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“Grandfather” by R.Viswanathan is written to eulogize his grandfather who had an infectious joviality about him . The poem is about the death of the grandfather. However, it does not have a mournful tome or an elegiac tone. He is said to have laughed his way through life overcoming all trials and tribulations with ease. The alliteration in the phrase ‘lived long’ points to his harmonious life that was drunk to the lees. He made his folks laugh many times till all their bones broke.The speaker implies that his humour infused their very being and his buoyancy was the very core of their existence. Even while he was ill and the others around him were very pessimistic he inspired them with his incorrigible optimism and cracked jokes. Their bones broke but never did his spirit die. Though the speaker was not home during the incident, the experience was communicated to him with all the positive vibes intact. Therefore, grandfather transported his positivism to people at a distance also. The speaker was not home even when grandfather died, yet his still body seemed to laugh, according to the versions of others. His static body appeared to be kinetic.
The speaker comes home for Sanjayana to administer the last rites and goes with his Dad to the crematory.…
Kamala Das is first and foremost, a confessional poet. In the rendering of her poems,she has divorced herself completely from social stigma and societal inhibitions. Her “The Fancy-Dress show” is an indictment of the society that is driven by brazenness and hypocrisy. She has utilized the metaphor of the fancy dress most aptly. The fancy dress show is always a competition, as is any concept in the modern world. People are always, what they are not. Inherent in the metaphor, is the feature of parading the same. They wear the guise primarily for outward profit, and not for inner satisfaction. Iago, the archetypal villain echoes the same when he exclaims in Othello: “I am not what I am.”
In the contemporary times, the poem rings a bell, for people are noticed more for their outward appearances and ostentation of public life. Inherent goodness is no longer the criteria for the identity of an individual. The hallmark of a priest remains his cassock. It is as if he is not a priest without this prescribed norm. And sadly ,the priests of the Modern day have deteriorated in principles to such an extent that their vocation is acknowledged only from the cassock. Gone are the days, when they were judged based on spiritual learning and instilling values.…
Kamala Das recalls her ancestral house that was filled with the all-pervading presence of her grandmother And this is why her grandmother’s house is singular: Kamala Das received ‘love’ there. When the poetess speaks of ‘love’ in particular she ascertains that it is unconditional and selfless. With the death of the Grandmother, the house ceased being inhabited. It now became an isolated and remote entity, echoed by the phrase ‘far away.’ The poetess asserts that with the death of her grandmother silence began to sink in the house. Kamala Das, at that juncture, was too small to read books, but emotional enough to comprehend the true feeling of love.
With the death of the Grandmother, her life that was hitherto filled only with emotions becomes numb. Her veins thus become cold rather than warm. It is as cold as the moon, the moon being an emblem of love. The worms on the books seem like snakes at that moment, in comparison to the size of the little girl; and in keeping with the eeriness of the situation. The poetess also implies that the deserted house is like a desert with reptiles crawling over. The poetess now longs to ‘peer’ at a house that was once her own.…
In the poem “The Sunshine Cat”, the poetess rants over the disillusionment in her yearning for love. Those who took advantage of her emotional instability are termed ‘men’ in general ;it inevitably includes her husband too. He turned out to be a mere objective observer without emotional attachment. His being selfish, he did not exhibit the slightest display of love. And, his being cowardly, he did not dare to give in sexually to her, for it would mark the relegation of his ego: his perspective of masculinity..He was a relentless onlooker to the extent of being insensitive for he watched her encounters with other men like a carnival affair. This is why Kamala Das employs the word ‘band.’
She ‘clinged’ on to this band of ‘cynics.’ The word “cling” is very significant, as one clings out of desperation, as in clinging onto dear life. A cynic is a person who believes that only selfishness motivates human actions. Her life revolved around these egocentric people. Nevertheless, she “burrows’ herself in the chest of these men. Note the word “burrow” is generally used with reference to mongooses or rats that dig holes to hide themselves for security. For the poetess, this was a temporary refuge to make herself secure as long as it lasted.…
Kamala Suraiya Das also known as Madhavikutty, is India’s ‘Poet Laureate’. The “Dance of the Eunuchs” is included in the collection Summer in Calcutta(1965). The poem is an eloquent expression of the barrenness of Kamala Das’s love-life and emblematic of the spiritual aridity of her being. The poetess utilizes the symbolism of the eunuchs who are the very emblem of sterility. The dance of the eunuchs far from being an aesthetic extravaganza is rather a spectacle that is looked down upon.
