Love in Kamala Das's Poetry

Love and Sex in the Poetry of Kamala Das : A Quest for Identity Creative writing in a language not one’s own is possible and Kamala Das remains even today after five long decades ‘ the most powerful voice of the post colonial reality”. She has acquired and nativized the English language by exploring the nuances of English and impassioned celebration of genuine emotions. Confessional poetry of Kamala Das are often “ anti-structural and anti –establishment’ (Kamala Das and Her Poetry ,23) . They are still more interesting from the viewpoint of identity of a woman. Love and sex in her poetry become a paradigm for fractured realities encountered by the poetess. Essentially she speaks for a woman who is in search of love. She challenges the very idea of phallocentric tradition and asserts in poem after poem that the subaltern can speak. Post colonialism consists primarily in the contestation of power structures and social hierarchies. For Kamala Das a woman’s predicament as a daughter , a wife, or a lover reflects a victimization in relationships. Kamala Das revolts against a constructed notion of relationship. Women are not the self-sacrficial model of virtue or promiscuity. The hitherto premises of male hegemony are violently shaken by Kamala Das who can defy the conventional ideological discourse of sexism and love. She herself became a victim of a young man’s carnal hunger . In ‘The Freaks’, a remarkable lyric which was published in Summer in Calcutta contains a picture of love that is full of dirt and filth as the man ensconced in sexual intercourse turned his ‘sun-stained / Cheek to me , his mouth , a dark /Cavern, where stalacities of /Uneven teeth gleam , his right / Hand on my knee, while our minds/ Are willed to race towards love ; / But they only wander, tripping / Idly over puddles of desire” . The focus on the ‘puddles of desire’ refers to her unfulfilled sexual desire as her