Introduction of “Poem An Introduction”:
In her autobiographical poem “An Introduction,” Kamala Das reflects on her defiance of patriarchal and societal constraints in postcolonial India as she strives to establish her own identity as both a woman and a writer. The poem, deeply confessional in tone, portrays her quest for self-expression and autonomy—her effort to find an authentic voice amid a male-dominated, multilingual culture—and culminates in her assertion of the right to self-definition and equality with men.
Summary of the Poem “An Introduction”:
The Poetess’s Indifference to Politics:
The poetess expresses her clear indifference and lack of interest in politics. She admits that, though she does not possess deep political knowledge, she is familiar with the names of the leaders who ruled from the time of Pt. Nehru to her own era. She can recall and arrange their names in chronological order without any confusion, just as easily as one recites the days of the week or the months of the year. She then proceeds to introduce herself as an Indian, mentioning her brown complexion and her birthplace, Malabar. (Her words reflect that she is free from regional bias—she identifies herself first by her nationality and then by her skin colour.)
Assertion of Linguistic Identity:
She claims her right to speak three languages and justifies her decision to write in two of them—her mother tongue, Malayalam, and English. She believes she has a good grasp of the third language as well. However, her friends and relatives annoy her by insisting that she should write and speak only in Malayalam. They harshly criticise her for choosing to use English in her speech and writing.
Freedom to Use Any Language:
She wonders why these people provoke her anger with their unsolicited advice and constant interference in her personal affairs. After all, it is entirely her own choice. She has every right to speak and write in any language she prefers. Once she uses a language, it becomes her own — she takes full possession of it. She is free to mould and shape it as she wishes, bending its usual form and giving it a unique identity that reflects her exclusive claim over it.
The Conflict of Language and Expression:
The poet depicts the tension between expressing oneself in a native tongue and adopting a foreign language. The language she speaks truly belongs to her, as she takes full ownership of it. When she uses English, for example, she reshapes it with the rhythm and flavour of her own regional speech. Though such blending may seem strange or humorous to others, it represents her personal adaptation. By infusing the language with her unique thoughts and expressions, she transforms it into something genuine, sincere, human, and deeply expressive.
Naturalness and Emotional Coherence of Language:
By introducing deliberate distortions and a touch of strangeness, she renders the language entirely her own—natural and deeply personal. Though her speech may appear flawed, it conveys truth and authenticity, making it an inherently human mode of expression. Through her language, she voices her joys, desires, and aspirations. It flows from her as instinctively as cawing from crows or roaring from lions—spontaneous and natural. Despite its imperfections, her speech is not a mark of limitation; it is vibrant and alive, not chaotic like storm-tossed trees or drifting rain clouds, nor fragmented like the murmurs of a raging fire. Instead, it carries its own unique order—an order rooted in emotion and sincerity.
Unawareness of Womanhood and Physical Change:
The poetess was unaware that she was entering the stage of womanhood and acquiring the natural ability for procreation. In her mind, she still saw herself as a child, often behaving in innocent and playful ways. She did not fully realize the transformations occurring within her body, though the changes were significant. It was her friends and relatives who made her conscious of this transition, reminding her that she had reached the threshold of maturity and making her aware of her physical growth.
Early Marriage and Suppression of Emotions:
There was a noticeable transformation in her appearance and physique. She became taller and more graceful. Her limbs filled out, and a few spots on her body began to sprout hair. She realised that others saw her as grown up merely because her body had changed in size. Yet, inwardly, her emotions remained much the same. Married off at a young age, the love she had long yearned for during adolescence was stifled beneath the weight of sexual exploitation.
Sexual Exploitation and Emotional Neglect:
After her marriage she became only an embodiment of sex. She was sexually tortured and exploited by her husband. She could not get emotional fulfilment. Her husband, who was extremely hungry of sex, took her on the bed and after closing the door, enjoyed the sexual intercourse. He had sole concern with sex. He had no care of her emotions. Though he did not give her any physical harm, he crushed her feelings. Her husband confined her to a single room.
Shame, Femininity, and Rebellion Against Marriage:
She was shamed of her feminity that came before time, and brought her to this predicament. This clears her claim that she was crushed by the weight of her breast and womb. Her husband’s way of performing the sexual act with her in the crudest possible manner made her condition very pitiable. She was greatly frightened of this kind of state of woman. Though she was compelled to accept the traditional feminine role, she began to hate the traditional and social institution of marriage which suppressed her emotions, desires and ambitions.
