"The sunshine Cat" is a poem from Kamala Das ‘Summer In Calcutta’ collection written in 1965. This is an extremely powerful poem based on woman who has been suppressed by the society and her own family
The poem is in the third person narration where the poet sees the protagonist of the poem suffering.
In the first line we see that the poet has referred to “They” Here they means those men who used her ,abused the protagonist emotionally and physically those were not strangers they knew her.
One of the men was her lover who though loved her still did not love her enough to protect her or care or stand up for her. He was a coward and a selfish man who used her and left her.
One of the other men was her husband who neither loved her nor even used her this shows that her’s was an unhappy marriage where the husband didn’t care for her neither emotionally nor physically but just watched her move. May be he knew that she had lover so he was jealous or may be he had someone else in his life and this was a forced marriage.
And then comes a band of cynics who entered her life. Since her marriage was not a happy one she turned to few selfish men to forget her sorrows but it is clear that the solace she seeks from these men were only physical but emotionally she was still hollow since these men clearly told her that they do not love her and cannot love her but all they can do is be kind to her. Here we see a pathological condition of the protagonist who is slowly going into depression, we can imagine her weeping, being helpless and also being insomniac (sleep deprived ).
In the 14th line we see that her husband locks her inside a room full of books. May be he has now come to know her behaviour but instead of helping her to come out of the depression he just shuts her in a room. Here we can see that her company is a yellow cat with steak of sunshine or may be the poet here is trying tell us that she sees the cat like a ray of hope for a lonely soul. But soon arrives winter and the yellow cat leaves her and goes in search of warmth somewhere else like all the other men did. And now after suffering from all of these the winter has made her a cold and half dead women who has lost interest in life. There is no hope for her now she prefers to be dead emotionally and physically so now she is of no use to any men. She had high hopes from life which has been shattered by all of them who just saw her like prop in their life rather than a human being.
Its a very depressing poem.
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