Themes of Love and Sex Or Theme of Unfulfilled Love in the Poetry of Kamala Das

Themes of Love and Sex Or Theme of Unfulfilled Love in the Poetry of Kamala Das

Love and Sex Forming the Main Theme in Kamala Das' Poetry: 

Love is the central emotion in woman's heart. She craves for union with man for the fulfilment of love but she is disillusioned and frustrated when it degenerates into sheer lustfulness and bodily pleasures. Her poetry deals with unfulfilled love and the celebration of sex. Her poetry is a recordation of her own experiences and observations, her own unfulfilled love and her sexual exploitation, frustration and disillusionment that she had to suffer in a male dominated society. Her marriage was a failure because her husband, while fully satisfying her sexual desire, never thought that a wife expected love from her husband in the al sense of that word. She never received love in the real sense of that word from any of her other sexual partners of whom there were many. In poem after poem, Kamala Das speaks of her unfulfilled love and in poem after poem, she expresses her need for love. She has revealed her personal experience in this respect with a frankness and openness unusual in the Indian context. Love proved to be a pretension for her. She was tied to the tedium and monotony of sexuality: 

"I was child, and later they 

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 said woman-body felt so beaten 

The weight of my breasts and womb crushed me." 

She reveals the quest of a woman for love in general terms. It is her intense longing to find fulfilment in love: 

"I met a man, loved him. Call 

Him not by any name, he is every man 

Who wants a woman just as I am every 

Woman who seeks love. In him...the hungry haste 

Of rivers, in me...the ocean's tireless waiting."   (An Introduction) 

A Great Feeling of Emotions in the Poem the “Freaks”: 

The poetess expresses her emotions with great intensity and poignancy. Love is an illusion in her life. Her passionate yearning for love always remains unfulfilled. In this poem, she misses not only love and affection but even the intensity of the passion which is associated with lust. She finds her husband to be rather slow in moving his fingers over her body in order to enjoy the sensation of his contact with her he is passionate enough or not skilful enough to be able to arouse in her a really intense or fervent desire for sexual gratification. She then realizes the fact, that, even though they have lived together for a very long time, they have not really been able to achieve any conjugal happiness. She describes her heart as an empty tank of the kind which is fitted in toilets and lavatories and which, in the present o case, would be filled not with water but with "coiling snakes of silence”: 

"An empty cistern, waiting 

Through long hours, fills itself 

With coiling snakes of silence... 

I'm a freak. It's only 

To save my face, I flaunt at 

Times a grand flamboyant lust."    (Freaks) 

Revelation of the Woman's Intensity for Love and Dual Relationship: 

Kamala Das describes the sex act very frankly and clearly through these lines: 

"What 

If, he whispers stranger and 

Hesitates at the gateway 

Of my unfamiliar legs, 

If, as healing nights begin 

He, in child-like innocence 

Gets trapped in my dreams, and is 

Loved, and loved, and loved, until 

The bold, gray mornings burst in."

The repetition of "Loved, and loved, and loved" reveals the woman's intensity for love but she is not able to realise it, as her male partner is loveless sex personified. In The Seashore, the poetess bewails the loss of love in the male-dominated world: 

"I see you go away from me 

And feel the loss of love I never once received." 

Another facet of love that Kamala Das expresses in her love poetry is dual relationship, i.e., a strong sense of belonging to one and uniting with another. In her pursuit of realising love a woman, even though married, runs from one man to the other. In The Testing of the Sirens, the feeling is strongly communicated: 

"I am happy, just being with you. But you... 

You love another." 

But none of her male companions gives her love. She feels disillusioned and frustrated: 

"Shut my eyes, but inside eye-lids, there was 

No more night, no more love, or peace, only 

The white, white sun burning, burning, burning.. 

And why does love come to me like pain 

Again and again." 

Presenting the Picture of Lust in Brutal Manner: 

In Conflagration lust is pictured with a brutal realism. A man who indulges in sheer loveless sex lets his wife go astray. In her pursuit of finding love she goes from one man to other but to her utter dismay and disappointment she finds all of them to be loveless sexual beasts. All men are cast in the image of her husband: 

"...you let me toss my youth like coins 

Into various hands, you let me mate with shadows, 

You let me sing in empty shrines, you let your wife 

Seek ecstasy in other's arms. But I saw each 

Shadow cast your blurred image in my glass, somehow 

The words and gestures seemed familiar." 

Her Searching for an Ideal Relationship: 

In writing about love outside marriage Kamala Das does not justify adultery and infidelity but she justifies the search for an ideal relationship which gives love, satisfaction and security. She identifies extra-marital love with the mythical love of Radha and Krishna : 

"Vrindaban lives on in every woman's mind, 

and the flute, luring her 

From home and her husband, 

Who later asks her of the long scratch on the brown 

Aureola of her breast, and she shyly replies, 

hiding flushed cheeks, 

It was so dark outside, I tripped and fell over 

the brambles in the wood………..”. 

Kamala Das' Presenting Herself Emotionally Unsatisfied and Hungry in The Old Playhouse:

 According to Kamala Das, her husband had no notion of what love and affection for a wife were and that he thought of a wife as merely a housewife and a sexual partner. In the course of the sexual act, he used to kiss her very hard, pressing his lips against hers and letting his Saliva flow into her mouth. He used to press his whole body against hers with great vehemence, gratifying her sexual desire in the process. In the physical sense, he succeeded fully in penetrating every part of her body and making his bodily fluids mingle with hers. But he did not realize that although her sexually desire had fully been satisfied, she remained emotionally unsatisfied and hungry. In the emotional and spiritual sense, he proved a complete failure because it never occurred to him that a wife needed love and affection in addition to sexual gratification. She never experienced any feeling of oneness with him.

• Must also read: Rebellious Attitude of Kamala Das in Her Poetry

Her Feeling like Shattered Glass and Recalling the Love of Her Parents' House: 

In the poem Glass, a similar experience forms the subject. In this case her lover had pulled her towards himself as if were "an armful of splinters", and had failed to put any feeling or sentiment into his sexual performance. She had thus felt like shattered glass and had begun to look for her father who had given her much love and affection during her childhood. This means that only her father and her grandfather had given her the love which she failed to receive from anybody else in the whole of her life. All her sexual relationships with men proved disastrous failures because she received no real love or true affection from anyone of them. 

Her Poetry's Being Empty of Real or Spiritual Love and Her Expressions for This Emptiness: 

In true sense the absence of real or spiritual love is found in her poetry. Her poetry was always pining for getting place of true love, but, in vain because the poetess could meet no one who could express true love for her. Everyone was hungry of her body. She has given expression to this feeling of emptiness and desolation frankly, openly, freely, and candidly, going to the length of using such words as 'womb', 'pubis', and public 'hair' in her poems. Her poetry is truly confessional and through it, she has revealed not only her inmost feelings and longings but also her aspiration to a union or marriage with Ghanshyam. On account of her frustration, she has always felt alienated from her husband, from her successive lovers, from her environment and from the society which makes it possible for men to dominate women and to rule over them as their lords.