Rejection of Traditional Womanhood:
Her early marriage did not allow flourishing her desires. Her aspirations remained unfulfilled. She tried to overcome this pitiable and miserable state of woman by changing her appearance of a Tomboy (a romping girl). So she cut her hair in boys’ style and adorned herself in boyish clothes and tried to ignore her womanliness. Seeing her in such a boyish appearance, the people criticised her and told her to conform to the various womanly roles.
Social Pressure to Conform:
Everyone wanted to give some advice to her. Her advisers advised her to come in the appearance of a woman. They asked her to wear woman clothes such as saree and blouse and to lead a life like a girl and wife. They asked her to fulfil the traditional form of a woman. They urged her to do some embroidery or cooking and also to keep quarrelling with the servants. They also urged her to remain busy in domestic duties. They told her to call herself Amy or Kamala or better still Madhavikutty. They urged her not to pretend to be a split personality suffering from a psychological disorder and not to become a sex-crazy woman.
Rejection and Societal Condemnation:
When the poetess tried to come out from the traditional role of the woman by changing her outward appearance, she was badly condemned by the people of society and she was advised to perform the role of a domestic woman and wife. They asked her to take interest in household activities. They asked her to remain sincere towards her duty for her husband and to satisfy her husband’s desire. They suggested her that she should be satisfied with her present life.
Disillusionment in Love:
Next she describes her experience. Under the great aspiration of love, she turned to a man and loved him, but instead of loving and caring her emotions, he showed the same interest for the sexual intercourse as the others had. He also suppressed her emotions and aspirations for love under his lustful feelings. He also regarded her an embodiment of sex and used her to satisfy his utter lustfulness.
Repeated Exploitation and Emotional Frustration:
She found out that as every woman pined for love, in the same way every man showed the great fondness for sexual intercourse. In that man she found great eagerness and hastiness for making sexual intercourse with her. Whenever she aspired love from him, she got only sexual exploitation. She had ceaselessly been waiting for her emotional fulfilment.
Endless Search for True Love:
She developed many relations with different persons, but she got the same sexual response from them. Every time her tender feelings of love were crushed under the lustfulness. Wherever she saw, she found every man wrapped with the tendency and attitude of sexuality. Every man pined for a sexy and beautiful woman so that he might be able to satisfy his hunger.
Loneliness and Despair:
Every man took the woman to be the source of performing sexual act. In search of love, she kept on turning to different persons. She could not get a true lover who could soothe her offended feelings with his love. She always longed for a true company, but in vain. In spite of having many concerns, she felt herself alone. Sometimes she passed sleepless nights. Under the great impact of frustration and dejection, she drank at midnight in hotels of strange towns.
The Quest for True Love and Self-Realisation:
She was so crazy in search of true feelings of love that she kept on changing the company of man. Sometimes she laughed at her craziness, but another time she felt ashamed. She thought that she was not different from other human beings. Like every other human she was sometimes sinful because she committed a kind of sin by shifting her love from one man to another man in search of true love.
Conflict Between Sin and Purity in Love:
In other words, it was also an immoral act. But sometimes she thought her act pious because she was after true love and she wanted to get true feelings of love. She was sometimes loved and sometimes betrayed in love because every man was fond of her fleshy body and showed interest in sexual act. She had the same joys in love as others had. It means that like other women she met the same destiny when she yearned for true Jove. She suffered the same disappointment which others suffered.
Critical Appreciation of the Poem:
Introduction:
The poem An Introduction presents Kamala Das as a defiant voice within the realm of confessional poetry. It candidly explores her struggle to define both her cultural-linguistic and sexual identity within an oppressive postcolonial context. Deeply rooted in Indian sensibilities, the poem becomes a quintessential expression of authentic Indianness. It stands as a powerful outpouring of truth—marked by a poignant blend of rebellion and vulnerability.
The poem, featured in Kamala Das’s debut collection Summer in Calcutta (1965), opens with a candid expression of her disapproval of politics, particularly the kind practised in an independent India governed by a self-appointed elite. Das firmly asserts her right to speak in three languages and to write in two—her native Malayalam and English—defending this freedom as a deeply personal and passionate choice. She resists any interference or guidance from elders or relatives, emphasizing that her decision stems from authenticity rather than conformity. By choosing to write in English, she views her act as both natural and deeply human. As an Indian woman, Kamala Das displays remarkable courage in voicing thoughts and emotions that society traditionally expects women to suppress.
