Summer In Calcutta
What is this drink but
The April sun, squeezed
Like an orange in
My glass? I sip the
Fire, I drink and drink
Again, I am drunk
Yes, but on the gold
of suns, What noble
venom now flows through
my veins and fills my
mind with unhurried
laughter? My worries
doze. Wee bubblesring
my glass, like a brides
nervous smile, and meet
my lips. Dear, forgive
this moments lull in
wanting you, the blur
in memory. How
brief the term of my
devotion, how brief
your reign when I with
glass in hand, drink, drink,
and drink again this
Juice of April suns.
This poem is the title piece of the anthology of poems that was published in 1965. The poem projects, through action and gesture, a self-contained mood of sensuous luxury. The image of the April sun in it brings to the poet a sense of sensuous repletion, of warm intoxication which inspires as well as relaxes so that ‘my worries doze’. The poem celebrates the mood of temporary triumph over ‘the defeat of love.’ It is an Indian poet’s creative reaction to the torture of the Indian summer. What distinguishes Kamala Das’s reaction is her unconscious intimacy with this torture.
The poetess comparing the sun with a ripe orange seems to enjoy even the harshness of the heat. Though she compares the sunshine with orange juice she tells that even the juice makes her drunk. Under the influence of the drink, she forgets her worries and pains and indulges herself in fantasizing about her beloved. Yet she is impulsive by nature and thus cannot concentrate on his beloved for too long as she is too engulfed in the enjoyment of the hot but beautiful summer in Calcutta.
Being a modern poem the theme of the poem is not straightforward but is rather a mixture of a number of themes interwoven inextricably with each other giving the poem a postmodernist flavor. Apparently, the poem talks about how the poetess enjoys the Indian summer with a number of drinks. The poem offers a unique subjective experience where something which is heavily disliked in our social context has been presented as something desirable.
Nonchalantly the poetess subjectively represents a personal experience of a universal phenomenon. The meaning is warped in the extended metaphor of the sun being compared to an orange. The heat and its synecdochic sweat transformed into juice. Even more sexually explicit ideas are presented in the euphemistic language of a season and its usual drinks. Kamala Das confesses her impulsiveness, nymphomaniacal and alcohol-abusive attributes through very carefully selected words but as usual straight forward enough to make us smile just like the ‘nervous bride’ in the poem. The tone of the poem is half satirical and half confessional. At the same time, the lines exude a sense of confidence. The confidence of a person who has nothing much to lose and thus enjoys life on a hedonistic basis. Strikingly enough the line lengths show that the poem’s passion is well in control. The fact that the poem seems to be a recollection might be the reason behind this rare control of the passions.
The entire poem is actually a recapitulation of things past and thus is actually nothing but an experience removed from the plains of reality. It communicates a state of mind under the duress of pain half-forgotten and thus communicates only an abstract sense of oneness and fragmentation caused by conditions of deliriousness.
The entire poem seems to be an image of a continuous manner. The image of the sun as the orange, the heat of the sun as a liquid, the liquid being the liquor, and the liquor turning into poison are a chain of images that warms us only to leave us with goosebumps that inevitably follow a realization of intense sadness and pain. The sun is compared to an orange. This image invokes both the mythical signifier of the incident of Hanumana trying to eat the sun thinking it to be a fruit and since the month of April is mentioned, we tend to remember the lines-“April is the cruelest month.” The wonderful simile of the bubbles being compared with the nervous smile of the new bride is both naive and sexually charged. Sex being a large part of Kamala’s forte is often invoked consciously and unconsciously when we both expect and expect it.
Thus as usual with Kamala Das, she surprises us with her erratic and erotic linguistic turns of phrases, her unconventional images and symbols, and her frank acceptance of the bitter truths of life. Thus the poem which appears to be a descriptive one actually results to be a reminiscence of guilt.
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