An Introduction By Kamala Das

This poem is from her ‘Summer in Calcutta’ collection written in 1965, the poem has 59 lines with no specific rhyme scheme and meter is inconsistent. Its a loosely structured poem which makes the poem more colloquial or conversational like. This is a confessional poem where the poet is randomly confessing things  and also questioning the readers. 

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.

She abruptly starts the poem, telling the readers that she doesn’t know politics in detail but she knows names of those who are in power and remembers their name so well that she can tell it easily like how she can tell days of week or names of month. She also takes one of the famous politician’s name of that time ’Nehru’.

But actually she doesn’t care much about politics and she knows names just as a general knowledge and this poem is definitely not about that. 

Note, that there is a certain disjointedness in this poem where first sentences is probably has nothing to do with the next. This disjoints continues through out the poem.

I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar,
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…

In this stanzas she is introducing herself she says, she is first and foremost an Indian and like all Indians she is brown in colour and is born in Malabar (Kerala). She says she can speak in three languages and, she can write in two but dream in only one. But we are not sure in which language she dreams as of now.

This poem is a defence if not a confession for writing in English. Writing in English now is not a big thing but back in those days it was and those who wrote in English were criticised. So here in the first line she is making it clear that she is not an English but still she loves to write in that language, also that people were against it and told her not to write in English since it was not her mother tongue. So she urges people to not to interfere in her business and to leave her alone. These people were none other than her friends, relatives and critics. 

Since, she doesn’t want any kind barriers to come between her creative mind. She wants her people to understand that she is more creative in English than in her mother tongue so she says which ever language she speaks even though she might not be perfect in that or she might make mistakes but, whatever it is its hers, hers alone. 

She clearly tells that  her language is half English and half Indian that is its a mixture of both the languages and it might seems funny to people they may even laugh at her but she is being honest and there is no shame. She is just a human being who happens to love a foreign language and she finds joy and hopeful about it. And she loves that language so much that it has become inevitable to avoid it. Like how cawing is necessary for crow and roaring for lion, English language is necessary for her.

Further she says that this language, that she is in love with is a human speech and whatever she wants to convey that is going on in her mind it comes out only through this language and she is able to think, see and hear only in English and it is quite an easy language to understand as well. Its neither the language of deaf or blind  which is difficult to comprehend nor its the language of the nature which is difficult to grasp. Like we might not know what  storm, rain or fire is trying to tell us by their sound.

…. I was child, and later they
Told me I grew, for I became tall, my limbs
Swelled and one or two places sprouted hair.
When I 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.

Now the poet takes a new turn in the poem, after conveying the readers passionately about the language she loved and how people found it difficult to understand now she takes a new turn in the poem she takes the readers to her childhood and touches the topic of how people saw her as a woman and what restriction she had to face while growing up.

She says she was a child one day and suddenly as she grew up her appearance changed physically and she was addressed as a woman without her consent. At the age of 16 she wanted to know the meaning of love hoping she would get flowery words in return but to her shock, when she asked the first man she met (it might be her lover or her husband the poet is not clear about that) in return he took her to his bedroom and closed the door. She specifically says he didn’t beat her but whatever he did physically it was a horrifying experience, he might have used her physically but she clearly didn’t enjoy. She felt as if her whole body was crushed and was in pain and this whole act made her feel pity about herself.

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 … 

After that horrendous experience the poet thought that looking like a woman can be scary. So she tried to change her appearance. She says in the above lines that she started wearing her brother’s shirt and trousers and she also cut her hair short so that she could look like a man rather than a woman. But seeing this change in her people started worrying and they insisted her to wear saree and behave like how normal wife would behave and get busy with cooking, embroidering or quarrelling with servants. 

They wanted her to fit in as a woman, as a wife. The categorisers, here means the people who have put woman in a particular category and wants her to follow it. They are telling her not to sit and peep through the windows but choose any name be it Amy or Kamala or even Madhavikutty and follow the rules that has to be followed by a woman and stop playing games and pretending that she is a man because she isn’t. They scold her to not to act like a mentally unstable person or act like a nympho (a woman with very strong sexual desires) also not to cry loudly like a love sick woman and embarrass herself.

 … 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.

In these line when the poet says ‘I’ it can be the poet herself or it might be that she is representing all the women. She says she met a man and loved him but she is generally talking about all men here who only wants woman for their entertainment. 

She compares man to a hungry haste river and a woman to a  ocean who after knowing her man is using her still waits for him like a tireless ocean. When she questions the man ‘who is he?’ the answer she gets from him  ‘I’. He says he is like a sword which is tightly packed in a sheath. Here the poet is representing male-ego who does whatever he likes, he drinks late at night, alone and goes to hotel in strange towns without any fear. He laughs, makes love and feels shame too. He calls himself a sinner and a saint. He is someones beloved but some has betrayed him. He has no joys of his own and aches for others.  

 I too call myself I. 

The poet wonders that this man who is not afraid of committing ,regretting, confessing his mistakes, talks proudly about everything and calls himself ‘I’. The poem ends on an uncertain note where poet is trying to tell everyone that even she too calls herself ‘I’ so why doesn’t she have the privilege to do whatever she wants like him? Although both represent themselves as ‘I’. Why isn’t she treated like him why there is restrictions for her but not for him even though both are similar and equal.