Thought-Content:
The poetess, after discussing her indifferent attitude and distaste for the politics, goes on to articulate that she speaks in three languages, writes in two and dreams in one; as though dreams require a medium. The poetess echoes that the medium is not as significant as is the comfort level that one requires. The essence of one’s thinking is the prerequisite to writing. Hence, she implores with all—”critics, friends, visiting cousins” to leave her alone. The language that she speaks is essentially hers; the primary ideas are not a reflection but an individual impression. It is the distortions and queerness that makes it individual. And it is these imperfections that render it human.
It is the language of her expression and emotion as it voices her joys, sorrows and hopes. It comes to her as cawing comes to the crows and roaring to the lions, and is therefore impulsive and instinctive. it is not the deaf, blind speech : though it has its own defects, it cannot be seen as her handicap. It is not unpredictable like the trees on storm, or the clouds of rain. Neither does it echo the incoherent mutterings of the blazing fire.
It possesses coherence of its own: an emotional coherence. From the issue of the politics of language, the poetess passes on to the subject of sexual politics in a patriarchy-dominated society where a girl attaining puberty is told about her biological changes by some domineering parental figure. As the girl seeks fulfilment of her adolescent passion, a young lover is forced upon her to traumatize and coerce the female-body since the same is the site for patriarchy to display its power and authority. Where thereafter, she opts for male clothing to hide her feminity, the guardians enforce typical female attire, with warnings to fit into the socially determined attributes of a woman, to become a wife and a mother and get confined to the domestic routine. She is threatened to remain within the four walls of her female space lest she should make herself a psychic or a maniac.
Moral of the Poem:
The poetess opens the loneliness of pot just Indian women but women of many a ration. She presents crankiness, distority, honesty and brutal frankness and a tradition and culture of that time and the earnest rebellion of a growing girl who was trapped in a time zone different from her mental time. The poetess has grown to see her rebellion in many a women. The poetess, who is an individual woman, tries to voice a universal womanhood and tries to share her experience, good or bad, with all other women. Love and sexuality are a strong component in her search for female identity and the identity consists of polarities.
The Use of Sex Imagery:
In the poem, the poetess gives us a vivid picture of how she grew up from a child to an adult, becoming tall, with her limbs swelling (or becoming bigger) and hair sprouting at one or two places in her body. Here she also gives us a picture of her husband, to whom she had just been married, drawing her into the bedroom, closing the door, and performing the sexual act with her in such a rough manner that her body felt beaten, with the weight of her breasts and womb crushing her. This is sensuous, nay sensual imagery, candid and inhibited. The reader would enjoy this imagery because of its very candour.
Style and Language:
The assertion of the self against the various given social roles, identities and communal demands is an indicator of the existentialist leaning of the poetess. The first person narrative of the poem also reinforces the idea of the asserting self. The use of the indefinite article ‘An’ in the title is also indicative of the fluid but resisting and self-determining position of the poet. She explains her encounter with a man. She attributes him with not a proper noun, but a common noun-“every man” to reflect his universality. He defined himself by the “I”. the supreme male ego. He is tightly compartmentalized as “the sword in its sheath”. It portrays the power politics of the patriarchal society that we thrive in that is all about control.
It is this “I” that stays long away without any restrictions, is free to laugh at his own will, succumbs to a woman only out of lust and later feels ashamed of his own weakness that lets himself lose to a woman. Towards the end of the poem, a role-reversal occurs as this “I” gradually transitions to the poetess herself. She pronounces how this “I” is also sinner and saint, beloved and betrayed. As the role-reversal occurs, the woman too becomes the “I” reaching the pinnacle of self assertion.
The poem is remarkable for its compression and for the compactness of its structure even though it contains a diversity of facts and circumstances. The rules of punctuation have here been fully observed; all the lines are almost of the same length. The words used and the phraseology show Kamala Das’ talent for choosing the right words and putting them in highly satisfactory combinations. Indeed, the poem contains many felicities of word and phrase. In the poem, she very appropriately writes:
“……., He did not beat me
But my sad woman-body felt so beaten.
The weight of my breasts and womb crushed me.”
In the same poem she speaks of her lover’s longing for her and her longing for him in the following words:
“In him……the hungry haste of rivers,
In me……the oceans’ tireless waiting.”
