KENDRIYA VIDYALAYA NO 2,

DELHI CANTT

SESSION: 2022-23

ENGLISH PROJECT
TOPIC: KAMLA DAS AND HER WORK IN LITRATURE

SUBMITTED BY: SAHIL BIJARNIA

CLASS: 12TH ‘B’ ROLL NO:

SUBMITTED TO: MRS. GARIMA MEHTA

SIGNATURE OF SUBJECT TEACHER SIGNATURE OF EXTERNAL TEACHER

(MRS GARIMA MEHTA)

 CERTIFICATE
This is hereby to certify that “Sahil Bijarnia” of
class XII ‘B’ of K.V NO.2 DELHI CANTT-10, has
completed his project file on the topic “KAMLA
DAS AND HER WORK IN LITERATURE” under
the guidance of MRS GARIMA MEHTA. He has
taken proper care and shown utmost sincerity in
completing this project. I certify that this project
is up to my expectation and as per the guidelines
issued by CBSE.

SIGNATURE OF SUBJECT TEACHER

(MRS. GARIMA MEHTA)

SIGNATURE OF PRINCIPAL SIGNATURE OF EXTERNAL EXAMINER

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to express my profound and appreciation to
those who helped me with this project, for their time
expended and for sharing their insights about the project.
I have been immeasurably enriched by working under the
guidance and supervision of Mrs. Garima Mehta, who has
a great level of knowledge and has an art of encouraging,
Correcting and directing me in every situation possible,
which has enabled me to complete the project. I would
also like to thank all the people who have helped me in this
project and appreciate the available sources who provided
me with the research papers.
 KAMALA DAS
INTRODUCTION
Kamala Surayya (born Kamala; 31 March 1934 – 31
May 2009), popularly known by her one-time pen name
Madhavikutty and married name Kamala Das, was an
Indian poet in English as well as an author in
Malayalam from Kerala, India. Her popularity in Kerala
is based chiefly on her short stories and autobiography,
while her oeuvre in English, written under the name
Kamala Das, is noted for the poems and explicit
autobiography. She was also a widely read columnist
and wrote on diverse topics including women's issues,
child care, politics, etc. Her liberal treatment of female
sexuality, marked her as an iconoclast in popular
culture of her generation. On 31 May 2009, aged 75, she
died at Jehangir Hospital in Pune.
Her early life & Childhood:
Kamala Das was born in Punnayurkulam, Ponnani
taluk, Malabar District, British India (present-day
Thrissur district, Kerala, India) on 31 March 1934, to V.
M. Nair, a managing editor of the widely circulated
Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi, and Nalapat Balamani
Amma, a renowned Malayali poet.
She spent her childhood between Calcutta, where her
father was employed as a senior officer in the Walford
Transport Company that sold Bentley and Rolls-Royce
automobiles, and the Nalapat ancestral home in
Punnayurkulam.
Like her mother Balamani Amma, Kamala Das also
excelled in writing. Her love of poetry began at an early
age through the influence of her great uncle, Nalapat
Narayana Menon, a prominent writer
At the age of 15, she married bank officer Madhav Das,
who encouraged her writing interests, and she started
writing and publishing both in English and in
Malayalam. Calcutta in the 1960s was a tumultuous
time for the arts, and Kamala Das was one of the many
voices that came up and started appearing in cult
anthologies along with a generation of Indian English
poets. English was the language she chose for all six of
her published poetry collections. She began writing
poetry when she was a child. When she was 15 years
old, she married Madhava Das, a banking executive
many years her senior, and they moved to Bombay
(now Mumbai). Das had three sons and did her writing
at night.
ABOUT HER PERSONAL LIFE:
Kamala married Madhav Das at the age of 15. The
couple had three sons: M D Nalapat, Chinen Das and
Jayasurya Das. Her husband who happened to be
bisexual later on in their marriage life, predeceased her
in 1992, after 43 years of marriage. Madhav Das
Nalapat, her eldest son, is married to Princess
Thiruvathira Thirunal Lakshmi Bayi (daughter of
Princess Pooyam Thirunal Gouri Parvati Bayi and Sri
Chembrol Raja Varma Avargal) from the Travancore
Royal House. He holds the UNESCO Peace Chair and is a
professor of geopolitics at the Manipal University. He
had been a resident editor of The Times of India.
Kamala Surayya converted to Islam in 1999 and
announced that she planned to marry her Muslim lover,
but she never remarried.
On 31 May 2009, aged 75, she died at a hospital in
Pune, after a long battle with pneumonia. Her body was
flown to her home state of Kerala. She was interred at
the Palayam Juma Masjid at Thiruvananthapuram with
full state honour.
 • POLITICS:
Though never politically active before, she launched a
national political party, Lok Seva Party, aiming at the
promotion of so-called secularism and providing
asylum to orphaned mothers. In 1984 she
unsuccessfully contested in the Indian Parliament
elections.
• CONVERSION TO ISLAM:
She was born in a conservative Hindu Nair (Nalapat)
family, and married to Aristocratic Menon family
(Kalipurayath) which is having royal ancestry. She
converted to Islam on December 11, 1999, at the age
of 65 and assumed the name Kamala Surayya. “Allah
told me that in order to be effective, you should have
political power”, this is, What Kamala Das told when
she was asked why she converted to Islam. Kamala
Suraiya in her pre-Islamic days) continues to shock
the strait-laced Malayalees. One of India's best known
English poets and short story writers.

