"My Story" by Kamala Das: Book Recommendation 1

Last week, I read Kamala Das’ autobiography, My Story. The acclaimed poetess passed away recently, and when I read the mention of the book in tributes to her in various publications the name rang a bell. I have read her poetry in college, and was particularly struck by the extract from this poem (An Introduction) which reflects the many identities we juggle as Indians:

I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar,
I speak three languages, write in
Two, dream in one.
Don’t write in English, they said,
English is not your mother-tongue. Why not leave
Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,
Every one of you? Why not let me speak in
Any language I like? The language I speak,
Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses
All mine, mine alone.

The interesting background on the book is that Das wrote it when she was in the hospital, being treated for a bout with heart disease that she was sure she would succumb to. She started writing chapters for serialised publication in a journal. It helped pay the hospital bills and clear her conscience. Imagine her mortification then, when she made a surprising recovery and had to contend with the consequences of laying bare her heart and unmasking the deepest secrets of her family. Yet she faces up to it bravely, as seen in these lines:

This book has cost me many things that I held dear, but I do not for a moment regret having written it. I have written several books in my life time, but none of them provided the pleasure the writing of My Story has given to me.

What you notice immediately in the book is how she constructs sentences of simple beauty that hold profound meaning. For instance, “Like alms looking for a begging bowl was my love which only sought for it a receptacle. At the hour of worship even a stone becomes a idol.”

And her criticism is acerbic. “The obsession with sin destroyed the minds of several girls who were at the beginning of their adolescence normal and easygoing. If there was a dearth of sin, sin at any cost had to manufactured, because forgiving the sinners was a therapeutic exercise, popular with the rabidly virtuous.”

My Story is essentially an account of a woman’s search for love and happiness in the face of loss, loneliness and societal restrictions. She longed for some form of connectedness with the universe and her writing was one way of achieving this. With tools like the Internet, we often take for the granted the ease with which we can engage in conversations with like-minded people in far corners of the world, something that Kamala Das spent her whole life searching for.