Kamala Das
- Malayalam pen name:
- Madhavikutty
- Muslim name:
- Kamala Surayya
- Born:
- March 31, 1934, Thrissur, Malabar Coast [now in Kerala], British India
- Also Known As:
- Madhavikutty
- Kamala Surayya
Kamala Das (born March 31, 1934, Thrissur, Malabar Coast [now in Kerala], British India—died May 31, 2009, Pune, India) was an Indian author who wrote openly and frankly about female sexual desire and the experience of being an Indian woman. Das was part of a generation of Indian writers whose work centred on personal rather than colonial experiences, and her short stories, poetry, memoirs, and essays brought her respect and notoriety in equal measures. Das wrote both in English (mostly poetry) and, under the pen name Madhavikutty, in the Malayalam language of southern India.
Das was born into a high-status family. Her mother, Nalapat Balamani Amma, was a well-known poet, and her father, V.M. Nair, was an automobile company executive and a journalist. She grew up in what is now Kerala and in Calcutta (now Kolkata), where her father worked. She began writing poetry when she was a child. When she was 15 years old, she married Madhava Das, a banking executive many years her senior, and they moved to Bombay (now Mumbai). Das had three sons and did her writing at night.
Das’s poetry collections included Summer in Calcutta (1965), The Descendants (1967), and The Old Playhouse, and Other Poems (1973). Subsequent English-language works included the novel Alphabet of Lust (1976) and the short stories “A Doll for the Child Prostitute” (1977) and “Padmavati the Harlot” (1992). Notable among her many Malayalam works were the short-story collection Thanuppu (1967; “Cold”) and the memoir Balyakalasmaranakal (1987; “Memories of Childhood”). Perhaps her best-known work was an autobiography, which first appeared as a series of columns in the weekly Malayalanadu, then in Malayalam as Ente Katha (1973), and finally in English as My Story (1976). A shockingly intimate work, it came to be regarded as a classic. In later life Das said that parts of the book were fictional.
In 1999 she controversially converted to Islam, renaming herself Kamala Surayya. She received many literary awards, including the Asian World Prize for Literature in 1985.