Spoiling the Name: Kamala Das (Text and Summary)

Textual poem for B. Com. I Semester

Spoiling the Name: Kamala Das

I have a name, had it for thirty
Years, chosen by someone else
For convenience, but when you say
Don't spoil your name, I feel I
Must laugh, for I know I have a life
To be lived, and each nameless
Corpuscle in me, has its life to
Be lived . . . why should this name, so
Sweet-sounding, enter at all the room
Where I go to meet a man
Who gives me nothing but himself, who
Calls me in his private hours
By no name, or the city's dusty
Streets where on afternoons
I walk, looking for old books, antiques,
And new thrills that might come my
Way? Why should I remember or bear
That sweet-sounding name, pinned to
Me, a medal, undeservingly
Gained, at moments when, all of
Me is ablaze with life? You ask of
Me a silly thing. Carry
This gift of a name like a corpse and
Totter beneath its weight
And perhaps even fall... I who love
This gift of life more than all!

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A Brief introduction of Kamala Das  and a brief note of Summary:

Kamala Da was born on 31 march 1934 in Kerala in a reputed Menon’s family. Her love of poetry began at an early age through the influence of her great uncle, Nalapet Narayan Menon, a prominent writer in Malayalam.

At the age of 15, she got married to a bank officer Madhava Das, who encouraged her passions in writing and she started writing in both English and Malayalam. However, she chose English was the language for all six volumes of her poetry collections. Later, at the age of 65, she embraced Islam and converted into Islam on December 11, 1999 and assumed the name as Kamala Surayya.

At the age of 75, on 31 may 2009, she died at a hospital in Pune. Her body was flown to her home state Kerala. He mortal remains were rested with state honours at Jama Masjid, Thiruvananthapuram.

Kamala Das’s poem “The Spoiling the Name” throws light on subjugation of female self in a dominant patriarchy. The persona has no name rather than the names given by someone for convenience.

“Spoiling the name” is one among the several poems written by Kamala Das that derives its conflict by pitting society and its norms against individual’s assertions. The connotation of the title is culture-specific, and refers to the importance given to the individual’s societal role in Indian context. If an individual does not adhere to the prescribed modes of behaviour laid down by a mostly Patriarchal and orthodox Indian society, then he/she is seen to be tarnishing the image of the family and his \her society; in other words she /he “spoils the name” of the family, and also of the society at large. The poem draws attention to this malice by challenging the authoritarian societal diktat through the individuals need to live life on his/her own terms. Thus Kamala Das writes “….. when you say/ Don’t spoil/ your name. I feel I/ Must laugh , for I know I have a life / To be lived…..”

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