Hello readers! This blog is a response to a task assigned by Yesha Bhatt ma’am based on the poem ‘An Introduction” by Kamala Das. The assignment is to Pick any one line/ word/ phrase/ thought/ idea from the poem, Writing our own version of it in the form of poetry, excerpt, paragraph (prose), story, or any literary piece.
AN INTRODUCTION
Kamala Das
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male point of view and that women are treated unjustly in these societies. Efforts to change this include fighting against gender stereotypes and establishing educational, professional, and interpersonal opportunities and outcomes for women that are equal to those for men.
“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion
About Kamala Das
Kamala Surayya is an Indian Author from Kerala, born on 31 March 1934 and died on 31 May 2009. She was popularly known by her one-time pen name Madhavikutty and married name Kamala Das. She is an Indian poet in English as well as an author in Malayalam, India. 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.
About the poem ‘ An Introduction’
Read the whole Poem ‘An Introduction’ By Kamala Das
"An Introduction" is a very bold poem, published in Calcutta in 1965, 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 realizes 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 ‘An Introduction’ is written in two stanzas, 37 and 22 lines respectively and in total it is 59 lines. Das explores powerful themes of feminism/equal rights, freedom, and marriage in 'An Introduction'. This poem is a very clear feminist statement that advocates for free choice for all women. The major theme of most of her poems are the quest for love and her failure to find fulfillment of love in life.
In the poem Kamala Das is sharing her personal life and her time when the world was all about patriarchy. The poem is a mixture of history and memory. She begins with how politics and positions were decided. She personally was not interested in politics but she knew all the politicians who ruled in sequence beginning with Nehru. Symbolically she presented the place of women in this patriarchal world. Even after independence women were/ are not independent as men were/ are. Absence of women politicians in the history of India till the time of Kamala Das.
Further, in the poem Das talks about her multi-linguistic . Das already had to face various oppositions being a female writer but above all she also had to justify her language of writing. Society forced her to write in her mother tongue and to leave English. But she claimed that whichever language she/ one uses turns to be one's own. Its distortions are not its flaw but its uniqueness.
Das was married at a very early age. She was always forced to ‘fit-in’ in the womanliness of the society and perform her duties in the patriarchal world. But yet in all this she fights and finds her own way and writes this wonderful poem which inspires other women also to be what they are and to search for self.
Das brings the poem to an end on the exact same notes that the beginning and the center of her poem explicitly stress, i.e., “I.” The struggle between herself and the world at large heightens towards the end, eventually blurring the lines between where her original self begins and ends.
I would like to quote Simon de Beauvoir's statement from The Second Sex-
"Man is defined as a human being and woman as a female – whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male." "One is not born, but rather becomes a woman."
This is a prose– poem of my own version from this poem. This is the first time I am trying my hands on creative writing. I apologize for the mistakes or any incompleteness found in it. I might make corrections or add in the poem later. The line I chose from the poem is Who are you, I ask each and everyone, The answer is, it is I.
Who are you, I ask each and everyone,
The answer is, it is I.
Who are you, I was asked by each and everyone,
The answer is, it is I.
I, trying to paint my world
I, trying to read the unsaid
I, trying to play with books;
Growing to what are you from who are you.
What are you? A woman, a girl
Made to play with kitchen set
Dressing Barbies, broom and mop;
No, a disordered girl
No more domicile as Sita
But fiery as Draupadi,
Escaping Austen’s world
Getting in Woolf’s world;
Growing to what are you from who are you.
Explanation of my poem
The above poem is my first experiment of creative writing. Borrowing the first line from Das’s poem ‘An Introduction’ I have tried to write a few lines continuing it. In this poem I have explained ‘I’, who is ‘I’ and what is ‘I’ which is used for self- identity. ‘I’ is the one who is building her own world and trying to change the question from who are you to what are you. Which means not asking who you are but how come you did this what are you? What is answered as you can be simply a woman who is always taught to be a girl. But now women will not be domicile or controllable as Sita but will fight challenges and be fierce like mythical character Draupadi. Today women is/ will try to escape Jane Austen’s world, world of marriage and womanliness and is/ will enter the world of Virginia Woolf, where women stood for themselves, fought for their place in the patriarchal society.
I have painted this painting based on a few lines of the poetry. Lines of the poetry are also written below.
I speak three languages, write in
Two, dream in one.
It is half English, halfIndian, funny perhaps, but it is honest,
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.
There is also a Hindi feminist song ‘Rupaiyya’ from Album ‘Super 8 womaniya Special’ released in 2017 by Sona Mohapatra. It was presented on ‘Satyamev Jayate’ Star Plus program on Women’s Day special program.
As in ‘An Introduction’ in this song a girl is requesting her parents that she is not a burden for anyone so they do not sell her. Sell her in the sense not to make her marriage and pay dowry for it. She will and can fight with all the troubles of life and society, she cannot be contemplated with money. She leant walking with fathers support and will turn to his father’s support. She is also a part of the family not a ‘paraya dhan’ she will definitely bring food, earnings to the family. This song strongly suggests the answer ‘No’. A girl has a right on herself, on the family she is born in. She can make her own decisions.
Here we see the poem was published in 1965 yet there is no great change in society which can be easily read from the very recent Hindi song released in 2017. Perhaps women have to start their own new world, new life, new language to get free from this patriarchal society. As we have a short story ‘Sultana’s Dream’ by Begum Rokeya. The land of women, first published in 1905 in a Madras English newspaper, is a witty feminist utopia—a tale of reverse purdah that posits a world in which men are confined indoors and women have taken over the public sphere, ending a war nonviolently and restoring health and beauty to the world.
I hope my blog is useful to you. Thanks for visiting.
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