Kamala Das Quotes

It is I who drink lonely Drinks at twelve, midnight, in hotels of strange towns, It is I who laugh, it is I who make love And then, feel shame, it is I who lie dying With a rattle in my throat. I am sinner, I am saint. I am the beloved and the Betrayed. I have no joys that are not yours, no Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I.

At sunset, on the river ban, Krishna Loved her for the last time and left. . . That night in her husband's arms, Radha felt So dead that he asked, What is wrong, Do you mind my kisses, love? And she said, Not not at all, but thought, What is It to the corpse if the maggots nip?

If wrappings of cloth can impart respectability, the most respectable persons are the Egyptian mummies, all wrapped in layers and layers of gauze

I am sinner, I am saint. I am the beloved and the betrayed. I have no joys that are not yours, no aches which are not yours. I too call myself I.

You didn't ever love him, but you were sentimental about him

A book is a good substitute for a man. Fiction, preferably

Like other women writers of my class, I am expected to tame my talent to suit the comfort of my family.

All round me are words, and words and words, They grow on me like leaves, they never Seem to stop their slow growing From within... But I tell my self, words Are a nuisance, beware of them, they Can be so many things, a Chasm where running feet must pause, to Look, a sea with paralyzing waves, A blast of burning air or, A knife most willing to cut your best Friend's throat... Words are a nuisance, but. They grow on me like leaves on a tree, They never seem to stop their coming, From a silence, somewhere deep within...

When I die                             do not throw                             the meat and bones away                             but pile them up                             and let them tell                             by their smell                             what life was worth                             on this earth                             what love was worth                             in the end.

Getting a man to love you is easy Only be honest about your wants as Woman. Stand nude before the glass with him So that he sees himself the stronger one And believes it so, and you so much more Softer, younger, lovelier. Admit your Admiration. Gift him all, Gift him what makes you woman, the scent of Long hair, the musk of sweat between the breasts, The warm shock of menstrual blood, and all your Endless female hungers. Oh yes, getting A man to love is easy, but living Without him afterwards may have to be Faced.

Wipe out the paints, unmould the clay, Let nothing remain of that yesterday.

I am sinner, I am saint, I am the beloved and the betrayed”.

Why do you love this man who offers you only pain?

Einmal sagte er zu ihr: Du bist wie ich, du bist anders als die meisten Menschen. Du bist Kamala, nichts andres, und in dir innen ist eine Stille und Zuflucht, in welche du zu jeder Stunde eingehen und bei dir daheim sein kannst, so wie auch ich es kann. Wenige Menschen haben das, und doch könnten alle es haben.

എനിക്ക് സ്നേഹം വേണം അത് പ്രകടമായി തന്നെ കിട്ടണം. അകത്തു സ്നേഹമുണ്ട്,പക്ഷെ പ്രകടിപ്പിക്കാനാവില്ല എന്നതില്‍ ഞാന്‍ വിശ്വസിക്കുന്നില്ല. ശവകുടീരത്തില് വന്നു പൂവിട്ടാല് അവരുടെ സ്നേഹം ഞാനറിയുമോ? പ്രേമമെന്ന രഥത്തിന്റെ കൊടിക്കൂറയാണ് കാമം. പ്രേമത്തിനു കാമം കൂടിയേ തീരു എന്ന് ഞാന് വിശ്വസിക്കുന്നു. ശരീരത്തിലൂടെയാണ് നാം എല്ലാം അറിയുന്നത്

No wonder the women of the best Nair families never mentioned sex. It was their principal phobia. They associated it with violence and bloodshed. They had been fed on the stories of Ravana who perished due to his desire for Sita and of Kichaka, who was torn to death by Draupadi's legal husband Bhima only because he coveted her. It was customary for a Nair girl to marry when she was hardly out of her childhood and it was also customary for the much older husband to give her a rude shockby his sexual haste on the wedding night. The only heroine whose sex life seemed comparatively untumultuous was Radha who waited on the banks of Jamuna for her blue-skinned lover. But she was another's wife and so an adulteress. In the orbit of licit sex, there seemed to be only crudeness and violence.

The obsession with sin destroyed the mind of several girls who were at the beginning of their adolescence, normal and easy-going. If there was a dearth of sin, sin at any cost had to be manufactured, because forgiving the sinners was a therapeutic exercise, popular with the rabidly virtuous.

This was in the early 1970s, and the controversy had been about the ‘revealing’ autobiography written by one of Kerala’s finest literary authors, Madhavikutty (Kamala Das). However, no two authors could be so differently located. Madhavikutty was born into an aristocratic Nair family, was the daughter of an eminent poet in Malayalam, and the niece of a prominent intellectual. She was already well known as a short story writer in Malayalam and as a poet and writer in English when Ente Katha appeared. Jameela came from a lower-middle class, lower caste (Ezhava) family, was removed from school at nine, and worked as a labourer and a domestic worker before becoming a sex worker. Later she became an activist and a filmmaker, but was not very well known outside a narrow sphere.

All of them want to be the people in the book. They’d rather be that than themselves. You’ve turned all the monsters into nice people.’ G. Isaac reeled of some of Chacko’s lines from the book, which didn’t help to ameliorate the confusion. The moment that is immortalized in my mind is G. Isaac in my mother’s school sports ground, airily quoting Chacko airily quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald with absolutely no context, to my completely bewildered British publisher and literary agent. ‘You know Gatsby turned out all right in the end. It is what preyed on him, the foul dust that foated in the wake of his dreams . . .’ When he didn’t manage to initiate an interesting conversation with them, G.  Isaac made his plump, cheerful way into the audience and sat in one of the middle rows. Mrs Roy was already onstage, deep in conversation with Kamala Das, and had still not noticed him.

But this love which I feel towards him, I do not think it is the activity of one organ within me. It is the collective activity of all the parts of my body.