Most Girls are Biggest Liars
Read what Kamal Das writes about girls and herself :
Book : My Story
Writer : Kamala Das
Chapter : 12
The Boarders
On holidays there were three study sessions for the boarders. One hour in the morning, two hours in the afternoon and one hour between seven and eight in the evening after supper. All that was expected of the students was total silence.
The nun in charge of the session sat sewing but slyly watched the girls who dared to raise their eyes from the books to look at one another. On fortunate days we had the mild Sister Thecla who never bothered about what was going on, but read her book or mended old veils, without once looking up from her work.
The girl who sat near me one day at study was fifteen and was called Annie. She kept reading and re-reading a letter and when she saw me glance at her, she whispered that she wanted me to read the letter that she had received from a boy. A rich and handsome boy, who was very fair and tall. He is always pestering me with such letters, Annie said, frowning.
I read with amazement that the boy considered Annie the most beautiful girl in the world and that he wanted not only to hold her in his arms, but also to kiss her passionately on her full lips. Do not be so cruel to me sweet Annie, the lover had written, give me a chance to prove my love for you... What do you think of this, asked Annie. Isn’t audacious? I nodded.
I studied Annie’s face with a new interest. She looked very plain to me. She was thin and her skin was swarthy and blotched with acne. Her teeth were in bad shape. Her hair was oily and hung in two scraggy plaits. This was the girl whom the rich boy adored so blindly. I felt sorry for the boy. But all I said was that she ought to try hard and love him back in return. Do you believe in love, asked Annie and without letting me reply, she shrugged her shoulders and said with a smile, after all you are only a little child, how can you be expected to know what love means...
When I told Sarada about Annie’s love she grew angry. You must not talk to that horrible creature again, she said. During study, sit close to me or near Meenakshi. Don’t mix with riff-raff. But Annie did not leave me alone even for a day. She used to call me to the bathhouse in the afternoon on Sundays only to lean against the wall and talk to me about her lover. She showed me yet another letter in which he had progressed in his ardour to such an extent, that he wrote about the round smooth breasts of Annie which he was dying to touch. I was shocked. Didn’t I tell you, asked Annie, didn’t I tell you he was a worthless lecher? He does not love me. He only wants my body...
And I glanced at Annie’s breasts which were flat and un-appetising. Ask him not to write again, I said. Tell him that you will report him to the Mother Superior.
One day Annie called me aside and showed me a bruise on her upper lip. He bit me, she said, and bewildered, I asked, who bit you? That one, the rich boy who loves me, said Annie in a whisper; he climbed over the wall and came to my bed last night when all of you were asleep. This is awful, I said, you must report to the Mother Superior at once. One day he will kill you. Annie gave an enigmatic smile. You are too young to know what love means, she said, but you are the only one I can trust with a secret...
During the third term, Annie was expelled from the boarding school and the nuns gave out no valid reasons. She left early in the morning before any of us had woken up, carrying with her all her books and clothes. An uncle had come in the night to take Annie away.
Later, Sarada told me that she was living in a world of make-believe and that all the love-letters were found to be in her own handwriting. Meenakshi laughed, but I felt some kind of loyalty towards Annie and kept silent. Good riddance, said Sarada, combing her long hair, she was a bad influence on our little Ulba (kamala) .
First Love of Kamala Das
Page No's 90-91
Book : My Story
Writer : Kamala Das
All the heroines of Bengali novels were supposed to bear in their eyes a sadness which made them irresistible to their heroes. I too tried to look sad but it was a difficult task, for there were so many things that made me burst into laughter, and the world seemed so young, so happy, so full of promise!
At thirteen when I went home to Malabar for my summer vacation, I fell in love with a student leader who had been jailed for his revolutionary activities. He did not reciprocate, for his only interest was politics. He had read the writing of all the famous political philosophers and could quote effortlessly from their books. He had eyes that rolled upwards showing only their whites whenever he grew excited. My grand-aunt told me that he had serpent eyes and that people with such eyes were never to be trusted. She must have deduced from my behaviour that I had become infatuated with his charm. I tried to spend as much time as I could get in his company, but he did not once touch my hand or show any particular fondness for me.
