A Letter to Kamala Das

My dearest Kamala, Amy, Madhavikutty, now what should I call you?

I don’t want to call you Das… although I fell in love with someone called Das, but no Kamala, why should I call you by the name of that man who never loved you? To whom you were just possession and property…

I will call you Amy-kutty, dearest. Or simply kutty. I can, after all, imagine that you are my younger sister. Though you are the amma of all of us women in India who write English poetry.

Your parents never loved each other Amy- kutty, and neither did your husband. My parents didn’t love each other either— well, they did once– but they fell out of love. And they divorced. And I? I never married, Amy. Not till now, in any case. Growing without love etched scars on our souls.
And your father made you only wear plain white frocks!! That reminds me of Anne… Anne Shirley… Marilla only dressed her in stiff browns and Grey’s, though she yearned for “puffed sleeves”! I have always been in love with Anne, since age ten…

How desperately lonely you must have been… that man didn’t even let you attend to your own kids!! Your woman breasts felt so crushed and your sad woman heart must have felt so beaten… First father, then husband! Our lives as women hemmed in by these patriarchal figures of authority! Oh, how the heart rages against it!

And of course, when we don’t have love, we fall into Illicit love. You fell in love with your art teacher, and your English teacher. How lovely, Amy. I fell in love with my teachers too. One was my history and hindi teacher, the other was my English teacher. Both were women. I wonder what about female English teachers attracts us, Amy… how did she look… how did she make you feel, Amy… and of course you were never allowed to pursue your loves, but were made to live a loveless life! Such a catastrophe… I could never fulfill my loves either, Amy… they were my teachers, and they were married after all… I wonder if I will ever find love, Amy… it seems enormously difficult… but then I seek love in foremothers like you, who have gone before, who have written painted and sung all that was in their hearts… I will keep my heart and trust in you, dearest…

But what about that girl in the train whom you kissed, Amy? On her mouth? Wow. I never did kiss a girl… and then that mysterious girl whom you lost after just one kiss—the eyes and the lips, and the curves, and the soul… how tragic did that seem, Amy! Did she have long black hair? I love dense black curls…

You wrote so honestly Amy… I do too… and I don’t know what will befall me for this courage of truth… you led a difficult life in your time, Amy… and me in mine… and it is so difficult to write about it Amy… I try to hide it in the garb of fiction, but I am afraid I am too honest, and that my words are transparent, perhaps my fiction fails to hide anything at all… because it is truth, after all… but it is only my truth. It could be fiction, seen from the other’s perspective. That’s what Tracy Chapman says, Amy, in her song, ‘Telling Stories’.

And of course, you fell in depression. You had to, kutty, after the life you led. But why did you fall into depression after the birth of your children, dearest? I fell into depression after I was forcefully cut off from my beloved… but it was one-sided love, it was illicit, Amy… it could not last… but I write too honestly, Amy… one day retribution will befall me for this too, this act of expressing… but you tell me about your depression, Amy kutty…

I am so glad you did find love at last… in Carlo… do you think I might too, Amy? I can’t seem to love men’s bodies somehow… especially not their penises… And of course you changed your name… they say you found love in Allah… or perhaps in a Muslim man… whatever it be, I am so glad you found love at last, dearest… you said you believed in Krishna too… my grandmother once compared me loving my teacher single-mindedly in absentia to Mirabai loving Krishna… but devotion is so beautiful, isn’t it now, Amy-kutty?

Devotedly yours,