topics: |  autobiography | india |

This fictional "autobiography" created a huge sensation when first
published in Malayalam.  The English translation, by herself, was no
exception.  It alienated a wide fraternity in Indian literary circles. 

K. Satchidanandan describes the genesis of this work:

	Ente Katha (My Story) was written during her treatment for leukemia
	created a sensation when it was serialised in Malayalanadu
	Weekly. Her father, the powerful V.M. Nair who was the Managing
	Director of the Mathrubhumi group (whom Kamala Das remembers in a
	poem on his death as her occasional visitor ‘who came with banana
	chips and abuses’), asked the editor to suspend its publication, but
	the proud author would be the last to yield. The readers were drawn
	into a charming and threatening life of love and longing, of desire
	and disloyalty. Her readers, in the typical Malayali fashion, lapped
	up the story of forbidden delights and then condemned her "moral
	aberrations". 

	And she, the eternal Sphinx, kept them tantalised by dropping
	contradictory hints, first confessing that it was nothing but truth
	and then declaring that it was just a wish-fulfilling fantasy, an
	alter-life she created for herself.
		- K. Satchidanandan: obituary, frontline

Excerpts

I wondered why I was born to Indian parents instead of to a white couple, who
may have been proud of my verses.

gay experience: a "girl friend"

Her fingers traced the outlines of my mouth with a gentleness that I had
never dreamt of finding.  She kissed my lips then, and whispered, you are so
sweet, I have never met anyone so sweet, my darling, my little darling...
It was the first kiss of its kind in my life.  Perhaps my mother may have
kissed me while I was an infant but after that, no one, not even my
grandmother, had bothered to kiss me. I was unnerved.  I could hardly
breathe. She kept stroking my hair and kissing my face and my throat all
through that night while sleep came to me in snatches and with fever. You
are feverish, she said, before dawn, your mouth is hot.


My cousin asked me why I was cold and frigid. I did not know what sexual
desire meant, not having experienced it even once. Don't you feel any
passion for me, he asked me. I do not know, I said simply and honestly. It
was a disappointing week for him and for me. I had expected him to take me
in his arms and stroke my face, my hair, my hands, and whisper loving
words. I had expected him to be all that I wanted my father to be and my
mother; I wanted conversations, companionship and warmth. Sex was far from
my thoughts.

[KD is to be married to Keshav Das, a distant relative]

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? In addition, I felt hurt and humiliated. All I said was goodbye. 

Again and again he hurt me all the while the Kathkalli drums throbbed
dully, then without warning he fell on me, surprising me by the extreme
brutality of the attack.

---

I did not know whom to turn for consolation. On a sudden impulse, I phoned
my girlfriend. She was surprised to hear my voice. I thought you had
forgotten me, she said, I invited her to my house.

She came to spend a Sunday with me and together we cleaned out our
bookcases and dusted the books. Only once, she kissed me. Our eyes were
watering and dust had swollen our lips. Can’t you take me away from here, I
asked her. Not for another four years, she said. I must complete my studies
she said. Then holding me close to her, she rubbed her cheek against
mine. 

When I put her out of my mind, I put aside my self-pity too. It would not
do to dream of a different kind of life. My life had been planned and its
course charted by my parents and relatives, I would be a middle-class
house-wife,, and walked along the vegetable shops carrying a string bag and
wearing faded chap pals on my feet. I would beat my thin children, and make
them scream out for mercy. I would wash my husband’s cheap underwear and
hang it out to dry in the balcony like some kind of national flag, with
wifely pride.

---

I made up my mind to be unfaithful to him, at least physically.

Was it no longer possible to lure a charming male into a complicated and
satisfying love affair with the right words, right glances, and the right
gestures? Was I finished as charmer?

If my desires were lotuses in a pond, closing their petals at dusk and
opening out at dawn once upon a time, they were totally dead, rotted and
dissolved and for them there was no more to be a reporting. The pond had
cleared itself of all growth. It was placid.


[about a lover, Carlo]
I loved as men love their women, but I yearned for change a new life. I was
looking for an ideal lover. I was looking for the one who went to Mathura and
forgot to return to his Radha. Perhaps I was seeking the cruelty that lies in
the depths of a man's heart: otherwise why did not I get my peace in the arms
of my husband.




--- preface

My story is my autobiography which I began writing during my first serious
illness about her heart diseases. The doctor thought that writing would
distract my mind from the fear of a sudden death and besides there was all
hospital bills to be taken care of. I sent a telegram to an editor who had
been after me to write such a book to be used as a serial in his Journal. He
arrived after a day bringing with him the total remuneration for the
serial. He was taking a risk as I was then very ill and it did not seem
likely that I want to be able to write more than a few chapters. Yet, he
agreed to the deal, seated near me, holding my hand, which had a green
withered look from that moment the book took hold of me. Carrying me back
into the past rapidly as though it were a motor boat chug chugging through
the inky waters at night. Between short hours of sleep induced by the drug
given to me by the nurses. I wrote continually not merely to honor my
commitment but because I wanted to empty myself of all the secrets so that I
could depart when the time came, with a scrubbed-out conscience.

My recovery was such as anti-climax! The serial had begun to appear in the
issues of the journal, which flooded the bookstalls in Kerala. My relatives
were embarrassed I had disgraced my well-known family by telling my readers
that I had fallen in love with a man other than my lawfully wedded
husband. Why I had even confessed that I was chronically falling in love with
persons of a flamboyant nature when I went for a short vacation to my home
state I received no warmth. In a hurry, I escaped back to Bombay. This book
has cost me many things that I held dear. However, I do not for a moment
regret having written it. I have written several books in my lifetime, but
none of them provided the pleasure the writing of 'My Story' has given me. I
have nothing more to say.


---

In an interview with Iqbal Kaur:

	Any book will contain passages which are the creation of the writer’s
	imagination. My Story is no exception. It may have happened to me or
	to another woman it is immaterial. What really matters is the
	experience,the incident. Which is probably too timid to write about
	it? I wanted to chronicle the times we lived in and I had to write
	about the experience.
		Kaur Iqbal, ‘Feminist Revolution and Kamala Das’s My Story,’
		Patiala, pub. Century Twenty-one, 1992, p 122