Poem: "An Introduction" by Kamala Das - Explanation

The poem "An Introduction" is written by Kamala Das, an eminent Indian poet, known for writing confessional poetry. The poem, as her style, is confessional in nature, sharing her personal and intimate thoughts.

Explanation

The narrator admits her lack of interest in politics, but she does know that Jawaharlal Nehru was the first prime minister of the nation, and the subsequent power political figures who remained in power. 

She states her nationality as Indian and flaunts her brown skin. Her place of birth is Malabar, that covers India's south-western coast. She has command over three languages, i.e. Malayalam, English and Hindi, out of which she writes in two (Malayalam & English), and one in which she dreams i.e. Malayalam because that was her mother tongue.

People including her friends, cousins, and critics advised her to not write in English because it's not her mother-tongue. She found such suggestion unwanted and wanted to be left alone with her choice. She wants not interference in her choice of language. According to her, when one speaks in a language, it becomes their own, as in her case, because the speaker adds nuances and personal touch to the language.

She explains that she is honest in expressions, despite it is the combination of "half  English, half Indian" and sounds funny. It doesn't matter whether her utterings, in this foreign language, are replete with errors as all humans beings are imperfect.

She defends her choice of writing in English as it gives expression to her joys, longings, and hopes. And it is as useful to her as "cawing is to crows" or as "roarings to the lions". After all, it is a medium of expression and all that mind gathers through senses of sight and hearing, and consciousness is expressed through it.

This human language is enough for that unless it has to describe the sounds of Nature that are termed as "deaf, blind speech" as the thrashy sound of trees, waving violently in a storm, or pitter-patter of rain or the burning sound arising from a funderal pyre.

Now she flashes back to her past when she was a child and paints an imagery of her growing up as her "limbs swelled and one or two places sprouted hair". When she was sixteen, she wanted love, and a man from whom she expected love, took her to the bedroom. Although he didn't beat her but her "sad woman-body" felt the abuse of the unconsented sex. She couldn't accept her sexuality. It depressed and dragged her down.

It changed her and she began wearing her brothers' trousers, and cut her hair short and tried to be a tomboy. But they asked her to dress like a girl, wear sarees and engage in traditional work associated with women such as embroidery, cooking, behaving dominantly with servants and fit in as a woman's 

The elements in society who categorizes people and their roles, whom she called "categorizer". They preach to fit in the society, not to sit on walls, peeping through windows. They ask her to choose an single identity for herself, be Amy or like Kamala or Madhavikutty (her pen name) and want her to take up a fixed role. They cautioned her to conceal her mental disorder and refrain from acting as a promiscuous woman. They told her if her heart is broken by a man, no need to cry embarrassingly.

She then tells how she met a man and fell in love with him. He is a typical embodiment of masculinity who desires a woman, in the same way every woman seeks a man. She describes the lust of man and the woman in an imagery of water bodies of river and ocean, she depicts the male's sexual act with "hungry haste of rivers" and portrays woman's sexual act by comparing it with "ocean's tireless waiting".

She asks the man who he is, and each and every time, she gets the answer "I". She can see that the man who replies with "I" fits rightly in this world, with the simile of sword and its sheath fitting it.

She confesses her lonely drinking at midnight in hotels of strange towns, having sex and feeling guilt about it. She calls herself both "sinner" and "saint" contradictingly. She is loved initially, then betrayed by men who at first claimed to love and then took advantage of her and had betrayed her. She is now coming to terms with her identity after these "men" who call themselves "I", she is embracing her own autonomous identity.