The freedom and bondage of Madhavikkutty

She is a respected writer. Hailing from the illustrious Nalappat family; daughter of the well-known poet and Jnanpith award winner, Balamani Amma, and Mathrubhoomi director V.M. Nair, she grew up in a intellectual and literary ambience. Her felicity with words found expression in everyliterary form fiction, the short story, poetry, and journalistic articles.

She has in her writing explicitly and imaginatively dealt with the grey area of sexual relations — acquiring the label of a free, uninhibited spirit. She is a wizard at anatomising the micro-mechanics of mental life, at charting the quicksilver zig-zags of the mind. Her writing has a carnal lyricism that escapes being pornographic. She is a master craftsperson when it comes to depicting every day life, straddling both the English and Malayalam literary worlds. Says writer-critic M. Leelavathy, “She is easily the best writer in Malayalam. Her short stories are examples of creative suggestive writing.

Her Balyakala Smaranakal (Childhood Memories) is unmatched in brilliance.”Her autobiographical work, My Story, which came out in 1976, demolished traditional sexual barriers by dealing in female sexuality. For the first time, perhaps, in the history of women’s writing in India, the “love needs” or unsatisfied sexual yearnings ofwomen were delineated. That a woman writer could dare to speak in this fashion of female sexuality was something that the Kerala psyche could not easily countenance. Indeed, the reaction that her work evoked locally made Kamala Das feel rejected and alienated.

She was in her sixties, when she took took up painting seriously. Once again she shocked polite society her watercolours were largely of female nudes. But they provoked critics to read new insights into them and they certainly sold well. And whenever she spoke publicly, she emerged an ardent advocate of freedom in love. The media quoted her and courted her. Many women were inspired to look at her as an icon.

Yet today, as Sorayya she seems to have renounced those old ideals, projecting herself as a woman who prefers bondage to freedom. Bondage, with love. There are many ways of looking at Kamala Das’s conversion to Islam. For some, the fact that an upper-caste woman can convert to a minority religion is evidence of a commendable courage, albeit onetinged with eccentricity. Especially now when a strong anti-conversion drive has been launched by certain extremist Hindu groups. But then that is Kamala Das all over again. All her life she has enjoyed defying taboos.

Certainly, her action has electrified Kerala’s somewhat moribund social scene. The state, many feel, is evolving into a land of widows, with women outliving men and depression stalking the land. In such a scenario, Kamala may even appear to provide an alternative. Whether her change of heart is hormonal or spiritual, her joyful decision to marry, adopt a new religion, explore new realms of a faith and preach it to the world, injects not only optimism but euphoria.

There are many others who find the transformation of Kamala Das difficult to stomach. They point out that Islam, as it is practised in the country, oppresses women. The Vanitha Commission is flooded with complaints from Muslim women complaining of the pernicious effect of triple talaq. Points out Sugata Kumari, the chairperson ofthe Vanitha Commission, “The Quran does not allow triple talaq, it does not allow dowry, it permits second marriage only with the permission of the first wife and never for pleasure.” Yet family court advocates admit that divorced Muslim women are flocking to family courts, pleading for a meagre maintenance.

What women activists in the state fear is that Sorayya, could undermine efforts at reform within the community. “Women are still fighting for the right to enter the mosque. Male-dominated vested interests deny women every right. Oppressive practices like talaaq, polygamy, child marriage and denial of property rights still characterise Muslim society,” comments Zuhara, who heads NISA, a progressive women’s forum.

The fear is Sorayya by equating the purdah with Islam, is limiting a great religion to a dress code. She has justified the Muslim’s right to four wives. She views this archaic practice, once justified in the context of a desert economy, as a generous gesture — a gesture where a man gives“life” to four women.

On the threshold of a new millennium, Sorayya alias Kamala Das straddles two worlds one representing freedom, the other bondage; one progress, the other regression. In the process, she has set the cat among the pigeons. As always.