HER WORK IN LITERATURE:

She was noted for her several Malayalam short stories
as well as poems written in English. Das was also a
syndicated columnist. She once claimed that "poetry
does not sell in this country [India]", but her forthright
columns, which sounded off on everything from
women's issues and child care to politics, were popular.
Das was a confessional poet whose poems have often
been considered at par with those of Anne Sexton and
Robert Lowell.
Kamala Das' first book of poetry, Summer in Calcutta
was a breath of fresh air in Indian English poetry. She
wrote chiefly of love, betrayal, and the consequent
anguish. Das abandoned the certainties offered by an
archaic, and somewhat sterile, aestheticism for an
independence of mind and body at a time when Indian
poets were still governed by "19th-century diction,
sentiment and romanticized love."

Her second book of poetry, The Descendants was even

more explicit, urging women to:

Gift him what makes you woman, the scent of

Long hair, the musk of sweat between the breasts,
The warm shock of menstrual blood, and all your
Endless female hungers ...

— Kamala Das, "The Looking Glass", The Descendants

This directness of her voice led to comparisons with
Marguerite Duras and Sylvia Plath. At the age of 42, she
published a daring autobiography, My Story; it was
originally written in Malayalam (titled Ente Katha) and
later she translated it into English. Later she admitted
that much of the autobiography had fictional elements.

Some people told me that writing an autobiography like

this, with absolute honesty, keeping nothing to oneself,
is like doing a striptease. True, maybe. I, will, firstly,
strip myself of clothes and ornaments. Then I intend to
peel off this light brown skin and shatter my bones. At
last, I hope you will be able to see my homeless, orphan,
intensely beautiful soul, deep within the bone, deep
down under, beneath even the marrow, in a fourth
dimension ...
- excerpts from the translation of Kamala Das'
autobiography in Malayalam, Ente Katha
"An Introduction" is very bold poem in which Das
expresses her femininity, individuality, and true
feelings about men. This autobiographical poem is
written in the colloquial style. She presents her feelings
and thoughts in a bold manner. She realises her identity
and understands that it is the need of every woman to
raise a voice in this male-dominated society. The poet
longs for love that is the result of her loneliness and
frustration.
The poem "A Hot Noon in Malabar" is about climate,
surrounding in a town in Malabar. The people may be
annoyed by the heat, dust and noise but she likes it. She
longs for the hot noon in Malabar because she
associates it with the wild men, wild thoughts and wild
love. It is a torture for her to be away from Malabar.

In "My Mother at Sixty-Six," Das explores the irony in

mother-daughter relationship, and includes the themes
of aging, growing-up, separation and love. "Dance of
Eunuchs" is another fine poem in which Das
sympathises with eunuchs. It has an autobiographical
tone. The eunuchs dance in the heat of the sun. Their
costumes, makeup and their passion with which they
dance suggest the female delicacy. Their outward
appearance and joy is contrasted with their inward
sadness. Actually, there is no joy in their heart, they
cannot even dream of happiness. In the poem "A
Request," Das realises that her life is meaningless. She
is alone and her colourless life is designed of crumbling
patterns.