My grandmother had got a local tailor named Kumaran to make for me two long skirts of green and two pale pink blouses.
I had no jewellery at all. I thought that it was my austere way of dressing that ruined my first love and made it unrequited. Then I tried to wear flowers in my hair. But all he said was that I should, without wasting any more time, begin to read Marx and Engels.
Second love of Kamla Das
Page No's 100-103
Book : My Story
Writer : Kamala Das
During that period when I was fourteen my father arranged for me to have an art-tutor. He was twenty-nine, pale-complexioned and tall. He wore the loose clinging dress of the rich Bengalee. He taught me on the first day to draw Kala Lakshmi and he pronounced the Goddess’s name as Kola Lokhi. You have a good hand, he said appreciatively. He came to teach me every Wednesday in the evening, and instead of asking the cook to serve him tea I brought the tray down to him laden with tea, idlis, vadas and steamed banana. He spoke with respect and it seemed to me that in his eyes I was an adult. While he touched up what I drew, I watched with fascination his pink earlobes and his serene mouth.
I bought a white sari with a red border, the type the Bengali peasants wore, and draped myself in it to conceal my boyish body. I was in such a hurry to grow up that it began to show in the way I brushed my hair whipping it as one would whip a snake to kill it and in the way I stared at myself in the mirror for long lost moments. My parents began to notice the change in me. I was dressing for the tuition, I was wearing a sari for him and I was nearly tripping, coming down the stairs carrying the heavy tea tray. So one day the tuition was discontinued, my father telling my tutor that I needed all the time available to do well in the school-exams. He went away nodding in agreement.
After he left saying goodbye, I realised that I loved him. Lying on my narrow bed at night all I could think of was his face and his earlobes. What a fool I had been to have resisted my temptation to kiss his mouth. I wanted to go to Mrs Kunhappa and seek her advice. But I was afraid that she might only laugh at my infatuation. I talked to a much younger friend, a school-mate, and without hesitation she put me on a bus that took me as far as the place where he worked. You must tell him what you feel for him, my friend had said, helping me to climb into the bus.
I was nervous and my blue school-tunic was clinging to my back soaked in perspiration. After I had got on to the bus I discovered that I had not enough money to return home. Fighting back my tears, I waited for the bus to stop and then jumped down. There was a courtyard which I had to cross before I could reach his room. A large square with one pockmarked statue of a God at its centre. By the time I reached the statue the rain began.
In Bengal the rain falls suddenly with no warning like the hysterical tears of a woman who herself does not know why she must suddenly burst into tears. I was totally drenched in a minute. I tried unsuccessfully to bend my head beneath the God’s face to protect it from the lash of the rain. I did not know the name of the God. His face was pitted with the rains of centuries but his mouth was startlingly beautiful, an unformed smile softening the outlines. For a moment or two I stood there hugging him and then I remembered the other mouth, the pink earlobes and all the hours of hungering, and ran into his room, throwing open the door noisily, rudely.
He was seated at his table with some yellowing files in front of him. He raised his eyes. Thumi? He asked me in Bengali.You? The rain swept the dust of the courtyard into his room. He rose from his chair and shut the door.
I clung to his shirt-front sobbing uncontrollably. You are wet, you must change your clothes, he mumbled. He pulled my tunic over my head and wrung the water out through the window. His fingers were warm on my skin. Then with a handtowel he dried my hair and put the tunic on my body again. And, without another word he took me by taxi to my house and shook my hand at the gate.
Aren’t you coming in, I asked him. No, not today, he said. That was the last time 1 saw him. But off and on I remembered the tenderness with which he pulled aside my dress and dried my body.
Why did he not kiss me? Why didn’t he make love to me? I asked my friend in school why my first adult meeting with him gave me only disappointment. You never told him you loved him, she said. It is only when a man knows that a girl loves him that he kisses her. You got such a golden chance to have a love affair and all you did was cry and make a fool of yourself.
