Kamala Surayya (1934-2009) was an Indian English-language poet. She is popularly known by her pen name Madhavikutty. Kamala is famous for her poetry. Her choice of writing topics such as female sexuality, childcare, and politics made her famous. She died at the age of 75 at Jehangir Hospital in Pune on May 31, 2009.
Wiki/Biography
Kamala Surayya was born on Saturday, March 31, 1934, in Punnayurkulam, Malabar district, Punnayurkulam, British India (now Thrissur district, Kerala, India). Her zodiac sign is Aries. She went to school in Calcutta and Malabar. She began writing at the age of six and had her poems published for the first time in PEN India at the age of fourteen. She did not receive any formal college education. At 15 she married, and by 18 she was a wife and a very unhappy mother, which resulted in her spending almost all her time writing.
Teenage Kamala Suraya
family
Parents and siblings
Kamala Surraya’s father VM Nair is the executive editor of prominent Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi and a senior official of Walford Transport, which sells Bentley and Rolls-Royce cars. Her mother Nalapat Balamani Amma was a famous Malayan poet. She has a brother Shyam Sunder and a sister Sulochana Nalapat.
Kamala Surayya (standing left) with her parents and siblings
Kamala Suraya and her sister
husband and children
In 1949, at the age of 15, she married Madhav Das, a bank clerk. After her marriage, she started adding “Das” to her name, i.e. Kamala Das. The couple has three sons: MD Nalapat (India’s first professor of geopolitics and UNESCO Peace Chair at Manipal University), Chinen Das and Jayasurya Das. She has an adopted son, Ishad Ghulam Ahmed.
Kamala Surayya with her son and husband
Kamala (middle) with her adopted son and his wife
other relatives
Kamala Das’ great-uncle Nalapat Narayana Menon was a Malayalam writer from Kerala.
Kamala Das’ great-uncle Narapat Narayana Menon
Relationships/Affairs
In 1999, 65-year-old Kamala Das fell in love with 38-year-old Sadiq Ali, almost half her age and a Muslim League MP. She announced plans to marry her Muslim lover, but she never remarried.
Religion/Religious Views
For 65 years of her life, she remained a great devotee of Lord Krishna, but at the age of 65, on December 11, 1999, she converted to Islam and changed her name to Kamala Kamala Surayya.
Kamala Surayya in burqa
caste
Kamala Das was born into an aristocratic Nair Hindu family in Malabar. Her maternal grandfather and great-grandfather were members of the aristocratic Hindu caste Rajas, while her father came from a peasant background and followed the simple ideals championed by Mahatma Gandhi.
Profession
literary career
Surayya published her first collection of poems, Summer in Calcutta, in 1965. She writes about love, betrayal, and the pain that follows. Later, she moved away from writing about “19th-century diction, emotion, and romanticized love” to more diverse topics such as female sexuality, childcare, and menstruation. Her second collection of poems, “The Descendants,” is more bold and explicit, using a sarcastic tone to talk about how easy it is for women to be loved by men. Due to her bold expressions and explicit content, she has been compared to American poet and novelist Sylvia Plath and French novelist Marguerite Duras. At the age of 42, she published her autobiography “Ente Katha” in Malayalam and later “My Story” in English. In her poems, she reflects her own yearning for love and freedom. She has traveled to many places to have her poetry read, including the Universities of Bonn and Duisburg in Germany, the Adelaide Writers Festival and the Frankfurt Book Fair.
Kamala Surayya attends Frankfurt Book Fair
Her works are available in French, Spanish, Russian, German and Japanese. She has served as Vice-President of the Kerala Sahitya Academic Council, Chairman of the Kerala Forest Board, Chairman of the Kerala Children’s Film Society, Magazine Editor and Poetry Editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India. Her last book, The Bound Woman and Other Stories, which included translations of her short stories, was published posthumously.
