Kamala Das’ poem “An Introduction” which can be considered as a rebel against the male dominated

society as it voices for the liberation of women’s self tries to create their own identity in such society. The
poetess in her typical confessional tone presents herself as wounded due to social and familial humiliation
in her past and present life. Das tries to establish both the selves— the poetic self and the self as a
woman—strongly enough to assert her own identity. She differentiates between both the selves and
attempts to present the agonies of the selves. Her poetic self and self as a woman are wounded not only by
the society but also her family members and relatives and friends.

She identifies the two selves with the domestic gender role occupies a safe position accepted and
esteemed by society in general and male in particular, whereas the self as an artist haunts the fringes of
human intercourse, isolated from men and women and repressed by the women of whose psyche she is a
part. From the beginning Das demonstrates a continuity of theme and expression concerning central
division of the self. She redefines herself and liberates herself both as a woman and a poet. The poem
reveals that the woman persona of her poem represents her own mutilated self tormented by both past
and present. She finds herself condemned to play the part of the other. She is not allowed to choose her lot.
It is some male who compels her to choose her roles. She is forced to act either as slave or idol.

Introducing herself, the poet says that she does not know politics but she knows the names of powerful
persons beginning with Nehru. She says that she is an Indian, very brown in complexion. She further adds
that she is married to a youth when she grew up a little. She was not mature enough to take the
responsibilities in marriage. She expresses her exploitation in sexual intercourse and says that her husband
did not beat her, but her womanly body felt beaten. She asked for love, but she got humiliation rather than
love. She began to feel ashamed of her feminity. She started to wear male dress and cut her hair to hide her
womanly identity ignoring her womanliness. But again people criticized her and told her to be a girl, a
woman, a mother, an embroider and a cook. She is advised to behave like a confined housewife and
perform domestic activities. When she behaves like a boy or a man, she is concerned to be a schizophrenic.
She is supposed to bear every sorrow in married life even though she is rejected love:

“When I asked for love, not knowing what else to ask

For, he drew a youth of sixteen into the

Bedroom and closed the door. He did not beat me

But my sad woman-body felt so beaten.”

While asserting her womanly identity, she provides her personal experience in extramarital love. She says
that she met a man and loved him, but didn’t get the same love from him in return. It shows her longing for
love and man’s attitude towards a woman. Her longing for love and man’s lust is described in the following
lines:

In him….the hungry haste

Of rivers, in me…. The oceans’ tireless

Waiting.
Moreover, Das presents man’s egoistic attitude when she uses metaphor of ‘the sword in its sheath’ for
man’s self which does not change at any cost. Man’s identity is directly compared with the sword in its
sheath which is safe from every attack.

Another concern expressed in the poem is regarding the medium of writing poetry chosen by her.
The poetic self of the poetess is shown wounded in the poem since she is not allowed to choose the
language of expression she wants. When she prefers English to express her feelings, everyone including her
friends, cousins and relatives object her not to use English for writing as it is not her mother tongue. But she
sticks firm to her decision and declares everybody to leave her alone:

Don’t write in English, they said,

English is not your mother-tongue. Why not leave

Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,

Every one of you?

Furthermore she stresses the importance of the language for her that it expresses her feelings of joy, hope
and longing. She compares the usefulness of the language to the usefulness of cawing and roaring to cows
and lions respectively. According to her, the language or the speech is of the mind and the mind that sees,
hears and is aware of everything around. She says that the speech is not as deaf and blind as trees in storm
or monsoon clouds or rain or the incoherent mutterings of the blazing funeral pyre. So the poetess tries to
establish her identity as a poet or an artist without adapting the language of male poets to voice her own
feelings as a woman, a writer, a mother, and a citizen and by by asserting her right to choose the language
of her choice denying the objection of the society.

In the final lines, Kamala Das stresses her own identity equal to that of man. According to her she
has no joys which are not of man and no aches which are not of man. It means the joys and aches both are
same to man and woman, but she feels them more intensively than man. Kamala Das wants to assert that
man and woman and their feelings are equal but there is contrast in dealing with them. Even she says that
she too calls herself ‘I’. She thinks that she also has her own identity in the world. If man can call himself ‘I’,
she can also call herself ‘I’.

I have no joys which are not yours, no

Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I.

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