Understanding Kamala Das/Kamala Suraiya/Madhavikutty

She is honest. honest to the core. only the dishonest will label her honesty as sleaze!

she is brave. one has to be brave to be a Madhavikutty or Kamala Das or Kamala Suraiya in a cynical, hypocritical and censorious state like Kerala.

And she is not consistent. Inconsistency is the privilege of an utterly honest, brave person. perception of truth changes with experience of life. it's mulish to stick to a once made statement, a once taken position , simply to APPEAR consistent. Consistency is meant for the average - not for the genius.

She was honest when she said My Story is not her autobiography. every one has a story to tell. if you and I tell our stories, we will not allow ourselves to be chained down to pedestrian facts - if we are true artists. Our perceptions/creativity will modify/reinvent our true experiences. We will move freely between fact and fiction, between the ground reality and the imagined - if we are true artists, if we possess an elevated level of negative capability.

As an artist, we would owe nothing to anyone. We owe it to us, only to us, to be honest to ourselves, and our creation. The creation takes on a life of its own, dictating rules that necessitate the creator to forget her identity as a person (Madhavikutty, in this case) and respect the identity of her creation - her WORK OF ART. A true artist listens to the demands of her creation. A lesser one will be dictated by such extraneous matters as the societal sensibilities, sense of propriety - - -.

Kamala Das is an artist par excellence – a nonpareil in English literature.