Thinking Activity- selected Poems- An Introduction- Kamala Das

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.

She has wrote a Novel Alphabet of Lust (1976); Autobiography My Story (1976); Short stories A Doll for the Child Prostitute (1977), Padmavati the Harlot and Other Stories (1992) in English and various poems in English and 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.

Digital Narrative : Sultana's Dream

SUNDAY READING

Sultana's Dream and Sultana's Reality

This blog is a response to a reading task given by Yesha Bhatt Ma'am. On the very first day of MA semester 3 class Ma'am introduced us to a ‘Digital Narrative’ in the class.

Women writers were not so celebrated in Literature. Reading female writers gives us insight to their life, we can read their situations and way of living in a specific period. ‘Sultana's Dream’ is a short story by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880 - 1932) which was originally published in The Indian Ladies' Magazine, Madras, 1905, in English.

Rokeya Hossain was a prominent Bengali feminist thinker, writer, educator and political activist from British India (present day Bangladesh). She is widely regarded as a pioneer of women's liberation in South Asia.

She advocated for men and women to be treated equally as rational beings, noting that the lack of education for women was responsible for their inferior economic position. Her major works include:

1. Matichur (A String of Sweet Pearls, 1904 and 1922), a collection of essays in two volumes expressing her feminist thoughts;

2. Sultana’s Dream (1908), a feminist science fiction novella set in Ladyland ruled by women; 3. Padmarag ("Essence of the Lotus", 1924) depicting the difficulties faced by Bengali wives;

4. Oborodh Basini (The Confined Women, 1931), a spirited attack on the extreme forms of purdah that endangered women's lives and self-image.

Afrah Shafiq is a multi/new media artist based out of Goa, India. Using the process of research as an artistic playground, Afrah intertwines archival findings, history, memory, folklore and fantasy to create a speculative world born of remixed culture. Afrah Shafiq has retold the story of Sultana from Rokeya Hossain’s story ‘Sultana’s Dream’ and presented her imaginative creative work which tries brings out the real situation which might be faced by Sultana or Rokeya Hossain in her life with the name ‘Sultana’s Reality’. ‘Sultana’s Reality’ is an interactive multimedia story that explores the relationship between women and the colonial education movement in India using archival imagery, women’s writing and history.

You can visit her Digital Narrative ‘Sultana’s Reality’- https://www.entersultanasreality.com/

Below I am answering the assigned question.

Concept of Andar mahal – the universe of Women

Beginning with the meaning of what is Andar mahal; Andar mahal or inner chambers is also known as Zenana, it is a part of a house for the seclusion of Women. The very first chapter of ‘Sultana’s Reality' talks about Andar mahal ‘an inner world of their own’.

The concept of Andar mahal was at its peak in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. It was a completely secluded place for women, the only contact with the outside world was working women who did household jobs in Andar mahal and had freedom to roam the world. It was the place from where women cannot step out and it was only the place where men can not step- in. in a small bonded place but women were all free to do what they wished. They used to live their best life singing, dancing, jokes, partying etc.

While reading a short story ‘Sultana’s Dream’ we realize that she also might be caged in an Andar mahal and it is giving her an imagination of the ladyland where women were free and men were caged in Mardana instead of Zenana. One can interpret the craving of women in Andar mahal to be free, roam unveiled.

Andar mahal can be considered to be a universe of women because it was the only place where they were safe from the men. In a compact, caged place, they were free to dance, sing, enjoy, writing poetry, gossip about husbands and making jokes on them.

Observation of females and their connection with books.

(Colonial education movement)

Sultana’s Reality explores the inner lives of the first generation of women to be educated in pre-independent India. Following an Alice in Wonderland style adventure the interactive multimedia installation brings to life accounts of different women.

On 14th August 1856. Koyla Schumer Bose gave a speech on ‘Education of Hindu Females’ in Calcutta. He appealed to the wealthiest people of Bengal to rally around for female education. He was the one to give a famous line “ She must be re-organized, refined, recast, regenerated.” In the second chapter of ‘Sultana’s Reality’ I Got my Eye on You’ we get an idea about why female education began. It seems like before this period no men paid attention to what happened inside the Andar mahal. Later, men felt that women were loose and men were embarrassed. So they decided to give education and hand books to them but not for their development and growing, for cultivating women’s true nature, their stri- bhava. Good books to improve their religious sense, being suitable for domestic work, to be more amiable and high principled, more faithful and devoted to men’s services, to have a modeled English women; men believed the only duty/ dharma of women is to serve their husband. The books ‘Stri- Dharma Padhti’ and ‘Bahishti Zewar’ were the two famous publications of the time.

The third chapter ‘Straighten Things Out’ clearly states that men wanted to bring women on line through education. Even in this system some women were happily accepting books but some were annoyed by it. Some would rather nap than read, Some were stoned in the streets for wearing shoes and carrying umbrellas, Some read forbidden texts in secret at night, Some read and then challenged the very ideas they read and some went on to write books - telling their story in their own words. The books they wrote reveal a universe of women’s lives as they were actually lived – outside the confines of bad and good behavior. The women in the books and the books in the women were full of messiness, intimacy, cynicism, humor, anger, dreams, beauty and love - and all of it together makes up their history. Men wanted a modeled woman for the show piece but for some getting books worked as a boon.

But later for all the women the savior women came and talked for women and their growth.

Compare both narratives of Sultana's Dream and Reality.

Sultan's Dream is the story of the utopian world, while Sultana's reality is the prequel of Sultana’s Dream. Sultana’s Dream is a story of dreamland, it has a wonderful feminist point of view of a ladyland. Sultana’s Dream is based on an imagined Ladyland where women Can access public spaces unrestricted by social or religious customs. A feminist utopia imagines a world without gender binaries and gender discrimination. women seem to have access to public spaces without being restricted by social or religious customs in Sultana’s Dream which is an unrealistic idea. But it gives us a feel for women’s urge to be free, live life like men. The story reveals various emotions felt by women facing patriarchal oppression. In the story, women are shown as more rational and scientific than men, wherein Sara (the protagonist’s imaginary friend) is a scientific researcher who considers women as superior to men. Women and men work in a completely opposite manner than sultana’s world. While the Sultana’s reality gives a view of Sultana’s world and their suffering. Complete opposite concepts are seen in both the stories like of Mardana and Zenana, Women ruling and growing faster in Dream and Reality. The story of Sultana’s Dream also gives a hope that only in a world of women, women ruling is far more better, organized, refined, regenerated, progressive than ruled by men.

Sultana’s Reality is told through animated video, graphics, gifs, comics, collages and other digital art forms made by collating, re-mixing, re-interpreting and re-imagining traditional visual imaginations of the female form. It tries to explore the multiplicity of women’s history and also image making – the ways in which it is told and remembered. Sultana’s Reality is perhaps an exercise in questioning history. Not the history of the image, but a history that is constructed with the image.

I hope my blog was useful to you. Thanks for visiting.