Kamala Suraiya was a well-known Indian writer who wrote in English as well as Malayalam, her native language. She was considered to be one of the outstanding Indian poets writing in English, although her popularity in Kerala is based chiefly on her short stories and autobiography. Much of her writing in Malayalam came under the pen name Madhavikkutty. On May 31 2009, she died at a hospital in Pune.

Kamala Das was born on March 31, 1934 at Punnayurkulam in the Malabar area of Kerala. She is the daughter of V. M. Nair, a former managing editor of the widely-circulated Malayalam daily and Nalappatt Balamani Amma a renowned Malayali poetess. She acquainted with the great writers in Malayalam literature at a tender age and had enough exposure due to her stay at Calcutta and Kerala. The young Kamala read the Malayalam translation of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables by Nalapattu Narayanamenon at a tender age of eight. This ancestral house and the love of her grandmother influenced the young ‘Amy’ to grow into the Malayalam writer Madhavikutty as well as English poet Kamala Das.

She was also active in politics in India, and has launched a national political party known as the Lok Seva Party, to concentrate on humanitarian work as well as to provide asylum to orphaned mothers and promote secularism. In 1984, she contested election to enter parliament, but lost.

Kamala Das’ first poetry collection Summer in Calcutta promised the rise of a revolutionary woman poet in India. Her writings mainly reflected woman’s longing for love and her restrictions in the society. Her stories and poems were greatly misunderstood and criticized by a section of Indian critics. Her poems like An Introduction, The Descendants, Alphabet of Lust and Only The Soul Knows How To Sing were open voices of restricted women in an orthodox society. Her autobiography My Story, published in 1976 put her on the centre of controversies. When this confessional work has been translated to more than 15 languages, Inadian critics accused for spreading the idea of unmarital relationships.

Kamala Das took a controversial step in 1999, as she converted from Hinduism to Islam in 1999. The poet who always wrote about Lord Krishna and imagined to be his Radha suddenly started to address Allah. Her statement “I converted my Krishna to Islam” evoked much opposition from conservative Hindus in Kerala. However she was bold in her decisions and continues her life according to Muslim beliefs. She recently left her native Kerala to settle her life in Pune with youngest son Jaysurya.

Kamala Das was short listed for Nobel Prize for literature in 1984 along with Marguerite Yourcenar, Doris Lessing, and Nadine Gordimer. Apart from that she received many awards for her literary contributions like Asian Poetry Prize, Kent Award for English Writing from Asian Countries, Asan World Prize, Sahitya Academy Award and Kerala Sahitya Academy Award etc. Her readers are anticipating more works from the pen of this gifted writer.

Her Works

Das has published many novels and short stories in English, as well as in the Indian language of Malayalam under the name “Madhavikutty” (de Souza 7). Some of her work in English includes the novel Alphabet of Lust (1977), a collection of short stories called Padmavati the Harlot and Other Stories (1992), in addition to five books of poetry, Summer in Calcutta (1965), The Descendants (1967), The Old Playhouse and Other Poems (1973), The Anamalai Poems (1985), and Only the Soul Knows How to Sing (1996), a collection of poetry with Pritish Nandy (1990), and her autobiography, My Story (1976). Some of her more recent novels in Malayalam include Palayan (1990), Neypayasam (1991), and Dayarikkurippukal (1992).