Mamoni sheds light on her similarities with and closeness to late Kamala Das
“Be Amy, or be Kamala. Or, better / Still, be Madhavikutty. It is time to / Choose a name, a role. Don’t play pretending games. / Don’t play at schizophrenia or be a / Nympho. Don’t cry embarrassingly loud when / Jilted in love”. (From an introduction by Kamala Das)
Poetess Kamala Das’s story is, in a way, my story too, if you pardon the pun. We shared many things in common, differed in many more but still found ourselves as friends in a bonding that would last many, many years; a friendship we nurtured at close quarters and savoured when hundreds of miles apart.
When the news of the death of Kamala Das — or Madhavikutty, if you like — came to me not many days ago, I felt no pain but just a numbness in my heart. A sort of emptiness inside me. I knew her so well.
Kamala was older to me by many years but that did not come between our friendship. I remembered my last conversation with her. It was over the phone. I still recall the day, March 10, 2005.
The first time I rang, there was no answer from the other end, which was in Kamala’s ancestral home at Kottayam in Kerala. The second time the phone rang, Kamala picked up the phone herself, her unique singsong voice wafting in through the receiver.
Even at such an age, the voice was the same. I am sure there are very few persons with such a sweet voice. When she realised it was I, even across the miles I could “hear” the joy in her voice.
She had bombarded me with questions: “Where are you ? How are you? What are you doing?” I said that I remembered her and was reading an old article I had written about her.
She had giggled like a child, delighted, perhaps amused.
She had then said, “I am very lonely. Come and stay with me for a few days”.
I could not go then, as I was very busy. That was the last I had heard her voice, though, in essence, her voice is now the voice of Indian women — bold and authoritative.
My first meeting with her is also another interesting story. It was many years ago — I don’t remember how many years ago — at the India International Centre in New Delhi.
As I walked into the room, I found her lying in bed. Her long, black hair was scattered on the pillow like a halo. Her kohl-rimmed eyes were sad, almost moist. I could not fathom why.
She looked at me in a quizzical manner, perhaps trying to size me up before the conversation started. But we did not speak for too long that day. She asked about myself and my writings. She asked me for a copy of my autobiography — Aadha likha dastawez (Half-written manuscript).
However, I could not keep my promise to send the book within a week. It reached her only after several months later. I received a letter from her after that. It was so much full of praise that I was embarrassed. “You are a major among the majors,” she wrote in praise of me as a writer. That was the start.
We met many times after that in different places and we became close friends. Drawn together, perhaps, by the similarities in our lives. We were, as it were, a single soul breathing in different bodies.
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