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Kamala Surayya Quotes

Kamala Surayya , popularly known by her one-time pen name Madhavikutty and Kamala Das, was an Indian English poet as well as a leading Malayalam author from Kerala, India. Her popularity in Kerala is based chiefly on her short stories and autobiography, while her oeuvre in English, written under the name Kamala Das, is noted for the poems and explicit autobiography. She was also a widely read columnist and wrote on diverse topics including women's issues, child care, politics among others. She was born in a conservative Hindu Nair family having royal ancestry, She converted to Islam on December 11, 1999, at the age of 65 and assumed the name Kamala Surayya.

Her open and honest treatment of female sexuality, free from any sense of guilt, infused her writing with power and she got hope after freedom, but also marked her as an iconoclast in her generation. On 31 May 2009, aged 75, she died at a hospital in Pune.On 1 February 2018, Google Doodle by artist Manjit Thapp celebrates the work she left behind, which provides a window into the world of an engrossing woman.

✵ 31. March 1934 – 31. May 2009
Kamala Surayya photo

Works
My Story
Kamala Surayya
Kamala Surayya: 12   quotes 5   likes

Famous Kamala Surayya Quotes

“Like other women writers of my class, I am expected to tame my talent to suit the comfort of my family.”

Kamala Surayya

Kamala Suraiyya Das (Wages of Love)

“All round me are words, and words and words, They grow on me like leaves, they never Seem to stop their slow growing From within… But I tell my self, words Are a nuisance, beware of them, they Can be so many things, a Chasm where running feet must pause, to Look, a sea with paralyzing waves, A blast of burning air or, A knife most willing to cut your best Friend's throat… Words are a nuisance, but. They grow on me like leaves on a tree, They never seem to stop their coming, From a silence, somewhere deep within…”

Kamala Surayya

Kamala Suraiyya Das (Summer in Calcutta)

“At sunset, on the river ban, Krishna Loved her for the last time and left... That night in her husband's arms, Radha felt So dead that he asked, What is wrong, Do you mind my kisses, love? And she said, Not not at all, but thought, What is It to the corpse if the maggots nip?”

Kamala Surayya

Kamala Suraiyya Das (The Descendants)

“It is I who drink lonely Drinks at twelve, midnight, in hotels of strange towns, It is I who laugh, it is I who make love And then, feel shame, it is I who lie dying With a rattle in my throat. I am sinner, I am saint. I am the beloved and the Betrayed. I have no joys that are not yours, no Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I.”

Kamala Surayya

Kamala Suraiyya Das

“You didn't ever love him, but you were sentimental about him.”

Kamala Surayya

Kamala Suraiyya Das (Wages of Love)

“I am fed up with the Congress. I am beginning to prefer the BJP to the Congress, because the Congress is now more communal than the BJP, despite Ram Janmabhoomi. It is the Congress which evolved the Muslim votebank. … In comparison, I prefer the BJP as an alternative, because it is less corrupt. The BJP at least loves the country. But I wish the BJP does not stress redundant issues like the Ram Janmabhoomi or other places of worship.”

Kamala Surayya

Kamala Surayya, quoted by Leela Menon (1996), and quoted from Elst, Koenraad (2014). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa. p. 245.

Kamala Surayya Quotes

“I am sinner, I am saint. I am the beloved and the betrayed. I have no joys that are not yours, no aches which are not yours. I too call myself I.”

Kamala Surayya

Kamala Suraiyya Das

Joy

“If wrappings of cloth can impart respectability, the most respectable persons are the Egyptian mummies, all wrapped in layers and layers of gauze.”

Kamala Surayya

Kamala Suraiyya Das (Wages of Love)

Personality , Clothes

“A book is a good substitute for a man. Fiction, preferably.”

Kamala Surayya

Kamala Suraiyya Das (Wages of Love)

Books

“Wipe out the paints, unmould the clay, Let nothing remain of that yesterday.”

Kamala Surayya book My Story

Kamala Suraiyya Das (My Story: The Compelling Autobiography of the Most Contreversial Indian Writer)

Painting

“I fell in love with a Muslim after my husband's death. He was kind and generous in the beginning. But I now feel one shouldn't change one's religion. It is not worth it. Also, I have been accused of being feminist. I am not a feminist, as it is understood. I don't hate men. I feel a woman is most attractive when she surrenders to her man. She is incomplete without a man.”

Kamala Surayya

Suresh Kohli: Still a rebel writer, The Hindu (August 13, 2006)

Love , Death , Men , Hate

“Getting a man to love you is easy Only be honest about your wants as Woman. Stand nude before the glass with him So that he sees himself the stronger one And believes it so, and you so much more Softer, younger, lovelier. Admit your Admiration. Gift him all, Gift him what makes you woman, the scent of Long hair, the musk of sweat between the breasts, The warm shock of menstrual blood, and all your Endless female hungers. Oh yes, getting A man to love is easy, but living Without him afterwards may have to be Faced.”

Kamala Surayya

Kamala Suraiyya Das

Love , Hunger

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