MIDDLE AGE

Kamala Das is a well known Indian poet writing in English. In this poem, Kamala Das portrays the generation gap that happens in the relationship of mothers and children in a touching way. It also reveals her most sensitive heart before the reader. The poem speaks of the dismal state of a mother whose love is rejected by her son. She vividly depicts the loneliness and estrangement of middle aged people through the thoughts of a poor mother whose full-fledged intimacy and motherhood are neglected by her son. In the opening of the poem, she tells us that one's middle age is when her children become a critic all that she does. At this age the children lashes their tongue without any mercy. They use harsh language towards their parents. This change in their attitude is beautifully compared to the transformation that happens to pupae in a cocoon. The children emerge in harsh adult glory. They do not need their mothers except for serving tea and pressing their dress. The mothers do not take this change as something very natural. They need the company of their children all the same. They miss their children very badly. In their loneliness, they touch books and other things of their children. They weep a little secretly. They can only dream of the days when they narrated many animals' stories to their children. As they remember those days, they can only cry in their present helplessness. It gives them a realization that they are no longer as young as they used to be. It reminds them that it is the time to wake up from the daydreams. This poem is written in free verse. It is written in a conversational tone. The rhythm of the poem takes us to a dreamy world of a lonely mother. The visual imagery in the poem like the pupae coming out the cocoon and the jungle stories written in golden ink are very remarkable. The reader gets such a picture in his mind. It also takes us back to our child hood when we used to listen to such stories from our parents. At the end of the poem, she comes to a realization that things are different in their middle age. This poem can be taken as an effort of the mother to accept the harsh reality in one's life that as the children grow up, the parents grow old. The mother is helpless at the callousness shown by the children. To a woman, motherhood is a part of her feminine self that yearns for love and its fulfilment. But the harsh realities of adolescence overturn it without any remorse. The situation she describes here is one that is common place and found in every other household. Once we finished reading the poem, we could hear the cry of a weeping heart of a mother.
Kamala Das is a well known Indian poet writing in English. As a writer, she made bold attempts to break the traditional shell of Indian woman with her fiery tone and confessional mode of writing. She takes reader to her confidence and opens her mind before them. In her poem, Middle Age she tells us her feeling as a mother. She tries to bring out the loneliness that she feels at her middle age.
The situation she describes here is one that is common place and found in every other household. When children grow up estrangement develops and the views or the old generation becomes totally unacceptable to the growing generation. Certainly it is a life of humiliation and suffering that the middle aged are made to experience. Like a pupa becoming a cocoon and then butterfly, the silent obedient child has all on a sudden become an independent self-asserting personality and the casualty is his own mother. The poet's attempt in this poem is to wake up the dreamy middle aged mothers and to prepare them face the ultimate reality shedding the mental torture that has been in store for them.