Abstract
The intention of this article is show the different treatment of sex and love between Kamala Das and Jayanta Mahapatra, two leading exponents of Indian English poetry. Both of them composed poems on the same topic but their individual analytical sentiments offered two instinct perspectives of that subject. The article is intended to present on the one hand the humiliation and deprivation of women from having satisfaction on sexual ground in the poems of Kamala Das, on the other hand the socio-political and economical background for victimization of women both on sexual and financial points in Jayanta Mahapatra’s poetry. Qualitative methodology is keenly adopted for preparing this research article and textual annotations of several poems are mentioned. The hollowness and drawbacks of Indian life and civilization in post-independent time found in textual analysis that had originated several questions on position of women in modern social life. Finally it’s apparent that Jayanta Mahapatra uplifted the suffering of women in a national; or universal form where as female personas were mostly confined within their inner psychological turmoil. Mahapatra had enhanced the boundary of the problem of women sexuality to a broader socio-economical aura.
Keywords: Body, Hunger, Love, Sex, Women.
Indian writing in English was originated in the colonial time as the result of educational and cultural renaissance of nineteenth century. It was also provoked by the cross cultural interaction of India and Britain. It was started in Bengal by the hand of Raja Rammohan Ray, Henry Derozio, Michael Madhusudan Dutta, Monmohan Ghosh . However, it was sturdily founded as effective voice of Indian culture, society, history, life, and struggle by Rabindranath Tagore, Toru Dutt, Sarojini Naidu, Aurobindo Ghosh, Harindranath Chattapadhay, Dr. Krishna Srinivas and others. But after the independence of India, literature was going through a new direction where few literary exponents were needed for its proper enrichments. Apart from this, Gender studies, Waves of Feminism, Post Colonial criticism, Post Modern and Post Structural theories were effecting strongly upon literature and social studies. In that perspective A.K. Ramanujan, R. Parthasarathi, Jayanta Mahapatra, Kamala Das, P.Lal, Nissim Ezekiel, K.N. Daruwala, Shiv. K. Kumar, O.P. Bhatnagar and others. Among several themes human relationship, love, sex, offence, suffering became a common theme for moreover all poets from this time. Basically apart from external world, the inner psychology of human mind and body was getting prominence in that time. Kamala Das and Jayanta Mahapatra vividly focused on love, sex, feminism but their out looking was quite different. It on the one hand established those facts in Indian literature in two different ways, on the other hand enabled the readers to enhance their faculty of judgment.
Kamala Das was born on 30th March 1934 in a highly educated and aristocratic family in Malabar, Kerala. Her maiden name was Madhavi Kutty by which name she wrote several poems in her mother tongue Malayalam. However, her life in paternal house, childhood made the background of her literary career that is mostly reflected in her compositions. Das didn’t gain any university education and was taught under the supervision of private tutor. Once due to serious illness she returned from school and never went again. So from the very childhood Das was kept in home from where her longing of coming out was germinated. Those facts are depicted in her autobiography My Story, the authentic source of Das’s delineation of subject matter in her poetry. In spite of being born in an orthodox family Kamala Das was too much frank and bold in her compositions that added specialty on her poetic craftsmanship. However, her family arranged her marriage at a tender age of fifteen with Madhav Das, much older than Kamala in age, an employee of Reserve Bank of India. Madhav Das was totally a wrong matching for a teen age girl like Kamala. Her marriage was non-conjugal, a failure and disastrous that basically ruined her life as he was a man of unlimited physical lust who didn’t know anything except fulfilling hunger of his libido through the body of wife. Here Kamala became nothing but a toy puppet who could only be played as per the whim of her master husband. Those agonies are clearly portrayed vividly by her pen. Her volumes of poems are Summer in Calcutta (1965), The Descendants (1967), The Old Playhouse and Other Poems (1973), and Strange Time (1975). She also wrote some essays but her noteworthy prose work is her autobiography My Story (1975), significant in literary perspective. She won some prestigious awards like ‘Asian Poetry Prize’, ‘Sahitya Academy Award’, ‘Kerala Sahitya Academy Award’, ‘Kent award’, ‘Vayalem Award’. Even she was short listed for Nobel Prize in literature in 1984, however she didn’t get it.