The man I was married to
Page No 115-116
Book : My Story
Writer : Kamala Das
After a week a relative of mine who used to be a regular contributor to the magazine, jointly edited for years by my brother and myself, arrived on the scene. He was working in the Reserve Bank of India at Bombay. Once he had sent me a poem entitled ‘A Bank Clerk’s Dreams’, which was very moving. Then again a story, slightly satirical, of a young man in Bombay called Prabhakar who did not know which direction to take, but let simple lust lead him.
He wrote well. When he came on leave and visited us at Nalapat he gazed at me in astonishment. I was in a striped sari. You have become a lovely young woman, he said,I was expecting to see a child. When I was a little child and staying with my grandmother he had many a time lifted me by my shoulders to swing me round and round like a ceiling fan. He made me sit near him and he quoted from Huxley and Bertrand Russell. He was thin, walking with a stoop and had bad teeth. But he looked intellectual.
My favourite author at that time was Oscar Wilde and my favourite poem the ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol.’ He talked about homosexuality with frankness. Many of us pass through that stage, he said. I was afraid that my grandmother might come and hear the uninhibited talk. When the sky darkened, he looked at it and rose to go. Will you walk with me to the hedge, he asked me. At the hedge, beside the Damson tree, he embraced me, and puzzled by his conduct I ran back to my house.
[ I didn't know that I would be married to the same man . I disliked him . He touched me without even asking for my permission.]
At another occasion, before I left for Calcutta, my relative pushed me into a dark corner behind a door and kissed me sloppily near my mouth. He crushed my breasts with his thick fingers. Don’t you love me, he asked me, don’t you like my touching you? I felt hurt and humiliated. All I said was “goodbye.”
I did not want to marry him but I had no choice . He was doing a government job, that is why, my family thought that he was the perfect guy for me. I obeyed my family and killed my all dreams. I married him .
Why Kamala Das cheated her husband ?
Having him at my side during the night reminded me of my husband and I wrote asking him to come home on leave. When he arrived, he grew disgusted with the child who woke up several times during the night to take his feed. Take him away to your grandmother’s room, he cried angrily. I cannot sleep with all this noise and fussing. The baby clung to me and I sensed that he too felt the humiliation of our position.
I took him to my grandmother and the three of us slept soundly on her single mattress laid out on the floor. Before I fell asleep I told my grandmother that I should have done better at Arithmetic in school. Why do you say this now, asked my grandmother.Then I wouldn’t have been married off so soon, I said. She laughed covering me and my son with a shawl gently.
During his stay in Malabar, he spent most of his time with his cousins and his sister-in-law, paying me little attention and never bothering to converse with me. At night he was like a chieftain who collected the taxes due to him from his vassal, simply and without exhilaration. All the Parijata that I wove in my curly hair was wasted. The taking was brutal and brief. The only topic of conversation that delighted him was sex and I was ignorant in the study of it. I did not have any sex-appeal either. I was thin and my swollen breasts resembled a papaya tree. How much more voluptuous were my maidservants who took for my husband his bath-water and his change of clothes while he waited impatiently in the dark bathroom at Nalapat!
I yearned for a kind word, a glance in my direction. It became obvious to me that my husband had wished to marry me only because of my social status and the possibility of financial gain. A coldness took hold of my heart then. I knew then that if love was what I had looked for in marriage I would have to look for it outside its legal orbit. I wanted to be given an identity that was lovable.When he returned to Bombay the first letter that he wrote was not to me but to a girl-cousin who had allowed him to hug her while he walked towards my home in the evenings. I made up my mind to be unfaithful to him, at least physically.
My father was at that time getting built a modern house only a few yards away from the old Nalapat House, for he was a non-vegetarian and wanted such fare that could never be allowed in the Nalapat kitchen. Among the workers there was a young bricklayer who had come from another village on contract. He was extremely handsome. My cousins and I kept visiting the site to watch him at work. He used to make indecent suggestions to my maidservant which she confided in me. I thought it a good idea to have him as a pet.