The poetess begins by exclaiming that: “It was hot, so hot, before the eunuchs came.”
Climate change is not a matter of concern for them, as they are always subjected to cold air and frigid responses. The anklets just jingle and jingle without any rhythm to it.They are indeed a spectacle with their ‘flashing eyes’ beneath the fiery gulmohar. The gulmohar is a beautiful tree that is juxtaposed against something deemed unpleasant.
To dance, wide skirts going round and round, cymbals
Richly clashing, and anklets jingling, jingling
They were green tattoos on their face. They have to carve tattoos on their face, as the face of the eunuchs will be the only place that will be explored, that too, by disinterested eyes.…
The word ‘freak’ has the following meanings:
Here , the first stands for the sexual act in the poem that is unnatural, simply for the reason that it is not natural (not arising out of love).
The second meaning can be attributed to the object of the act, the poetess herself- an eccentric.
The third implication is responsible for the poem itself as a whole, a sudden whim that results in the poet’s inspiration.
The man in question is described in terms of his unattractive attributes: his sun-burnt cheek, his dark mouth, the uneven teeth that gleam (implying that the person is most probably dark) etc. The poetess begins the poem with ”He talks” as he is the supreme authority as in “And God said…” The act of love also has patriarchy reigning supreme. His mouth is a dark cavern of hidden egoistic secrets. The cavern is also a passage for the poetess to reach her love’s heart, that she fails to achieve. The teeth hanging from the roof of his mouth appear as uneven as stalactites.The word ‘stalactites’ denotes lack of warmth.…
An Introduction” is Kamala Das’s most famous poem in the confessional mode. Writing to her, always served as a sort of spiritual therapy: ”If I had been a loved person, I wouldn’t have become a writer. I would have been a happy human being.”
Kamala Das begins by self-assertion: I am what I am. The poetess claims that she is not interested in politics, but claims to know the names of all in power beginning from Nehru. She seems to state that these are involuntarily ingrained in her. By challenging us that she can repeat these as easily as days of the week, or the names of months she echoes that they these politicians were caught in a repetitive cycle of time, irrespective of any individuality. They did not define time; rather time defined them.
Subsequently, she comes down to her roots. She declares that by default she is an Indian. Other considerations follow this factor. She says that she is ‘born in’ Malabar; she does not say that she belongs to Malabar. She is far from regional prejudices. She first defines herself in terms of her nationality, and second by her colour.
I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar,
And she is very proud to exclaim that she is ‘very brown’.…
“Small-Scale Reflections on a Great House” may appear on the superficial level as a poem about an ancestral house. Nevertheless, it signifies, considerably, the Great Indian Culture. The house is said to possess an incorrigible property of letting anything into its confine without allowing it to go back. The Indian culture has forever accommodated whatever had arrived at its threshold. It has incorporated all foreign elements into its internal structure to form a homogenous whole. The adroit repetition of the phrase “lost long ago” points to the loss of its true essence. The use of the present tense highlight the ‘presentness of the past’, how the past and present are intricately linked to each other.
Things that once found their way into the house lost themselves among other things in the house that had also been lost long ago. Therefore this projects the antiquity, rich heritage and innumerable elements the culture encompasses. In a world, were human beings are marginalized, irrational creatures are accepted and provided with an identity (name); as with the intruding cow. The poet also mocks at the so-called tabooisms about natural things in Indian culture. For instance, the mating of the cows that girls of the house were carefully shielded from.…
Kamala Das captures the picture of her mother in a significant moment of comprehension. The speaker in a fast-forward life, pauses for a moment to regard her mother, with with reference to time and space.
Driving from my parent’s
home to Cochin last Friday
morning, I saw my mother,
beside me
Words are indicated to signify time, space and position (‘beside me’). The act of ‘seeing’ poses as a stationary moment as against the kinetic act of ‘driving’. The drive from home to Cochin also serves to illustrate the metaphor of journey as experience. The poem is indeed born, out of love as one observes the possessive pronoun ‘my’ when the word ‘Mother’ would have sufficed. The speaker’s understanding of her mother at the age of sixty-six, would be indeed one of enriched experience; as it would be coloured with the speaker’s individual maternal experience as with her own children. It would be a different one, with indication to the past when she was single. She could probably judge her better as a wife, and mother now.
doze, open mouthed, her face
ashen like that
of a corpse and realised with
pain
that she was as old as she
looked but soon
put that thought away, and
Words like ‘doze’ point to the torpidity that old age has imposed upon her.…
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