Kamala Das broke several social as well as traditional literary regulations in her poetry. Her open presentation of subject, personal experiences, notion of love and sex was new in Indian literature. In her treatment of love Das was different as she didn’t advise women to keep distance from men. But she was against the oppression of women in sexuality. It’s the point of Das’s poetry where her conception of love is thought provoking and liberal. Her love is divided between two self— pure love and sexual love. She didn’t deny the necessity of sex of bodily connection; even she treated it as the half portion of love relationship. She opposed the mere lust where there is no mutual understanding, affection, connection of heart, there is only domination, subjection. She wished to offer her body to beloved but not to be raped by him. She called this lusty domestic rape ‘skin’s lazy hunger’ where the hunger of heart and soul is denied. In the poem Of Calcutta, Das treated her position like the dogs of circus who only played the role as per the direction of its master. Generally the mental and sexual developments of Indian girls are done in this process. This remind us the theory of Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1949) where Beauvoir emphasized how women saw their sexual development, social attitude to their body and sex organs. A woman tragically felt how her body was taken away from her possession and used by others. Both Beauvoir and Kamala Das exposed the miserable consequence of a young girl who dreamt of a romantic first night with her beloved but was treated only as a sex machine and nothing else. Actually the existence of body or more openly naked body is strongly felt in Das’s delineation of love. She was not ashamed for woman body and genital but it was her pride and glorification of feminine beauty. In the poem ‘The Looking glass’ Das suggested the women to utilize their bodily grace fully with their men and to attract them to make sexual love without any sin, stigma, and shame hesitation. She suggested women to be fully naked and offer the body boldly to the beloved. They should look at the observation of their lovers to their body:
“Notice the perfection of his limbs….
Dropping towels, and the jerky way he
Urinates. All the fond details that make
Him made and your only man”. (Das, 1967,p.25)
But all the love and glories of body is lost when it became the instrument of lusty exploitation. If there is no emotional attachment, there is no pleasure but endless mechanical suffering. Then the body is turned into a living prison for girls as Das depicted in her poem The Prisoner:
“I study the trappings of your body
For I must someday find
An escape from its share”. (Das, 2004,p.29)
Das was excellent in her pictorial and metaphorical devices with the sexual acts or organs. She compared her husband of partners with poisonous insects and snake. In the poem Gino She compared the kiss of her beloved with ‘krait bite’ that is poisonous for health. She felt the bitter taste when he sucked her body, there was no enjoyment. We may compare the situation with the poem Sick Rose of William Blake in the collection of Songs of Experience (1794):
“O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
… Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy?” (Sen, 2007,p.131)
Here the body is burden and source of oppression for women. Das didn’t find any meaning of such a type of bondless love. She became frightened at the degeneration of body that snatches the liberty of women from her own body. In the poem The Freaks, the poet felt the dirty and filthy appearances of her lover who was putting his right hand on her knee. It was very irritating for her as the beloved was touching only skin’s hunger, not the hunger of mind. The action of her lover was totally lustful as she mentioned in the poem:
“…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.” (Das, 2004,p.11)
The poet was not comfortable in front of such ‘unnatural’ behavior of her beloved. But she had hidden her actual agony by a mask of ‘grand, flamboyant lust’ to mean that she was enjoying the sex. But it was emotional suppression for her that was basically rape. The poem The Invitation is somewhere different from others as Kamala Das here divided her soul between life and death. It’s basically a battle between subjugation and emancipation. During her conversation with the Sea the Sea suggested the poet to dive in to its water to avail the taste of liberty through death. It would end her humiliation, physical cum sexual assault on bed as she would take rest in the bed and pillow like softness of the sea that would lead her to eternity. But the poet was still in the hope of gaining the passionate love from her beloved and so she refused the offer of the sea. However, the poet was unable to hold her authoritative positive upon others as due to her refusal the sea kept a pressure upon her forcefully to accept its offer. Now the poet had no other way but excepting death in to the sea. She expressed as:
“The tides beat against the walls, they
Beat in childish rage….
