An Introduction

- Kamala Das (1934 – 2009)

Be Amy, or be Kamala. Or, better

I don't know politics but I know the names
Still, be Madhavikutty. It is time to
Of those in power, and can repeat them like
Choose a name, a role. Don't play pretending
Days of week, or names of months, beginning with Nehru.
games.
I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar,
Don't play at schizophrenia or be a
I speak three languages, write in
Nympho. Don't cry embarrassingly loud when
Two, dream in one.
Jilted in love … I met a man, loved him. Call
Don't write in English, they said, English is
Him not by any name, he is every man
Not your mother-tongue. Why not leave
Who wants. a woman, just as I am every
Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,
Woman who seeks love. In him . . . the hungry
Every one of you? Why not let me speak in
haste
Any language I like? The language I speak,
Of rivers, in me . . . the oceans' tireless
Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses
Waiting. Who are you, I ask each and everyone,
All mine, mine alone.
The answer is, it is I. Anywhere and,
It is half English, half Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest,
Everywhere, I see the one who calls himself I
It is as human as I am human, don't
In this world, he is tightly packed like the
You see? It voices my joys, my longings, my
Sword in its sheath. It is I who drink lonely
Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing
Drinks at twelve, midnight, in hotels of strange
Is to crows or roaring to the lions, it
2 towns,
Is human speech, the speech of the mind that is
It is I who laugh, it is I who make love
Here and not there, a mind that sees and hears and
And then, feel shame, it is I who lie dying
Is aware. Not the deaf, blind speech
With a rattle in my throat. I am sinner,
Of trees in storm or of monsoon clouds or of rain or the
I am saint. I am the beloved and the
Incoherent mutterings of the blazing
Betrayed. I have no joys that are not yours, no
Funeral pyre. I was child, and later they
Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I.
Told me I grew, for I became tall, my limbs
Swelled and one or two places sprouted hair.
When I asked for love, not knowing what else to ask
For, he drew a youth of sixteen into the
Bedroom and closed the door, He did not beat me
But my sad woman-body felt so beaten.
The weight of my breasts and womb crushed me.
I shrank Pitifully.
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. Oh,
Belong, cried the categorizers. Don't sit
On walls or peep in through our lace-draped windows.
 Hunger
- Jayanta Mahapatra (born 22 October 1928)

It was hard to believe the flesh was heavy on my back.

The fisherman said: Will you have her, carelessly,
trailing his nets and his nerves, as though his words
sanctified the purpose with which he faced himself.
I saw his white bone thrash his eyes.

I followed him across the sprawling sands,

my mind thumping in the flesh's sling.
Hope lay perhaps in burning the house I lived in.
Silence gripped my sleeves; his body clawed at the froth
his old nets had only dragged up from the seas.

In the flickering dark his lean-to opened like a wound.

The wind was I, and the days and nights before.
Palm fronds scratched my skin. Inside the shack
an oil lamp splayed the hours bunched to those walls.
Over and over the sticky soot crossed the space of my mind.

3 I heard him say: My daughter, she's just turned fifteen...

Feel her. I'll be back soon, your bus leaves at nine.
The sky fell on me, and a father's exhausted wile.
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.