Kamala Das is essentially known for her bold and frank

expression. The prominent features of her poetry are
an acute obsession with love and the use of confession.
The main theme of her poetry is based upon freedom,
love and protection. She wrote on a diverse range of
topics, often disparate - from the story of a poor old
servant, about the sexual disposition of upper-middle-
class women living near a metropolitan city or in the
middle of the ghetto. Some of her better-known stories
include Pakshiyude Manam, Neypayasam, Thanuppu,
and Chandana Marangal. She wrote a few novels, out of
which Neermathalam Pootha Kalam, which was
received favorably by the general readers, as well as,
the critics, stands out.

She travelled extensively to read poetry to Germany's

University of Duisburg-Essen, University of Bonn and
University of Duisburg universities, Adelaide Writer's
Festival, Frankfurt Book Fair, University of Kingston,
Jamaica, Singapore, and South Bank Festival (London),
Concordia University (Montreal, Canada), etc. Her
works are available in French, Spanish, Russian,
German and Japanese.

She has also held positions as Vice-chairperson in

Kerala Sahitya Akademi, chairperson in Kerala Forestry
Board, President of the Kerala Children's Film Society,
editor of Poet magazine and poetry editor of Illustrated
Weekly of India.

Although occasionally seen as an attention-grabber in

her early years, she is now seen as one of the most
formative influences on Indian English poetry. In 2009,
The Times called her "the mother of modern English
Indian poetry".

Her last book titled The Kept Woman and Other Stories,
featuring translation of her short stories, was published
posthumously. Kamala Das is best remembered for her
controversial writings where she openly talks about the
restriction imposed on women. She is known for her
rebellious nature against the patriarchal conventions.
AWARDS AND OTHER RECOGNITIONS:
Kamala Das has received many awards for her literary
contribution, including:

1963: PEN Asian Poetry Prize

1968: Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Story –
Thanuppu
1984: Shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature
1985: Kendra Sahitya Academy Award (English) –
Collected Poems
1988: Kerala State Film Award for Best Story
1997: Vayalar Award – Neermathalam Pootha Kalam
1998: Asian Poetry Prize
2006: Honorary D.Litt by University of Calicut
2006: Muttathu Varkey Award
2002: Ezhuthachan Award
HER BOOKS:
• IN ENGLISH:
▪ Novel
1976: Alphabet of Lust
▪ Autobiography
1976: My Story
▪ Short stories
1977: A Doll for the Child Prostitute
1992: Padmavati the Harlot and Other Stories
▪ Poetry
1964: The Sirens
1965: Summer in Calcutta
1965: An Introduction
1967: The Descendants
1973: The Old Playhouse and Other Poems
1977: The Stranger Time
1979: Tonight, This Savage Rite (with Pritish Nandy)
1984: Collected Poems
1985: The Anamalai Poems
1997: Only the Soul Knows How to Sing
1999: My Mother at Sixty-six
2001: Yaa Allah
• IN MALYALAM
1964: Pakshiyude Manam (short stories)
1966: Naricheerukal Parakkumbol (short stories)
1968: Thanuppu (short story)
1973: Ente Katha (autobiography)
1987: Balyakala Smaranakal (childhood memories)
1989: Varshangalkku Mumbu (novel)
1990: Palayan (novel)
1991: Neypayasam (short story)
1992: Dayarikkurippukal (novel)
1994: Neermathalam Pootha Kalam (novel)
1996: Kadal Mayooram (short novel)
1996: Rohini (short novel)
1996: Rathriyude Padavinyasam (short novel)
1996: Aattukattil (short novel)
1996: Chekkerunna Pakshikal (short stories)
1998: Nashtapetta Neelambari (short stories)
2005: Chandana Marangal (novel)
2005: Madhavikkuttiyude Unmakkadhakal (short
stories)
2005: Vandikkalakal (novel)
2019 : Ottayadi pathayum vishadam pookkunna
marangalum
 BIBLIOGRAPHY:
WWW.WIKIPEDIA.ORG
WWW.BRITANNICA.COM
WWW.LITERARYLADIESGUIDE.COM
WWW.JAVATPOINT.COM
WWW.ENGLISHHECLASSES.COM
WWW.REDDIT.COM
WWW.FEMINISMININDIA.COM
WWW.YOUTUBE.COM