Darling forgive, how long can one resist?” (Das, 1967, p.20)
The poem is cynical in the sense that it expressed pessimism in love instead of offering optimism. At the end the Sea played the role of the poet’s beloved who forced her to do as per its will. Here also the poet couldn’t hold her independence on her decision. She was surely suffering from some sense of inferiority that subdued her. In ‘Convicts’ both the poet and her beloved lost their identity in sexual act. After sex they realized that this was nothing but a way of fulfilling lust. They looked on each other in motionless dead like eyes and treated themselves as convict of thief who had committed a crime secretly. It again proved the futility of love less sex oriented life. The Suicide is the same category poem , a conversation between the Sea and the poet. She again emphasized the mutual bonding of body and soul, but it would be grave like experience if body kills the soul. Then the poet would have no option except inviting the death:
“If love is not to be had
I want to be dead”. (Das,1967,p.20)
Here by inviting death to conclude her endless agony Kamala Das again offered pessimism to her readers. She could not make any solution of her problems of love relationship. However, by allowing death to interfere in her affairs and to end her life she again lost her control on her and the privilege of decision making.
Kamala das took a revolutionary step in her poems regarding prelateship that no other poet before her could show this courage in Indian literature. Das was not so timid and orthodox to maintain the traditional social taboo where men only had the privilege in relationship that women were deprived from getting so. She openly said in her poem that she was involved with many other men in extra marital affair in order to find mental gratification. But she was again hopeless in those affairs as her partners were just like her husband who only wished physical pleasure without any care for her romantic, wholehearted love. In the poem The Grandmother’s House the poet expressed that like a beggar she went to the door of her new partner for a ‘change’ that is highly bold:
“…..beg now at stranger’s doors
to receive love, at least in small change?” (Das,2004,p.32)
In the poem Composition the poet depicted that she was dissatisfied with all of her extramarital lovers. No one could fulfill the thirst of love from where she was suffering. In each term of making love her body was only objectified. In The stone Age the poet thought that her husband turned her into a lifeless stony bird. She expressed vividly the condition under which a woman is compelled to involve her in a relationship with other man ignoring the marital bonding. Here Kamala Das deserved freedom from this extra affair that is not taboo for her, but wings of emancipation to fly in the sky of loving liberty. In her poem Captive the poet was involved with a childish extra marital affair where her beloved cried at the end that they had not got anything. She consoled her pointing that their sexual act was nothing but ‘womb’s blinded hunger’, they didn’t come close through emotional attachment. The title of the poem is very suggestive in the sense that the poet is captivated by her own desire of pure love. She was caught between the frustration with husband and lovers of ‘illegal’ affair. The poem openly confessed in the poem The Sunshine Cat that her husband was a ‘ruthless watcher’ of her sharing bed with other partners but he himself didn’t love her. It showed the ironical enjoyment of his wife of being attached with other men. She devoted both her body and soul to those partners but they had not utilized it in adoring manner but through lusty hands. In this situation the poet had no other way except weeping:
“They let her slide from pegs of sanity into
A bed made soft with tears, and she lay there weeping,
For sleep had lost its use. I shall build walls with tears,
She said, walls to shut me in. Her husband shut her….” (Parthasarathi, 1984,p.25)
Very interestingly Kamala Das in her poem Ghanashyam attached a strong spiritual tone that she had not done earlier. In Hindu mythology Ghanashyam is Lord Sri Krishna who is the incarnation of love. He was passionately worshipped by his beloved Radha and more than hundred ‘gopis’ (female friend). However Kamala Das invoked Sri Krishna in her poem to justify her position in extra marital relationships. As lord Krishna had one hundred and eight names where in each of his name his role and identity is partly different, so while making love with several lovers Kamala Das thought that Ghanashyam (Lord Krishna) was making love with her in several incarnations. Being frustrated both with husband and lovers Kamala Das had sublimated her love to spirituality and that’s why she chose Ghanashyam as her lover to justify her affairs as she said in poem:
“You come in strange forms
And your names are many.
