Imagery in Kamala Das’s Poetry
Kamala Das broke free from the romantic and metaphysical preoccupations of the early Indian English poetry and spoke in the idiom of a female whose mind “is here and not there.” Through her poetry she not only expresses the pain of living in a patriarchal society, but also gives expression to a social awareness. K. Satchidanandan points out : “ There had been no dearth of female
poets in India, but a committed feminist poetry— one that emphasizes difference in terms of gender and seeks to rewrite the patriarchal discourse and challenge the phallocentric order of things — is a more aesthetic phenomenon in India. These poets ( Kamala Das one of them) are engaged in revision, myth-making and the establishment of a parallel semiotics round the female body.” This changed stance has resulted in the difference between the early Indo-Anglian poets, like Toru Dutt and Sarojini Naidu, and Kamala Das. Sharad Rajimwale in the essay, ‘Kamala Das— Need for Re-assessment’, suggested: “Readers whose tastes and expectations were formed by compositions like ‘Morning Seranade’, ‘Our Casuarina Tree’, ‘The Queen’s Rival’,……….were shocked and staggered by what Kamala Das wrote.” Such savage images like “Sleek crows flying/ like poison on wing” ( ‘In Love”), “a meager rain that smelt of dust in/ Attics and the urine of lizards and mice” ( ‘The Dance of the Ennuchs’) abound in the poetry of Kamala Das. The difference in the use of imagery between Toru Dutt and Kamala Das become more glaring if we study those
poems of the two poets treating similar themes. Toru Dutt’s ‘Our Casuarina Tree’ and Kamala Das’s ‘A Hot Noon in Malabar’ both express nostalgia of the poets for their homeland. But a comparative study of the use of imagery in the two poems appear like a change of worlds. Here is Toru Dutt’s ‘Our Casuarina Tree’: “ Ah, I have heard that wail far, far away In distant lands, by many a sheltered bay, When slumbered in his cave the water-wraith And the waves gently kissed the classic shore Of France or Italy, beneath the moon When earth lay tranced in a dreamless swoon: And every time the the music rose,— before Mine inner vision rose a form sublime, Thy form, O Tree, as in my happy prime I saw thee, in my own loved native clime” This is how Kamala Das expresses her heart-ache at being far away from her home, in ‘A Hot Noon in Malabar’: “ ………………………….. Yes, this is A noon for
wild men, wild thoughts, wild love. To Be here, far away, is torture. Wild feet Stirring up the dust,
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