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class="full-image-view"><div class="show-image" style="display:block"><div class="f-image"><a rel="lightbox[lightbox_full_image][<br /><br /><a class="lb-credit"> </a>]" title="" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151011061601/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/lightbox_full_image/9780143421047.jpg"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20151011061601im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/story_carousel/9780143421047.jpg" alt="" title="" width="283" height="407" class="imagecache imagecache-story_carousel"/></a></div><div class="f-credit"></div><div class="f-caption"></div></div><div class="show-image-11174" style="display:none"><div class="f-image"><a rel="lightbox[lightbox_full_image][<br /><br /><a class="lb-credit"> </a>]" title="" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151011061601/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/lightbox_full_image/9780143421047.jpg"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20151011061601im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/story_carousel/9780143421047.jpg" alt="" title="" width="283" height="407" class="imagecache imagecache-story_carousel"/></a></div><div class="f-credit"></div><div class="f-caption"></div></div><div class="show-image-11175" style="display:none"><div class="f-image"><a rel="lightbox[lightbox_full_image][<br /><br /><a class="lb-credit"> </a>]" title="" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151011061601/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/lightbox_full_image/death-that-awful-thug-the-caravan-magazine_october-2015_01.jpg"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20151011061601im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/story_carousel/death-that-awful-thug-the-caravan-magazine_october-2015_01.jpg" alt="" title="" width="390" height="435" class="imagecache imagecache-story_carousel"/></a></div><div class="f-credit"></div><div class="f-caption"></div></div><div class="show-image-11176" style="display:none"><div class="f-image"><a rel="lightbox[lightbox_full_image][Nair women have a meal in Malabar in the early 1900s. The matrilineal system followed by the community started to come under attack from the early twentieth century on.<br /><br /><a class="lb-credit"> university of southern california libraries</a>]" title="Nair women have a meal in Malabar in the early 1900s. The matrilineal system followed by the community started to come under attack from the early twentieth century on." href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151011061601/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/lightbox_full_image/death-that-awful-thug_public-domain_the-caravan-magazine_october-2015_02.jpg"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20151011061601im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/story_carousel/death-that-awful-thug_public-domain_the-caravan-magazine_october-2015_02.jpg" alt="" title="" width="680" height="433" class="imagecache imagecache-story_carousel"/></a></div><div class="f-credit">university of southern california libraries</div><div class="f-caption">Nair women have a meal in Malabar in the early 1900s. The matrilineal system followed by the community started to come under attack from the early twentieth century on.</div></div><div class="show-image-11177" style="display:none"><div class="f-image"><a rel="lightbox[lightbox_full_image][Kamala Das writes about the loss of the tharavadus, or family homes, in which generations lived back to back.<br /><br /><a class="lb-credit"> vinamra agrawal / creative commons</a>]" title="Kamala Das writes about the loss of the tharavadus, or family homes, in which generations lived back to back." href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151011061601/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/lightbox_full_image/death-that-awful-thug-vinamra-agrawal_creative-commons_the-caravan-magazine_october-2015_03.jpg"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20151011061601im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/story_carousel/death-that-awful-thug-vinamra-agrawal_creative-commons_the-caravan-magazine_october-2015_03.jpg" alt="" title="" width="653" height="435" class="imagecache imagecache-story_carousel"/></a></div><div class="f-credit">vinamra agrawal / creative commons</div><div class="f-caption">Kamala Das writes about the loss of the tharavadus, or family homes, in which generations lived back to back.</div></div><div class="show-image-11178" style="display:none"><div class="f-image"><a rel="lightbox[lightbox_full_image][<br /><br /><a class="lb-credit"> </a>]" title="" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151011061601/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/lightbox_full_image/9788125026433.jpg"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20151011061601im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/story_carousel/9788125026433.jpg" alt="" title="" width="274" height="435" class="imagecache imagecache-story_carousel"/></a></div><div class="f-credit"></div><div class="f-caption"></div></div><div class="show-image-11180" style="display:none"><div class="f-image"><a 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class="st_twitter_hcount" displaytext="Tweet"></span>  <script type="text/javascript" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20151011061601js_/https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>  <g:plusone href="http://www.caravanmagazine.in/books/death-awful-thug-Kamala-Das"></g:plusone> <div class="print-email"><a href="/web/20151011061601/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/print/5686">Print</a>|<a href="/web/20151011061601/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/printmail/5686">E-Mail</a>|</div><div class="single-paged">Single Page</div></div> <script type="text/javascript">var switchTo5x=false;</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20151011061601js_/http://w.sharethis.com/button/buttons.