the old playhouse poem kamala das

 'The Old Playhouse' Poem by Kamala Das

About 'Kamala Das'

Kamala Das (b. 1934) was educated mainly in Kerala. A bilingual writer, she prefers to write poetry in English and fiction in Malayalam. The literary awards she has won include the Asian Poetry Award (1963) and the Sahitya Akademi Award (1984). Her collections of poems are Summer in Calcutta (1965), The Descendants (1967), The Old Playhouse and Other Poems (1973) and Collected Poems Vol. 1 (1984). My Story, her autobiography, was published in 1975. Kamala Das is essentially known for her bold and frank expression. An acute obsession with love and the use of the confessional mode are the prominent features of her poetry. Against the frustrating emotional experience, guilt and depression expressed in her autobiography, there is a section of poetry where she writes about an idealised childhood and of a nostalgic yearning for her grandmother's Nalpat House symbolising freedom, love and protection.

'The Old Playhouse', selected from the book with the same title, deals with Das' recurrent theme of failure and frustration in love and marriage. It vividly reveals the plight of a housewife who bewails that her egocentric and male chauvinist husband has virtually reduced her full-blooded and aspiring self to a mere entertaining toy. Consequently, the caged wife, with her stifled and crippled spirit, is helplessly destined to witness the pathetic transformation of her mind into 'an old playhouse with all its lights put out'. The network of evocative and concrete imagery and imaginative symbols transcends an individual's suffering and makes it a generic experience.

'The Old Playhouse' Poem

You planned to tame a swallow, to hold her

In the long summer of your love so that she would forget

Not the raw seasons alone, and the homes left behind, but

Also her nature, the urge to fly, and the endless

Pathways of the sky. It was not to gather knowledge

Of yet another man that I came to you but to learn

What I was, and by learning, to learn to grow, but every 

Lesson you gave was about yourself. You were pleased

With my body's response, its weather, its usual shallow 

Convulsions. You dribbled spittle into my mouth, you poured 

Yourself into every nook and cranny, you embalmed 

My poor lust with your bitter-sweet juices. You called me wife, 

I was taught to break saccharine into your tea and

To offer at the right moment the vitamins. Cowering 

Beneath your monstrous ego I ate the magic loaf and 

Became a dwarf. I lost my will and reason, to all your 

Questions I mumbled incoherent replies. The summer 

Begins to pall. I remember the ruder breezes 

Of the fall and the smoke from burning leaves. Your room is 

Always lit by artificial lights, your windows always

Shut. Even the air-conditioner helps so little, 

All pervasive is the male scent of your breath. The cut flowers 

In the vases have begun to smell of human sweat. There is 

No more singing, no more dance, my mind is an old

Playhouse with all its lights put out. The strong man's technique is 

Always the same, he serves his love in lethal doses,

For, love is Narcissus at the water's edge, haunted

By its own lonely face, and yet it must seek at last

An end, a pure, total freedom, it must will the mirrors 

To shatter and the kind night to erase the water.