Is it then a fact that I love the disguise
and the name more than I love you?” (Das,1965,p.37)
A gorgeous star in the sky of Indian literature, Jayanta Mahapatra took birth on 22th October1928 in Cuttack, Odisha. He is an unusual persona of Indian literature in two senses, firstly he was a Professor of Physics in Ravenshaw College and he began to compose poetry at the age of forty. But significantly his contribution and success in literature is too unusual that he is the first poet in Indian literature in English who earned the ‘Sahitya Academy Award’ (1981). Apart from this, another interesting fact is that Mahapatra was recognized first in abroad then in his own country. However notable volumes of his poetry are Cloze the Sky, Ten by Ten (1971), Svayamvara and other Poems (1971), A Rain of Rites (1976), Waiting (1979), Relationship (1980), Temple (1989). He was awarded ‘Padma Shri’ award in 2009 from Hon’ble President of India, the fourth highest civilian award of the country. He also achieved ‘Jacob Glatstein Memorial Award – Poetry, Chicago’ (1975), ‘Cultural Award Visitor’, Australia, (1978), ‘Japan Foundation – Visitor's Award’, Japan, 1980. Here Mahapatra attempted to know the deepness of love in modern life that’s why in his treatment of love, sex, relationship, human interaction emotional touch is very little, realistic facts are pivotal. He was conscious with the question of sex with love that was also discussed by other poets of his time like Nissim Ezekiel, Kamala Das, Shiv. K. Kumar, A.K. Ramanujan. Mahapatra was not intended of making analytical studies on the basic instincts of human body (Sada Ripu or Six enemies ) but tried to evaluate this on larger perspective that controls the modern and post modern civilization as well as the fate of man. However in his love poems he glorified love with soul or spiritual intimacy over mere sex.
Mahaparta brilliantly dealt with the points of modern literature as well as the condition of India after independence like suffering, deprivation, victimization, hunger, poverty, religious and caste based discrimination, political upheaval, crisis of identity, discrimination of gender etc. On the point of feminism her intention was not to highlight women as victims of only sexual ground but to expose the causes attached with this. He frankly discussed the topics like prostitution several times and his conception of love and sex is depended on this. In this regard his poem Hunger is highly significant where Mahapatra attached the hunger of body with the hunger of belly that shows the poverty of common people. Any of the sea beach of Odisha is the background of the poem. Here due to immense poverty a fisherman used to offer his young daughter to the visitor for sexual gratification. It was the way of earning and quench the ‘hunger’ of belly for that father and daughter. While folding the nets in the fisherman was offering his proposal to the speaker of the poem. He was doing so in such a casual manner that it was normal and usual for him. Then he took the person to his sack where his daughter was waiting for ‘customers’ of her body. Then the fisherman left and his daughter ‘opened her wormly legs’ wide as a sign of motionless invitation for the person to use her sexually. The clear description of the poet is too much appealing:
“Long and lean, her years were cold as rubber.