When the work was nearly over I sent my maidservant to the place where he was staying, with a gold coin as my gift and an invitation to meet me near the shrine of the Bhagavati in the evening after moonrise. But my maid came back to tell me that he had already left for his village. I did not know his address. Find out where he lives and get him back to this village, I told her. I shall give you my gold chain if you get him this week...I was ready for love. Ripe for a sexual banquet. It showed in the way I walked and in my voice that had gradually ceased resembling a boy’s. A cousin of ours one day grabbed me when I was climbing the stairs whispering, “You are so beautiful” and although I did not believe him, in sheer gratitude I let him hold me in his arms for a couple of minutes. He panted with his emotion. When he kissed me on my mouth, I disliked the smell of his stale mouth.
That was probably the most bewitching spring of my life. The Bhajans of Meera on my gramophone, amorous cousins and the clusters of Nirmatala at the snakeshrine. And, in the night the moon grazing at the outlines of my baby-son’s face and his fingers at my breast. My husband faded into an unreal figure, became a blush on the horizon after the sun had set. I had stopped loving him. When his letters came, I put them away in a drawer. He wrote mostly about a friend of his who stayed at the Y.M.C.A. with him and was his constant companion. You will like him very much when you meet him, he wrote.
Ultimately it was decided that I must join my husband and resume my marital life.
Another Love story of married kamala Das
Book : My story
Page : 201
July slid by and August arrived, but I still yearned for my grey-eyed friend. Am I ugly, I asked Carlo. No you are a pretty girl but the fellow is a cad, he said. We walked along the narrow dirt road leading to the sea and Carlo held me close to him with an arm around my waist. What is my future, he asked me. Have I a future at all? [ We loved each other deeply . He wanted me to divorce my uncaring husband and marry him (Carlo) but I could not leave my two little sons with my husband . ]
Kamala Das wanted love and hated sex
Book : My Story
Page : 208-209
My favourite oil was the Dinesavalyadi which I used to get by post from the famous Arya Vaidyasala at Kottakkal. My husband thought that it had the sexiest scent of all. He was obsessed with sex. If it was not sex, it was the Co-operative Movement in India and both these bored me. But I endured both, knowing that there was no escape from either. I even learnt to pretend an interest that I never once really felt.
As my boss says, said my husband one day, the Co-operative Movement has failed, but the Co-operative Movement must succeed. I thought that I would burst out laughing. Who is your boss, I asked him. It is Venkatappiah, formerly of the I.C.S. Have you not heard of him?
My husband was furious. He felt that I was not up-to-date with the happenings in the field of co-operation. You have not once touched the prestigious report of Rural Credit Survey Committee, he said. But I let you make love to me every night, I said, isn’t that good enough?
Kamala Das falls in love with a beautiful woman doctor
Book: My Story
Page -222-223
If death had been offered as a gift she had knocked that gift away, but I felt only a new love for her. I stroked her hair and kissed her cheeks while she laughed in relief. I was looking at her as if I were seeing her for the first time. What is it, Amy, she asked me, why do you stare at me like this?...
She was the kindest woman I had ever known. Her patients adored her and when I was well enough to walk about I sat near the hall-window watching the poor patients queueing up with their babies on their hips and the medicine-bottles in their hands. She did not take money from the poor but made them feel that the gratuity was only due to friendship. Every patient felt that she was somebody special.
She was always dressed in pale Kanjivarams and had her hair tied into a bun. Occasionally I ran into her clinic and kissed her, smelling the fragrance of her face powder, It was not with happiness that I left her nursing home but the children were happy to get me back for the nightly story-tellings and for the silly games on the lawn.
Then, by and by, my health became almost perfect. The pimples vanished as suddenly as they had arrived. I kept telling my husband that I was in love with the doctor and he said, it is all right, she is a woman, she will not exploit you.
Why Kamala Das fell in love with every man or vice versa ?
[Kamala Das behaved like a harlot . Young , old , married and unmarried , all men who she came in contact with kissed her or hugged her or touched her sexually . Either she signalled them in some way or they were inherently immoral . (Ssb) ]
Book : My Story
Page : 245-246
Although there were tears in my sarees I had people to crowd round me as listeners. I had a large fanmail. There were at least a dozen men deeply infatuated with me. And, yet I feared Calcutta. I longed to escape from it.