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript">stLight.options({publisher:'8014eb0d-feae-4f08-9056-b8b78a153569'});</script> <div class="fullpage-body"><div class="detailBody"><div class="view view-story-page-views view-id-story_page_views view-display-id-block_1 view-dom-id-1"> <div class="view-content"> <div class="views-row views-row-1 views-row-odd views-row-first views-row-last"> <div class="views-field-body"> <div class="field-content"><p>Kamala das, born in 1934, was arguably one of India’s finest poets in English and Malayalam. She became known to Malayali readers by her pen name, Madhavikutty, and on converting to Islam in her final years took the name of Kamala Surayya. As a member of a landed Nair aristocracy, Das, in her writing, projected a modern, urban, bohemian self that was dismissive of social mores. Her conversion, allegedly the result of a marriage with a younger Muslim man, seemed to embody the multiple paradoxes that characterised her life. Was she a radical poet, or a conservative performing a transgressive identity through her writing and life?</p> <p>Since her death, in 2009, most of her writing in English has been reissued in India, allowing us to discover once again the intensity, as well as the repetition, in her work. It is wonderful to have her <em>Selected Poems</em>, published in 2014 with a superb introduction by the literary scholar Devindra Kohli, that provides an intellectual history of modern Indian poetry. A number of the poems in <em>Tonight This Savage Rite: The Love Poems of Kamala Das and Pritish Nandy</em>, reissued in 2010 after first being published in 1979 as an experiment counterpointing two distinct new voices in poetry, are reproduced in <em>Selected Poems</em>. The issue of this new edition is justified by its inclusion of some evocative graphics by the modernist artist Manu Parekh. <em>Wages of Love: Uncollected Writings of Kamala Das</em>, released in 2013, consists of short stories, one-act plays, and slight essays such as her refutation of the novelist Khushwant Singh’s allegation that she put out a self-promoting news story about being nominated for the Nobel Prize. It reminds us how so much of Kamala Das’s writing verges on mawkishness, self-regard and banality. This book, in particular, is of historical rather than literary value.</p> <p> </p> <p><span style="color:#666666;">(Subscribe to <em>The Caravan</em> to read the full story. <u><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151011061601/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/digital-subscriptions">Click here</a></u> for a digital subscription or email subscription@delhipress.in for a print subscription.)</span></p> <div>  </div></div> </div> <div class="views-field-phpcode"> <span class="field-content"><div class="shortbioview"><p><strong>Dilip M Menon</strong> is a historian and literary critic. He holds the Mellon Chair in Indian Studies at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.</p> </div></span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div></div><div class="detail-body"><div class="detailBody"><p>Kamala das, born in 1934, was arguably one of India’s finest poets in English and Malayalam. She became known to Malayali readers by her pen name, Madhavikutty, and on converting to Islam in her final years took the name of Kamala Surayya. As a member of a landed Nair aristocracy, Das, in her writing, projected a modern, urban, bohemian self that was dismissive of social mores. Her conversion, allegedly the result of a marriage with a younger Muslim man, seemed to embody the multiple paradoxes that characterised her life. Was she a radical poet, or a conservative performing a transgressive identity through her writing and life?</p> <p>Since her death, in 2009, most of her writing in English has been reissued in India, allowing us to discover once again the intensity, as well as the repetition, in her work. It is wonderful to have her <em>Selected Poems</em>, published in 2014 with a superb introduction by the literary scholar Devindra Kohli, that provides an intellectual history of modern Indian poetry. A number of the poems in <em>Tonight This Savage Rite: The Love Poems of Kamala Das and Pritish Nandy</em>, reissued in 2010 after first being published in 1979 as an experiment counterpointing two distinct new voices in poetry, are reproduced in <em>Selected Poems</em>. The issue of this new edition is justified by its inclusion of some evocative graphics by the modernist artist Manu Parekh. <em>Wages of Love: Uncollected Writings of Kamala Das</em>, released in 2013, consists of short stories, one-act plays, and slight essays such as her refutation of the novelist Khushwant Singh’s allegation that she put out a self-promoting news story about being nominated for the Nobel Prize. It reminds us how so much of Kamala Das’s writing verges on mawkishness, self-regard and banality. This book, in particular, is of historical rather than literary value.</p> <p> </p> <p><span style="color:#666666;">(Subscribe to <em>The Caravan</em> to read the full story. <u><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151011061601/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/digital-subscriptions">Click here</a></u> for a digital subscription or email subscription@delhipress.in for a print subscription.)</span></p> <div>  </div> </div></div> <div class="shortbioview"><p><strong>Dilip M Menon</strong> is a historian and literary critic. He holds the Mellon Chair in Indian Studies at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.</p> </div><div class="paging"></div> <div class="text-size-bottom"> <div class="views-as">View as</div><div class="single-paged">Single Page</div></div> <div class="story-tags"> <div class="story-block1"><div class="view view-story-related-tag view-id-story_related_tag view-display-id-block_1 view-dom-id-1"> <div class="view-header"> <h3 class="subject-heading">More From This Section</h3> </div> <div class="view-content"> <div class="views-row views-row-1 views-row-odd views-row-first"> <div class="views-field-title"> <span class="field-content"><a href="/web/20151011061601/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/books/tale-two-tongues-english-bengali-kolkata">A Tale of Two Tongues</a></span> </div> </div> <div class="views-row views-row-2 views-row-even"> <div class="views-field-title"> <span class="field-content"><a 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