She opened her wormy legs wide. I felt the hunger there,
the other one, the fish slithering, turning inside” (Mahapatra,1976,p.44)
The subject matter and the title ‘Hunger’ is very suggestive here that indicated both the hunger of food and the hunger of bodily desire. But the two ‘hungers’ are juxtaposed in the sense that if the girl would satisfy the ‘hunger’ of other’s libido then she and her father would get relief from starvation (hunger). The role of the fisherman is important with socio-economical stand point. He played the role of broker for the prostitute profession of his own daughter, he also tried to cast her sexual appeal to the visitor customer by mentioning her age as only fifteen. He wanted not only to sell her body but her beauty that showed his professional treatment of the matter. He also told the visitor that the bus would be living at nine o’ clock and he might taste the girl with relax by this time. In history of Indian English literature this is the most vivid portrayal of narrowness of poverty of newly independent country. It also emphasized the hollowness of traditional notion of relationship. In the earlier time under orthodox belief, women were veiled and kept under ‘pardha’ but now she is openly sold due to poverty. Here hunger both in sense is the controller that broke all orthodoxy and natural bonding of holy relationship between father and daughter. Here the interaction of a broker and a prostitute is left . In the poem some metaphorical phrases of Mahapatra is highly significant like “I saw his white bone thrash his eyes” that means the white bone or the teeth of the fisherman chastised him as a sort of resistance against his desire of selling daughter’s flesh. It clarified that one half of the fisherman’s conscience was reluctant to this act but the other half provoked by hunger of stomach overpowered it. It showed the tragic helplessness of the fisherman’s defeated soul to penury that’s why he was actually trailing his nets but metaphorically was controlling his mind to make an ‘evil’ proposal. Here the expression of the narrator of the poem is also important on whom the notion of love and sex of Jayanta Mahapatra is vested. His mind was ‘thumping in the flesh’s sling’ as he was feeling guilty to accept the proposal. Here the poet is condemning the loveless lusty sexual interaction. It’s attested by the desire of the narrator to burn his living house as atonement of this ‘illegal act’. The long and lean appearance of the girl indicated that she had not got enough food daily for her health development and her years were as cold as rubber. This is the skeleton of poverty of financially marginalized section where a girl had to offer her sexual organs in order to keep alive her feeble body. Even ‘She opened her warmly legs wide’ is suggestive in the sense that it was looking low and humble adding the abjectness of the girl. She was doing o out of constraint, not by her wish. The nature of hunger is also different in both cases as the visitor was able to do sex by hiring a girl it may be assumed that he was economically strong having no starvation (hunger) in his belly when he came to the fisherman, hopefully he had taken his meal before coming here. Now he’s here only to satisfy his physical desires (hunger). So due to financial stability he could satisfy both of his hungers smoothly. But for the girl, there is no question of her normal physical desire as she is the commodity for satisfying the longings of others. She should not have any choice of partner, she was compelled to do sex with all of her paying customers. Her only hunger was in stomach that should be satisfied first and so she had no option or luxury of sex. So there is no question whether the girl was sexually satisfied by those customers or not . While the women in poems of fellow poets of Mahapatra were expressing their dissatisfaction and allegation against love and sex, this girl of ‘hunger’ doesn’t know what is love and sex.
