Kamala Das, at 75; Indian poet, writer
- |
NEW YORK - When Kamala Das began writing five decades ago, her choice of subject matter was a bold one for a woman in midcentury India. A poet, short-story writer, and memoirist, Ms. Das was known for her open discussion of women’s sexual and romantic lives.
Over the years since then, Ms. Das became - and remained - one of India’s best-known writers, widely published, widely read, widely discussed, and widely celebrated. She died of respiratory failure May 31 in Pune, India. She was 75. .
A prolific author, Ms. Das wrote most of her poetry in English. Most of her fiction, written under the name Madhavikutty, was composed in Malayalam, a non-Indo-European language spoken primarily in the south Indian state of Kerala.
She wrote several memoirs, the most famous of them “My Story,’’ written in English and published in 1976. In it Ms. Das recounts her childhood in an artistic but emotionally distant family, her unfulfilling arranged marriage to an older man shortly before her 16th birthday, the emotional breakdowns and suicidal thoughts that punctuated her years as a young wife and mother, her husband’s apparent homosexuality, and the deep undercurrent of sexual and romantic yearning that ran through most of her married life.
For decades a public figure in India, Ms. Das by many accounts embraced both controversy and contradiction. Championed by feminists for writing about women’s oppression, she declined to be identified as a feminist herself. Born to a prominent Hindu family, she converted to Islam in 1999, renaming herself Kamala Suraiya.
