Introduction of the Poem:
Whenever she went and wherever she lived, Kamala Das looked back to the happy days spent in her grandmother's company with nostalgia and yearning. In this poem, published in Summer in Calcutta in 1965, Kamala Das recalls the landscape of Kerala. Others may be annoyed by heat, dust and noise, but the poet always longs for the hot noon in Malabar because it is associated in her mind with “wild men, wild thoughts, wild love”. She writes, “From every city I have lived, I have remembered the noons in Malabar with an ache growing inside me, homesickness”.
Critical Summary:
The world outside is defiled and boring. The summer in the city where the poet lives now is a torture to her. It is a hot noon with beggars crying for alms in their plaintive, sing - song tones. There are also men who come from the hills with parrots in their cages and, with their dirty soiled cards, foretell the future. There are Kurava girls who read their customer's palms and foretell the future in their carefree, sing - song tones. There are also bangle - sellers selling their nut - coloured bangles covered with the dust of the road. They have walked long distances in the heat; their feet have cracks on their heels.
The poet had known them all herself in her girlhood when she lived in her family home. But now when they come to the porch of her house, they seem to be strangers and the noise they make is harsh and unpleasant to the poet. The ellipse (dots) here expresses the poet's yearning for a time when they were neither so strange nor so unpleasant, but a familiar and pleasant sight.
In the hot noon the poet's soul is tortured with intense heat. It seems to her that strangers from the outside world are peering through the window of her room, with their hot and burning eyes, and searching for shelter from the heat of the sun. They first peer into the dark room, and not finding anyone there, look yearningly towards the “brick ledged wall” to quench their thirst and get some rest there from the heat of the sun. They are all strangers with wild looks in their eyes; they do not speak much but when they do, their voices are wild, like “jungle – voices”. Such is the maddening heat of the sun in the strange city where the poet lives now. It is a torture to her because it reminds, her of equally hot noons which she once passed in her ancestral house at Malabar when, despite the heat, she was happy and gay. Now everything is strange, dirty and painful. Then everything was familiar, innocent and pure.
The poet simultaneously recalls the past and compares it with the present. How different was the happy past from the unhappy present! It was also hot then; there were also strangers then stirring the dust with their wild feet, but how different, how innocent, pure and familiar they looked to her! The poet yearns for the innocence and purity of her old family home . It is a torture for her to be there in a strange city on a hot noon. Strangers with wild feet must still be there in Malabar. Alas, she is so far away from home. Life there must be going on as usual, but everything has changed for her. Her home in Malabar is the ideal, dream world for the poet. Distance lends enchantment to the view and the poet yearns to be there as to a place of refuge from the sorrow and suffering of the present.
It is all a cluster of associations with far - reaching emotional implications. Words like “jungle – voices”, through a fusion of sense and sound, enact a verbal drama and contribute to the peculiar tone of the poem. The poet lives in a jungle now and yearns for the safety and refuge of home.
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