The Freaks by Kamala Das

-

 The Freaks
 

Kamala Das


He talks, turning a sun-stained

Cheek to me, his mouth, a dark

Cavern, where stalactites of

Uneven teeth gleam, his right

Hand on my knee, while our minds

Are willed to race towards love;

But, they only wander, tripping

Idly over puddles of

Desire. .... .Can this man with

Nimble finger-tips unleash

Nothing more alive than the

Skin's lazy hungers? Who can

Help us who have lived so long

And have failed in love? The heart,

An empty cistern, waiting

Through long hours, fills itself

With coiling snakes of silence. .....

I am a freak. It's only

To save my face, I flaunt, at

Times, a grand, flamboyant lust.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Coolie Summary

-
Image
Coolie Coolie , by Mulk Raj Anand, was first published in 1936 and helped to establish Anand as one of the foremost Anglophone Indian writers of his day. Like much of his other work, this novel is concerned with the consequences of British Rule in India and with the rigid caste system that structured Indian society. “Coolie” is a term for an unskilled laborer, though it can also be used as a pejorative. Anand’s novel tells the story of Munoo, a young boy from the Kangra Hills in Bilaspur. He is an orphan who lives with his aunt Gujri and uncle Daya Ram ; however, early in the novel they reveal they can no longer support Munoo and insist that he get a job. This is the beginning of a journey that will take Munoo to Bombay and beyond, but it also marks the end of his childhood. With his Uncle, Munoo travels to a nearby town where he finds a job as a servant to a bank clerk, Babu Nathoo Ram. Munoo is mistreated by his master’s wife ( Bibi  Uttam Kaur) but he admires his maste
Read more

The whorehouse in a Calcutta street by Jayant Mahapatra

-
Image
THE WHOREHOUSE IN A CALCUTTA STREET  Walk right in. It is yours. Where the house smiles wryly into the lighted street.  Think of the women you wished to know and haven't.  The faces in the posters, the public hoardings  And who are all there together,  those who put the house there  for the startled eye to fall upon,  where pasts join, and where they part.  The sacred hollow courtyard  That harbours the promise of a great conspiracy.  Yet nothing you do makes a heresy of that house.  Are you ashamed to believe you're in this?  Then think of the secret moonlight of the women left behind their false chatter, perhaps their reminding themselves of looked after children and of home:  the shooting stars in the eager darkness of return.  Dream children, dark, superfluous;  you miss them in the house's dark spaces, how can't you?  Even the women don't wear them  like jewels or precious stones at the throat;  the faint feeling deep at a woman's centre  that brings back t
Read more