Author: Kamala Das
Publisher: Hind Pocket Books
Year: 2012
Language: Hindi
Pages: 240
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9788121615723
Description
The book describes a life of frolicking in sex . . It has its accent on titillation .. The titles of chapters are revealing.
Every middle-class bed is a cross on which the woman is crucified . . Men fall in lust, not love. Women crash in real self-destroying love Author of over 30 novels in Malayalam and 3 books of poems in English, Kampala DAs has blazed a new trail of emancipation for Indian women.
This book combines her love for truth with candor and poignancy. It has been read by millions of Indians and has evoked violent reactions - of admiration and criticism: the symptoms of a great work.
COMMENTS:
I cannot think of any other Indian autobiography that so honestly captures a woman's inner life in all its sad solitude, its desperate longing for real love and its desire for transcendence, its tumult of colours and its turbulent poetry. - K Satchidanandan
It is a straightforward story.. It has sincerity that strikes an immediate rapport with the reader. - Sunday Standard
There are entire section that are marvelously written. - The Hindu
Among the best things I have read.. Is the turbulent, self-indulgent but at all times, frank story of Kamala Das. - Deccan Herald
Kamala Das does not hide her secrets and does not follows the rules of old morality. - Assam Tribune
The chapter headings accentuate the 'Excitement'. . There is enough in it to give readers the sizzle and spice. - The Times of India
The technique and structure of the book are remarkable.. The life portrait of the cosmopolitans is quite pictorial. - National Herald
Contents
Preface
1. The humiliation of a brown child in a European school
2. About childhood nightmares and the only "good friend"
3. Each poem of mine made me cry
4. Nalapat House gifted by amorous chieftain
5. In the secret drawer was a brown bottle which smelt of Ambergris
6. I was infatuated with his charm
7. Women of good Nair families never mentioned sex
8. Lonely Goddess
9. They would have liked him to go to bed with a ghost every night
10. She was half-crazed with love and hardly noticed me
11. The girls in boarding school came from a very different background
12. Homely Annie gets handsome young lover!
13. The nuns used to censor the letters we wrote
14. "I wanted to marry a rich man . . . To be a snob"
15. We were subject to subtle sadism of several kinds
16. I prayed to the sun God to give me a male child
17. One morning the Sanyasi had gone . . . Only the smell of opium
remained
18. Was every married adult a clown in bed, a circus performer ?
19. Her voice was strange . . . It was easy for me to fall in love with her
20. She lay near me, holding my body close to hers
21. His hands bruised my body and left blue and red marks on the skin
22. Wedding night : Again and again he hurt me and all the while the
Kathakali drums throbbed duly
23. A gold coin for love
24. I sent the cook out to get some barbiturates
25. The blood-stained moonlight
26. The first chapter of darkness
27. For the first time in my life I learned to surrender totally
28. My love was like alms looking for a begging bowl
29. I still yearned for my grey-eyed friend
30. Sex and the co-operative movement
31. He walked in silence a few yards ahead of me . . .
32. It was the beginning of delightful death
33. Passing away of my great-grandmother
34. Again and again the same man phoned
35. Calcutta's cocktail season
36. I was Carlo's Sita
37. For the first time I saw the eunuchs dance in Calcutta
38. Delhi streets were fragrant and murky. . . I felt very young
39. Calicut gets a good crop of lunatics
40. Like the phoenix I rose from the ashes of my past
41. I withdrew into the cave I had made for my self
42. The last of my lovers : handsome dark one with a tattoo between his
eyes
43. "I too tried adultery for a short while"
44. I was never a nymphomaniac . . .
45. Return to Nalapat : Was my 24-year-old marriage on the rocks?
46. Only the wealthy hated me . . . They spread Iush scandals about me
47. The sorcerer came on a bike at night . . .
48. The ancient hungers that once tormented me were fulfilled
49. Who were we to sit beside their favourite God?
50. I have ceased to fear death . . .