Kamala Surayya reads poetry at home
political career
In 1984, she founded a national political party, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, whose agenda was to promote secularism and provide shelter to orphaned mothers. In the same year, she contested the Lok Sabha elections from Thiruvananthapuram constituency but failed. She ran as an independent candidate and received only 1,786 votes. After losing the election, she lived with her sister, where she wrote the Poem of Anamalai. She wrote more than twenty poems in this series, but only eleven were published: eight in Sahitya Akademi’s Journal of Indian Literature (1985) and three in The Best of Kamala Das” (1991).
dispute
Kamala Das converted to Kamala Surayya
Kamala Das was born into a Hindu family and converted to Islam in 1999 after practicing Hinduism for nearly 64 years. This move caused controversy and people across the country were dissatisfied. Kamala’s life was also threatened when leaders of the Hindu Grand Alliance took her to court, accusing her of misusing Hinduism in her remarks about Guruvayur and saying she converted because Muslims promised her a government job or Gain seats in parliamentary elections. Speaking about her transformation in an interview, she said:
When I was a Hindu, no one came home. Islam brought me friends and love. Some poor women and children came to me and they loved me, and I returned their affection. “
A memoir written by Das’ Canadian friend Merrily Weisbord states that Kamala converted to Islam because her lover Sadiq Ali wanted her to convert. Kamala Das’s original words in the book are:
Dearest Joy,
My life has changed since November 14, when a young man named Sadiq Ali walked in to greet me. He is 38 years old and has a bright smile. He then started wooing me on phone calls from Abu Dhabi and Dubai, reciting Urdu couplets and telling me what he would do to me after marriage. I took my nurse, Minnie, and drove to where he lived. I stayed with him for three days. There was a sunny river, some trees, and lots of laughter. He asked me to become a Muslim, which I did when I returned home.
Social activist AP Mohammad has claimed that there is a wider international conspiracy behind Malayalam writer Kamala Das’s conversion from Hinduism to Islam. According to Mohammad’s report, Das’s friend Merilee Weisburd mentioned in her book “The Love Queen of Malabar” that there was an international conspiracy behind her conversion. Apart from this, Mohammad said that the man behind Madhavikutty’s conversion to Islam was Muslim League leader and writer Abdussamad Samadhani, who received $1 million for converting Madhavikutty to Islam. Merrilee Weisburd claims in her book that Samadni received money from an organization in Saudi Arabia for his contribution to the famed writer’s transformation. Muhammad added,
Foreign funds are being pumped into Kerala with the sole purpose of converting people to Islam. People are seeking famous people to convert because it gives credibility to the conversion and there is an incentive for more ordinary people to accept conversion. “
Some sources claim that Das’s conversion to Islam was one of the earliest instances of “love jihad” in the country.
Kamala Das is one of the earliest victims of the love jihad that is still going on in Kerala. According to government records, 9,000 Hindu girls converted to Islam due to the false love interest of Muslim boys. Most of them experienced the same fate as Kamla. Theme story👇 pic.twitter.com/xh5siZsn6X
– 🇭🇮🇳🇩🇺🚩 (@indiangujarati1) August 8, 2020
Awards, Honors, Achievements
- In 1963, she won the PEN Asian Poetry Award.
- In 1968, she won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for her story “Thanuppu”.
- In 1984, she was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
- In 1985, she won the Kendra Sahitya Academy Award (English) for her collection of poetry.
- In 1988, she won the Kerala State Film Award for Best Story.
- In 1997, she won the Wayalal Award for “Neermathalam Pootha Kalam”.
- Won the Asian Poetry Award in 1998.
- In 2002, she received the Ezhuthachan Award.
- In 2006, she received the Honorary D.Litt Award from Calicut University.
- In 2006, she received the Muttathu Varkey Award.
die
She died at the age of 75 on May 31, 2009, at Jehangir Hospital in Pune after battling cancer. The state government buried her according to Islamic rites at the Palayam Jumma Masjid in Thiruvananthapuram without the presence of her relatives. After she converted from Hinduism to Islam, all her children and relatives reportedly abandoned her and the man she wanted to marry soon left to reunite with his two previous wives. With no family around her, she was diagnosed with cancer in 2009.
Facts/Trivia
- On February 9, 2018, a biopic “Aami” about her directed by Kamal was released, starring Manju Warrier as Kamala Surayya and Murali Gopy as Madhava Das.
- Canadian non-fiction writer Merrily Weisbord found Das’s work so compelling that she came to India to meet her. She has written a book titled The Love Queen of Malabar: A Memoir of a Friendship with Kamala Das, which is a memoir of a decade-long friendship.
Kamala Surayya (left) and Merrily Weisbord
- In an interview, when talking about getting married and having children at a young age, she said:
It wasn’t until my third child was born that I was mature enough to be a mother.”
- Das often started writing late at night and continued until morning.
- Her autobiography was serialized into 50 chapters by a magazine.
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education