Loneliness And Longing For The Self In Kamala Das' Poem The Freaks

Published in Bookworm Digest, March 2023
(Master’s Project of Moksha Garg, St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore)

Though compared to Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton for the prominent presence of confessionalism in her poetry, Kamala Das was something nobody else was. Quite simply because no experience that can be generalised could ever duplicate Das’. A shifty childhood, a distastefully early marriage that failed to fulfil her in every way a marriage theoretically ought to, innumerable attempts to satiate her many human needs at the hands of many men, a complex relationship with one faith and then another — everything culminating into a life driven by a constant state of uncomfortable flux. Perhaps, the only redeeming factor that survived her many waves, accompanying her long enough to see her through her life, and continues to show us her life today in literary pictures, is her poetry. To say the least, Kamala Das lived in multitudes, and as every other article on the poet states, she lived ahead of her times. In an obituary, Shahnaz Habib of The Guardian wrote, “This early lesson in dislocation may have inspired many of her literary themes — the vulnerable child-woman trying to create meaning in an inconstant world; nostalgia for a serene, rural past; the unfair privileges of caste and wealth; and the contradictions of motherhood.”

Skimming Kamala Das over, the most identifiable themes that surface are undoubtedly sexuality, a quest for identity, strong feminist views, patriarchal biases and social injustice. It is only on second glance, do we get to notice a sense of another underlying feeling, quietly but consistently running as the undercurrent of most of her verses — loneliness; a sense of longing for company, and by extension, a longing for the self. Though an unfailing secondary theme in other poems, loneliness comes to the forefront in the poem, ‘The Freaks’.

Overarchingly, ‘The Freaks’, is a poem about a failing marriage, fuelled by discordant physical connection and an absolute lack of love. The poem opens with vivid, sharp, almost unpleasant imagery attacking her male partner, including a “sun-stained cheek”, “a dark cavern” for a mouth and “stalactites” for teeth which could metaphorically represent the reason for jaggedness in his talk and her clear dislike for it. The poem then advances into what holds its central essence — love-making, or rather a futile attempt at it. With clear signs showing the poet not engaging in her side of the process, the poem eventually bleeds into the bigger theme of her own loneliness. The rather shallow, superficial act of sex here leads Das to question if the man’s fingers are only capable enough to arouse lust, which is a lazy, unfulfilling, half- emotion that seeps into where the residues of love should be, to momentarily satisfy mere seconds long urges. Das who can see right through both the man and herself is unafraid to call out this masquerading feeling. She is also unafraid to classify her emotion and call it loneliness. Her own son has observed that “the only mind she felt compelled to obey was her own.” Here too she is recognising her own mind’s vacancies and writing about it consciously. She is cognizant that she has failed in love all her life, never having found anything satisfactory enough to quench not only the thirst of her body but of her soul.

Loneliness though is a feeling of isolation, it need not necessarily be felt while physically isolated. Some of the most severe bouts of it can occur while having company. The feeling she is experiencing here is something greater than just longing for someone to co-exist with. Kamala Das, through all her poetry, has made it abundantly clear that underneath all her complexities, she is only human with human needs and desires, asking for an experience that fares a little above the theoretical basics. She has the bare minimum — food, clothing, shelter — a little more than the minimum even. But she is not a lady ready to settle. She is someone who knows what she wants and is ready to go a step beyond, to unapologetically declare what she wants, in a very stereotypically unladylike fashion. She sees her heart which is an “empty cistern”, a void where love should be. Having not had quality company which can complete her for arguably her entire life has led to silence, which has coiled inside her like a snake. This imagery shows how prolonged loneliness has tangled inside her though it all amounts to nothingness in the end. She is carrying a weight inside of her, that has accumulated over time and with incessant waiting for something that complements her life with meaning to come by.

This longing for an external entity to fulfil her recoils, in my opinion, to her longing for her own self. A safe space where she is free to her true self, which so far has shown its glimpses only through her words and verses. Having pretended all her life in order to satisfy other’s needs and society’s requirements, Kamala Das has somewhere lost pieces of her self and here, is longing for them to come back to her. She has carried the burden of a marriage that was forced upon her and cultural, societal norms that pierced her first and then shred her to bits. It’s these pieces of her scattered self that I see her waiting for. Where they once existed, now exists silence. She ends the poem by calling herself “a freak”. She confesses that she sometimes “flaunts” her lust in order to survive and exist in the society. She is masquerading herself to please others and hides her true face behind the blinding, deceiving face of lust, which is superficial enough for her husband to satisfy his needs while not giving another thought to his partner’s.

Kamala Das might be a woman of multitudes, but she is also a woman who is shattered by all the many farces she is forced to live on an everyday basis. Her multitudes neither gave her an identity nor helped her actualise her true self. Haunted by a relentless loneliness, what could have possibly lasted for her entire life, she has suffered to make meaning out of relationships that were forced on her, which in turn has fractured her dynamic with herself. All this only leading for loneliness to coil tight inside her — making her feel isolated both, while with company and in her own heart.