born in a conservative Hindu NairNair
Nair , also known as Nayar , refers to "not a unitary group but a named category of castes", which historically embody several castes and many subdivisions, not all of whom bore the Nair title. These people historically live in the present-day Indian state of Kerala...
(Nallappattu) family having royal ancestry, she embraced Islam in 1999 at the age of 65 and assumed the name Kamala Surayya. Her conversion was rather controversial, among social and literary circles, with The Hindu
The Hindu
The Hindu is an Indian English-language daily newspaper founded and continuously published in Chennai since 1878. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, it has a circulation of 1.46 million copies as of December 2009. The enterprise employed over 1,600 workers and gross income reached $40...
calling it part of her "histrionics". She said she liked being behind the protective veil of the purdah. Later, she said it was not worth it to change one's religion.
Politics
Though never politically active before, she launched a national political party, Lok Seva Party, aiming asylum to orphaned mothers and promotion of secularism. In 1984 she unsuccessfully contested in the Indian Parliament elections.Personal life
Kamala Das had three sons - M D Nalapat, Chinnen Das and Jayasurya Das. Madhav Das NalapatMadhav Das Nalapat
Madhav Das Nalapat , holds the UNESCO Peace Chair and is Professor of Geopolitics at Manipal University, an international private university headquartered in Southern India. The former Coordinating Editor of the Times of India, Prof. Nalapat writes extensively on security, policy and international...
, the eldest, is married to Princess Lakshmi Bayi (daughter of M.R.Ry. Sri Chembrol Raja Raja Varma Avargal) from the Travancore
Travancore
Kingdom of Travancore was a former Hindu feudal kingdom and Indian Princely State with its capital at Padmanabhapuram or Trivandrum ruled by the Travancore Royal Family. The Kingdom of Travancore comprised most of modern day southern Kerala, Kanyakumari district, and the southernmost parts of...
Royal House. He holds the UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
Peace Chair and Professor of geopolitics
Geopolitics
Geopolitics, from Greek Γη and Πολιτική in broad terms, is a theory that describes the relation between politics and territory whether on local or international scale....
at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education
Manipal Academy of Higher Education
Manipal University, formerly known as Manipal Academy of Higher Education or MAHE for short, is a deemed university in Manipal, Karnataka, India. It has over 20,000 students from over 50 countries...
. He was formerly a resident editor of the Times of India.
On 31 May 2009, aged 75, she died at a hospital in Pune
Pune
Pune , is the eighth largest metropolis in India, the second largest in the state of Maharashtra after Mumbai, and the largest city in the Western Ghats. Once the centre of power of the Maratha Empire, it is situated 560 metres above sea level on the Deccan plateau at the confluence of the Mula ...
. Her body was flown to her home state of Kerala. She was buried at the Palayam
Palayam / Cantonment
Palayam or Cantonment, as it is locally known, one of the busiest localities in Thiruvanathapuram , the capital of Kerala State in India.- History :...
Juma Masjid at Thiruvanathapuram with full state honour.
Awards and other recognitions
Kamala Das has received many awards for her literary contribution, including:- Nominated and shortlisted for Nobel Prize in 1984.
- Asian Poetry Prize-1998
- Kent Award for English Writing from Asian Countries-1999
- Asian World Prize-2000
- Ezhuthachan Award-2009
- Sahitya Academy Award-2003
- Vayalar AwardVayalar AwardThe Vayalar Award is given for the best literary work in Malayalam. The award was instituted in 1977 by the Vayalar Ramavarma Memorial Trust in memory of the poet and lyricist Vayalar Ramavarma . A sum of Rs.25,000/-, a silver plate and certificate constitutes the award...
2001 - Kerala Sahitya Academy Award-2005
- Muttathu Varkey Award
She was a longtime friend of Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
writer Merrily Weisbord
Merrily Weisbord
Merrily Weisbord is a Canadian non-fiction writer, best known for her 2010 book The Love Queen of Malabar, a memoir of her longtime friendship with the late Indian writer Kamala Das...
, who published a memoir of their friendship, The Love Queen of Malabar, in 2010.
English
- 1964: The Sirens (Asian Poetry Prize winner)
- 1965: Summer in Calcutta (poetry; Kent's Award winner)
- 1967: The Descendants (poetry)
- 1973: The Old Playhouse and Other Poems (poetry)
- 1976: My Story (autobiography)
- 1977: Alphabet of Lust (novel)
- 1985: The Anamalai Poems (poetry)
- 1992: Padmavati the Harlot and Other Stories (collection of short stories)
- 1996: Only the Soul Knows How to Sing (poetry)
- 2001: Yaa Allah (collection of poems)
- 1979: Tonight,This Savage Rite (with Pritish Nandy)
Malayalam
- 1964: Pakshiyude Manam (short stories)
- 1966: Naricheerukal Parakkumbol (short stories)
- 1968: Thanuppu (short story, Sahitya Academi award)
- 1982: Ente Katha (autobiography)
- 1987: Balyakala Smaranakal (Childhood Memories)
- 1989: Varshangalkku Mumbu (Years Before)
- 1990: Palayan (novel)
- 1991: Neypayasam (short story)
- 1992: Dayarikkurippukal (novel)
- 1994: Neermathalam Pootha Kalam (novel, Vayalar AwardVayalar AwardThe Vayalar Award is given for the best literary work in Malayalam. The award was instituted in 1977 by the Vayalar Ramavarma Memorial Trust in memory of the poet and lyricist Vayalar Ramavarma . A sum of Rs.25,000/-, a silver plate and certificate constitutes the award...
) - 1996: Chekkerunna Pakshikal (short stories)
- 1998: Nashtapetta Neelambari (short stories)
- 2005: Chandana Marangal (Novel)
- 2005: Madhavikkuttiyude Unmakkadhakal (short stories)2x
- 2005: Vandikkalakal (novel)