The Whorehouse in a Calcutta Street is a realistic poem that again shows the port’s concern for sexual degradation in modern life. It’s the experience of a customer who went to a brothel of Calcutta who is the speaker of the poem. The broker of that brothel told him to be relaxed as the owner of this place for the night. He also suggested the customer to remember the faces of women in the hoardings of advertisement whom he wished to have secretly. Girls looking like them were available in that whorehouse. It’s the place to satisfy his sexual fantasy. But the customer was ashamed and reluctant to do the job, he thought the entire brothel was mocking him. He thought he would be defeated to this house if he chooses a girl for having sex in that night. Then the speaker customer reached to the room and the girl whom he chose stepped into. However, interestingly the customer had keen psychological insight that’s why he came to brother in order to learn the psychology of whores whereas most of the people come here only to satisfy their sexual starvation. Actually he went to brother to find any sensual appeal if it was available there. He closely observed the actions and behaviours of the whore but didn’t find any intimacy, compassion, love, sympathy, friendship from her. Even she was irritated at the ‘inactive’ sexual movement of the customer and tried to hurry him up for making the business end. Then she would take preparation for another customer. She knew all types of tricks to allure a customer so that he might visit again but not to love her. However the customer understood his own inner self as visiting a whorehouse was exceptional for him. There is nothing special for a regular customer of that brothel. But the customer realized himself and his inner self was like a ‘disobeying toy’ that didn’t work all the time according to his wish. The poems ends with moral note:
“….her words close behind:
Hurry, will you? Let me go,
And her lonely breath thrashed against your kind”. (Mahapatra,1976,p.18)
On the point of sexuality the poem suggested the moral dilemmas of love less trading sexual relationship. The whore is silent throughout the poem as she had no message or it was forcefully silenced. Actually it was her profession to satisfy her ‘hunger’ of belly, she didn’t do this by her own wish for any pleasing purpose. The poem ‘Slum’ is a realistic word picture painted by Mahapatra that disclosed the ugly picture of Indian slum areas. Normally people living in those areas lead a very marginalized life style. The narrator protagonist faced two women of different age but their profession and way of life was same. He found a old whore on the road waiting for customer. Her breasts were open that was looking tired for being used roughly several times by her customers. They only quenched the pleasures from those breasts for sexual satisfaction but didn’t think about her health. But in that old age too she was on the open road with open breasts to attract the people and it was only her only way of livelihood. She even tried to attract the protagonist speaker to have him as customer. Then he saw a sad looking young girl waiting for people who would offer her money in exchange of her body. She was looking pale may be due to starvation and poverty. Here again there is no human relationship or interaction but the affair between money and food and literally ‘hunger’ of body and ‘hunger’ of belly.
The nothingness of modern life is disclosed by Mahapatra in the poem The Exile that mentioned the broken sate of the protagonist in mental, physical, moral sense and his frustrations. He visualized the scene of dead body burning in a village of hill region. The ashes of the body was being scattered by wind that indicates the passing of blowing present time, It showed the transitory modern life . The decay of civilization is presented brilliantly by the poet in the poem Dwan at Puri where the cowing of crows and the scattered skulls on the holy sea beach of Puri symbolized the wretched condition of mankind filled with penury and poverty with lack or morality:
“Endless crow noises
A skull in the holy sands
tilts its empty country towards hunger.” (Prasad,1992,p.79)
Jayanta Mahapatra possessed a satirical tone in his poem The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of a Republic with the question “what is wrong with my country?” But here his notion of sexuality is different from other poets where he thought that history seemed to be standing between the breasts of a college girl. It asserter the independent mind of Indian women where breast is not a shame for them but a source of pride. Mahapatra here tried to normalize the matter of physical organs of women that was earlier either only eroticized or stigmatized. His conception of women emancipation is clarified in his presentation of his neighbour girl Mina who possessed both the divorce paper and a ‘lonely’ PhD degree. Being a Professor of Science and educationist Mahapatra on the one hand took women’s body on scientific parameters where the breasts are only biological organ of women, not a source of shame or stigma, not a source of satisfying sexual lusts of others, on the other hand he asserted the necessity of doctoral level higher education for women . But Mina’s divorce paper and ‘lonely’ PhD is highly suggestive that raised so many questions. Mina might had faced oppression in her in-laws house where because of unable to tolerate this she got divorced and took higher studies. But ‘lonely’ PhD suggests that even after getting a doctorate degree the society didn’t take