In the summer of the first year, a visitor from Bombay called us for breakfast on his hotel-room. He was intelligent and well-read. There was nothing I liked better than talking about books, and so sitting near him I was relaxed and happy when suddenly his hand moved closer to my thigh and rested touching it lightly.
I thought that it was accidental. But his hand crept under my thigh and became immobile. What was happening? Although I had had men falling in love with me, none of them had shown sexual desire. I was loved as a young sister is loved. This man’s movements surprised me. He cultivated the habit of stroking my legs during conversation and caressing my long hair. I nearly fell in love with him.
One day when he held me close and kissed me on my mouth, I stood acquiescent and after he released me, I asked him, are you in love with me, and he said, I like you.
When I told my husband about it, he warned me against loving such a man. He is not capable of loving anyone except himself, my husband said. You are always a child in my eyes, Amy, he said, you may play around with love but be choosey about your playmates. I do not want you ever to get hurt in your life...
Kamala Das was alcoholic
Book : My Story
Chapter : 36
Page : 251-252
That week a famous novelist visiting India arrived in Calcutta and as he was related to my husband, a cousin arranged a cocktail party for him on the lawn for which I had to go along. The writer had spent the whole day with me, lunching and drinking bottles of chilled beer and by evening I had a severe headache, but I liked parties, especially those with writers strutting around and I joined in, most happily, but there was a mischievous cousin who coaxed me in affectionate tones to drink more and more, so that I soon became quite drunk and dizzy.
And still the man kept telling me that he would feel insulted if I refused the drink he himself had mixed for me. Sister-in-law, you look lovely when you are drunk, he said, and laughing a great deal I gulped down another long drink. My eyes burned like torches and like a fishing boat a laugh moved about drifting in the dusk of my veins. When I climbed into my car finally taking leave of them all, what was left of my common sense told me that I ought not to return home to my children looking like a tramp.
So I went to the hotel where Carlo was staying and in the lift, seeing my red face glowing like the red moon of an eclipse, I felt frightened and unsteady but once inside Carlo’s room, he carried me up to the bed and wiped my face with wet towels smelling of eau de cologne. What has happened to you, he asked me, who has put you in this horrible state...?
The last love or extramarital affair of Kamala Das
Book : My story
Chapter : 42-43
What was happening to me, I wondered. Was it no longer possible to lure a charming male into a complicated and satisfying love affair with the right words, the right glances, the right gestures? Was I finished as a charmer? Then with the force of a typhoon he conquered me, the last of my lovers, the most notorious of all, the king of all kings, the bison among animals, the handsome dark one with a tattoo between his eyes.
He was coming out of a cloth shop at Churchgate and I was walking in. His face was familiar to me. I stared at him in fascination. There were several stories circulating about his innumerable love affairs and his sexual prowess. In my eyes he was a magnificent animal.
He turned back again and again to see why I stared so hard at him. I did not resemble any of the usual nymphomaniacs probably because I was never one. Having an active brain, I did not have the round, glassy, flowerlike face that normally appeals to a libertine. I was plain, very brown and I did not like coquetry. He must have put my face out of his mind immediately. [I fell badly ill and was hospitalized for a few weeks ] Health has its own anointments. When I recovered from my serious illness I grew attractive once again. Then at the airport I collided with the elderly man who had once fascinated me just by turning back to glance darkly at me. I had heard of his fabulous lusts. He drew me to him as a serpent draws its dazed victim. I was his slave. That night I tossed about in my bed thinking of his dark limbs and of his eyes glazed with desire. Very soon we met and I fell into his arms.
You are my Krishna, I whispered kissing his eyes shut. He laughed. I felt that I was a virgin in his arms. Was there a summer before the autumn of his love? Was there a dawn before the dusk of his skin? I did not remember. I carried him with me inside my eyelids, the dark God of girlhood dreams. At night from the lush foxholes of the city his concubines wailed for him. Oh Krishna, oh Kanhaiya, do not leave me for another.
