An Introduction

An Introduction is obviously an autobiographical poem written by Kamala Das

Which first appeared in her Summer in Calcutta (1965). The poem is a brilliant
example of her confessionalism wherein she unfolds her entire self with
extreme frankness and candour. In this poem,the poet expresses her
experiences which were strictly private and personal.

The poem is a revolt against conventionalism and restraints put against Indian
women. In this poem, the question of whether or not Indians should write in
English is put to rest. The poem is also remarkable for its daring
innovativeness.

The poet says she is not interested in politics but claims that since the time of
Nehru, she can name all the people who have been in office. She implicitly
states the fact that politics in the world is a game of the few selected elite who
ironically govern a democracy by claiming that she can repeat them as fluently
as days of the week or names of the month. The fact that she remembers them
so clearly indicates that the same people have been in power over and over
again.

Next, she identifies herself as an Indian, born in Malabar and very brown in
colour. She speaks in three languages, writes in two and dreams in one,
sharing the notion that dreams have a common language of their own. Kamala
Das reiterates that the medium of writing is not as important as the amount of
comfort one needs. Since it is not her mother tongue, people have asked her
not to write in English. In comparison, any time she had a meeting with a critic,
colleagues, or visiting cousins, the fact that English was a colonial language
predominant as a means of communication during British times attracted still
more scrutiny. She stresses that all the imperfections and queerness is her
own, the vocabulary she speaks becomes her own.

It’s half-English, half-Hindi, which sounds pretty funny, but the point is that it’s
fair. All that makes it more human is its imperfections, making it similar to
what we term normal. As it voices its joys, sorrows and dreams, it is the tongue
of her expression and sentiment. Cawing is as critical to her as it is to the
crows and the lions roaring. It is not, though incomplete, a deaf, blind
expression like that of storm trees or rain clouds. Nor does it echo the “funeral
pyre’s incoherent mutterings.” Rather, it has its own intrinsic natural
coherence.
She continues to share her own storey. She was a child and she was later told
by strangers that she had grown up and her body had begun to exhibit signs
of puberty. She didn’t seem to understand this interpretation, though she was
still a child at her heart. When she asked her soulmate for love, not knowing
what else to ask, the sixteen-year-old took her to his apartment. The word is a
potent critique of child marriage that drives children into such a predicament
when they are still very childish at heart. She felt beaten even though he didn’t
beat her, and her body seemed crushed by her own weight. This is a rather
emphatic expression of how a sixteen-year-old ‘s body is unprepared for the
attack under which it is exposed. Ashamed of her femininity, she shrank
pitifully.

By being tomboyish, she attempts to overcome such embarrassment. And

then, as she chooses to cover her femininity in male clothes, the guardians
impose traditional feminine attire, with reminders to conform into a woman’s
socially defined features, to become a woman and a mother, and to be limited
to the domestic routine. In order not to make herself a psychic or a maniac,
she is threatened to live inside the four walls of her women’s room. They also
ask her to catch her tears when rejected in love. As they seem to categorise
any person based on merely whimsical points, she calls them categorizers.

Towards the end of the poem, the poet mentions his experiences with a man.
She doesn’t take names, but the symbolism of her relationship is what she’s
trying to express. He’s every other man who wants a woman, like the
embodiment of the hungry rush of the river, while she’s every other woman,
the embodiment of patience like the tireless waiting of the ocean. When he
asks a man who he is, he responds saying he is I. The poet, herein through
symbolism, introduces to the readers the inherent male ego of a patriarchal
society. He is rigid in his mind as a “sword in his sheath,” and his opinions are
not open to debate. It is this “I,” i.e. the male ego, that justifies lying drunk at
midnight in the night in a hotel in a foreign area, that justifies complacent
laughter, that makes a woman’s love and then feels embarrassed that she is so
easily carried away, and yet dies with a rattling in her throat, as anyone else.
Death reveals the futility of the male ego, revealing that “he” is not greater.

The poet then ends by saying that this “I” should not be different from “her,”
and so I am both the sinner and the saint, both the betrayer and the betrayed,
as well as the man and the woman. There are no pleasures of “I” that she
doesn’t get to feel, not any pains that she hasn’t been through with through.
Thus “She” is “I” too.