her wholeheartedly. Either she became alone in the country or her PhD is not treated by others as indicator of development. They were confined with the traditional roles of women to call them ‘good girl’. Here discussion on T.S. Eliot is highly relevant as in The Waste Land (1922) expressed the scenario of modern life after First World War with vivid pictures where the pragmatic, religious and cultural traditions were collapsed. Through this poetry he reached from body to the soul of civilization in London. The name of the chapters of the poem is suggestive where the first chapter ‘The Burial of the Dead’ starts with the line “April is the cruelest month….” that indicated the darkness of modern life. The wasteland is full of dead bodies, barren and lifelessness. In another point Eliot and Jayanta Mahapatra are on the same row that is corruption in sexuality. In the chapter ‘A Game of Chess’ hollowness of love, relation is apparent in the story of Albert and his wife Lil. Here a friend of Lil advised her to maintain her physical beauty otherwise Albert would go to another woman. Actually Lil was unable to satisfy the sexual desires of husband. She lost her beauty after giving birth of five children , her teeth and facial grace were decreased. Apart from this because of taking excessive birth control pills regularly she became weak and pale. So Albert would go for another attractive sexually appealing girl to quench his desires. Lil’s uses of pill regularly suggests that she had to meet excessive sexual encounter daily where her partner didn’t think of her health. This was the barren sexuality of wasteland where there was no scope of making love between husband and wife, only body was the chief functionary. Eliot showed the burning passion of reckless sex in the section ‘The Fire Sermon’ , the scene of riverside of Thames narrated by Tiresias. The river was polluted with garbage, ‘testimony of summer night’, ‘empty bottles’, ‘silk handkerchief’, ‘cigarette ends’ that symbolized the degraded modern life. Apart from this, the nights were for excessive sex with the harlots calling in the river side. Tiresias depicted another narrow sex relationship between a typist girl and her lover. After returning from office, her ‘lover’ met her in her lodging. They did sex mechanically without any sort of love or passion and the man went out after satisfying libido. Then the girl started to listen record on gramophone as if nothing was happened to her and it was a common daily routine. This was the typical lifestyle of young people who did not know love, passion, mental attachment, compassion but only burning thirst of body.
Kamala Das’s treatment of sex and love is different from Jayanta Mahapatra that’s both praised and criticized. Actually in almost all of her poems on sexuality the theme is more or less same— emotion less lustrous sex in married life and failed extra marital relationship. She repeated the same thing poem after poem that’s boring and monotonous for the readers and critics. Her delineation was confined within dissatisfaction of women in sex where their only tortured desires of body and mind was exposed. In most of the poem Kamala Das used ‘I’ as the narrator voice where her poetic world became a suffered ambience of her psychology and personal life. Her own nightmares of subjugated sexuality created an incurable malady with which Das was obsessed. Her poetic persona was tormented by male sexual desires but on the other hand she couldn’t live without this. Here her poems have a sadomasochistic appeal where the opinion of critic A.N. Dwivedi is remarkable, “Kamala Das is a typical confessional poet who pours her very heart into poetry. She is largely subjective and autobiographical, anguished and tortured, letting us peep into her sufferings and tortured psyche” (Dwivedi,2006,p. 50). Das’s blending of pure love and sexual love is ambiguous as she was not satisfied anywhere. In most of the case sex overpowered her conception of love and it had disastrous effect upon the poet and then its appealing upon the reader was the outcome of her malady of psychology. Here eminent scholar of Indian literature K.R.S. Iyengar said, “While her sensibility seems to be obsessively preoccupied with love and lust , it finds love invariably petering out into lust , and lust merely eating itself to the point of nausea”.(Iyenger,1983,p. 679)
Here another important point is that though Das tried to used narrative voice “I” as the representative of suffering Indian women but often it appeared as the voice of the poet herself where her appealing are mere the anguished soliloquy of Kamala Das, not the collective revolt of Indian women that decreased the applicability of her notion of sex. Here another remark of Iyengar is significant, “Das’s themes go beyond stereotyped longings and complaints. Even her feelings of loneliness and disappointment are part of a larger than life personality, obsessive in its awareness of itself, yet creating a drama of selfhood ”(King,2001,p. 147). Another demerit of Das was that both on sex and love she possessed no stable position and her desires, longing, message were being changed from time to time , poem to poem. Basically the method of diary writing is apparent here where she captured her feeling or opinion for a particular day that may be changed in course of time. Actually love or sex are not the parameter of Das’s poetry but her exposition of emotions took prominence where she tried to established the message of her authorial voice. Bruce King (King,1987), popular critic was on the same opinion.