I wrote him letters when I could not meet him. He hated such letters. Do not get sentimental, he said. Don’t write silly letters... I should have gone away from him immediately. But I stayed near him, snuggling against his hairless chest, burrowing my tear-stained face into the deep curve of his arm. Each time we parted, I asked him, when am I to meet you again, and combing his iron grey hair his eyes meeting mine in the glass, he always said, darling, we shall meet after two days...
There were eighteen mirrors in his room, eighteen ponds into which I dipped my hot brown body. Beyond that room was an enclosed verandah where we stood together to look at the sea. The sea was our only witness. How many times I turned to it and whispered, oh, sea, I am at last in love. I have found my Krishna...
Finally Kamal Das turned to God Krishna forgetting all her earthly lovers
Free from that last of human bondage, I turned to Krishna. I felt that the show had ended and the auditorium was empty. Then He came, not wearing a crown, not wearing make-up, but making a quiet entry. What is the role you are going to play, I asked Him. Your face seems familiar. I am not playing any role, I am myself, He said. In the old playhouse of my mind, in its echoing hollowness, His voice was sweet. He had come to claim me, ultimately. Thereafter He dwelt in my dreams. Often I sat crosslegged before a lamp reciting mantras in His praise.
A Note by Sahil :
[ I read many autobiographies , autobiographical novels and self-revealing stories written by the modern women who thought that they fought against the society , parochialism , religions , this and that in order to live a life of choice , freedom and independence. Unfortunately , if you think deeply and logically , you will agree with me that they did not live a life of choice , freedom and respect at all . On the contrary , they disgraced themselves and discredited their homes by sleeping with more men , wearing less clothes , divorcing their caring husbands and thus rendered their kids half orphans . They wasted more money on cosmetics and parties and hurt more relatives and friends by not fulfilling their lawful responsibilities and basic duties . I don't think it is any honour, freedom or happiness to cheat husbands , seduce strangers , please fans and unknown people , protest on roads and share foolishness and sins with the public shamelessly. One woman fled from her home on her wedding day , spend a few months in another city , fell in love with a guy there , slept with him for a few nights , realised her foolishness and returned shamelessly home . That is what modern women call freedom and liberation. Another woman married and divorced five men , wrote a book against the prophet Muhammad ο·Ί , emigrated from her country , hurt a few communities occasionally with her tweets , slept occasionally with the men she liked in parties and died without any heir or legal husband. Tell me , what kind of freedom and honour is this ?
If you are a woman , think well before taking off your clothes and preparing to live a hollow and miserable life which is labelled as a life of freedom by some morons . If you are a man , advise sympathetically the womenfolk around you . Make them understand the difference between freedom and foolishness. ]
Like all women say finally , kamala Das also said that she never liked men and sex . You know , men must not try to understand women . They just have to obey them when it is useful to obey them .
My story
Chapter 44
'' Disease and pain matured me. I forgot the art of localising my love. I found it easy to love nearly all those who came to see us. Even to my husband I became a mother. He had to learn to adjust to my metamorphosis, for in his eyes even my broken-down doll of a body was attractive. It was not what it was years ago. Impartially I scrutinised its news and its virtues. It was like a cloth doll that had lost a few stitches here and there. The scars of operations decorated my abdomen like a map of the world painted crudely by a child. My breasts had a slight sag. And yet this form continued to beguile my poor husband. It upset him when I turned deeply religious.
I had shed carnal desire as a shake might shed its skin. I could no longer pretend either. I was no longer bed-worthy, no longer a charmer of lecherous men. But my poems had been read by several people. My articles on free love had titillated many. So I continued to get phone calls from men who wanted to proposition me. It was obvious to me that I had painted of myself a wrong image. I was never a nymphomaniac. Sex did not interest me except as a gift I could grant to my husband to make him happy. A few of our acquaintances tried to touch me and made indiscreet suggestions. I was horrified. When I showed my disgust at their behaviour they became my bitterest critics and started to spread scandals about me. If I were really promiscuous and obliging I would not have gained the hate and the notoriety that my indifference to sex has earned for me. ''
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