The interest of Das’s poetry is not the story of sex outside of marriage but the instability of her feelings, the way they rapidly shift and assume new postures, new attitudes of defense, attack, explanation or celebration. Her poems are situated neither in the act of sex nor in the feelings of love; they are instead involved with the self and its varied, often conflicting emotions, ranging from the desire for security and intimacy to the assertion of ego, self-dramatization and feelings of shame and depression.( King 151)
In the poetry of Kamala Das, mention of social perspective of her time is very little, though it’s slightly apparent in An Introduction. The socio-political, economical causes for humiliation of women in a newly independent Country is not exposed in her poems. She only showed women as the victim of sexual lust by partner or dissatisfied empty soul that confined the issue only with in domestic sphere. Das’s treatment of sexuality is generated only from a suffered person, its applicability is too little. Another important point is that Kamala Das discussed only suffering, humiliation, death, decay but didn’t show any way of solution. Her poetic persona only had suffered and she chose death as a relief but never attempted to live that’s why in the poem The Invitation she couldn’t ignore the invitation of sea to commit suicide. Actually her soul became habituated to be dominated, it was unable to protect itself. So most of her poems were ended with a tone of pessimism and defeat. Several critics and scholars had discussed on this point but the opinion of Vimola Rao is appealing, “Kamala das finally appears to be a poet of decadence….a victim of the inadequacies of her life, falling to gain control over her heart.”(Iyenger,1985,p.712)
The poetic world of Jayanta Mahapatra is not only different from Kamala Das but from other poets of his time. Mahapatra was also frank in his treatment of love and sex but he was not intended to use it for his personal therapeutic purpose or to justify his own deprivation and longing. He not only disclosed an unconventional matter like sex but offered the reader to go beyond the circle of the poet. His conception of sex and relationship in poetry is closely attached with social, political, financial, judicial issues of the country where by this topic the condition of society in the second half of twentieth century is described in pictorial ways. Her women in poems are also sexuality exploited but not always in domestic ground. They are sexually misused by the entire society where they had nothing to do. whereas Kamala Das’s women persona were suffering from insufficiency of sexual pleasure and emotional attachment, Mahapatra’s women did not know what was pleasure in sex. They were compelled to sell their bodies in order to maintain livelihood. In the poem Freaks Das mentioned the desire of sex as ‘skin’s lazy hunger’ but the ‘hunger’ of Mahapatra is more pathetic and suggestive. Here the hunger of ‘belly’ (of women) is fulfilled by hunger of ‘sex’ (of men). The social perspective of Mahapata behind every poem is realistic that is typical of modern and post modern literature. Mahapatra evaluated the wretched position of sex and hopeless love in the narrow civilized life that Eliot had done in several of his poems specially in The Wasteland, Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock. In this regard Mahapatra’s subject delineation took the national or universal figure where his victimized women personas are not individual but represent the women in general of a particular time. He presented hunger not only in sexual but through several human instinct that is devastative not for a person but for entire civilization. His poems Grandfather, Dhauli certainly attested the view. Though most of his poems were based on Odisha landscape but in serious subject matter and message it surpassed the regional ambience. Here Odisha is the substance of entire India where the poetic personas or characters are the common people of the country where the authorial whim of Mahapatra is absent. His cause of immense success is vested on another matter that in several of his poems he offered optimism for the readers as the way of remedy for the present turmoil. The Twenty fifth Anniversary of the Republic was concluded with new hope for the nation. Here Jayanta Mahapatra is again akin to T.S. Eliot who offered solution and hope for wasteland in the ending of the poem:
“Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shanthi shanthi shanthi.”
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