Nani - Kamala Das

Nani, by Kamala Das is a poem symbolic in itself of the problem risen due to Castism and nonchalance towards the woman figure. Nani, is a maid who worked for Kamala Das’s family at the time when she was a kid. One day suddenly she hangs herself to death in the privy. Thinking of this as a game that Nani might be on, Kamala Das who was a little girl that time thought that Nani was just trying to amuse them. The fact that Nani was there hanging for three hours is morbid indeed. When Kamala Das asked her Grandmother of the Nani, she refused to have any memory of someone like her. And after that lines of logical and philosophical introspection are laid out unto such truths of life.

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“Nani, the pregnant maid hanged herself

In the privy one day.”

These opening lines of the poem tell us that Nani hung herself with a baby in her womb. Considering that she was a working Dalit class woman, the burden of having a child would’ve made her do so as she wouldn’t have been able to provide for the child. From other sources this also suggests that the maid would’ve gotten pregnant from sexual abuse by her master.

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“…a clumsy puppet, and when the wind blew

Turning her gently on the rope, it seemed

To us who were children then, that Nani

Was doing, to delight us, a comic dance…”

The poetess being a child at the time could not understand what happened here, so she assumed that Nani was playing a puppet game of some sort. This is symbolism to Nani’s job as Nani was only a puppet to the family she worked for, and her life was getting worse and worse day by day.

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“The shrubs grew fast. Before the summer’s end…

…doorway and the walls”

This set of lines suggest the passing away of time without notice. This is very contrasting as someone’s death usually makes the environment a bit gloomy, dull and eerie. Here Nani’s death didn’t have any effect on the people, just as if she wasn’t even a person and all her life was in vain. This makes us question humanity and the caste system which has made people heartless.

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“The privy, so abandoned,

Became an altar then, a sunny shrine,

For a goddess who was dead.”

The above tells us that Nani was a Goddess. This must mean that Nani must’ve been a really good and caring person. So humane that she was eligible for the title of Goddess. It’s in the humanity that we find God, and not in the heavens.

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“Another year or two, and I asked my Grandmother one day,

Don’t you remember Nani, the dark plump one?

Who bathed me near the well…?

Grandmother shifted her reading glasses on her nose, and stared at me.

Nani, she asked, who is she?

With that question ended Nani.

Each truth ends with thus a query.”

The poetess asks of her Grandmother about Nani, but the grandma refuses to have any memory of her. It is heart breaking to know that a person can forget about such an incident that happened in their own house, where a kid remembers it and you can’t. Well it is justifiable that the lady is old and maybe can barely remember anything. But this is just one perspective to these lines. The last three lines in the above excerpt suggest that the grandma might’ve done it willingly so that her granddaughter doesn’t have to remember a death from her childhood. The last three lines tell us how with one sentence how a person’s memory can be erased from existence, how truths can be manipulated to look like nothing with constant unreasonable questions and questioning.

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“It is this designed deafness,

That turns mortality into immortality,

The definite into the soft indefinite.

They are lucky, who ask questions,

And move on before the answers come.”

From here the poetess writes about the ethical aspect of the poem. The designed deafness meaning, the way people selectively ignore something instead of listening to the point and analyzing it. This turns mortality to immortality because if something is questioned and the answer received is very appropriate, it would replace the original truth in context with a new truth. This makes the truth before mortal as it is no more and hence this designed deafness helps retain immortality in ideas.

Those who do not question these truths are happy as they have something that is very constant and they believe that it would be constant hence they do not have to deal with the soft indefinite. Whereas, the ones who keep asking questions have nothing constant in their life in terms of truth, their idea of truth keeps changing and so does their mind.

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“Like music in the Koel’s egg,

Like lust in the blood,

Or Like sap in a tree”

This is the end of the poem and symbolises human nature in 3 contexts. All humans are the same. All of them have lust in the blood just like the Koel who would break the egg and grow to sing, and sap in a tree which can’t be seen but is there.

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Nani is a complete poem in the sense of bringing out the inhumanity in us and showing us the way to retain our own true nature or will by following what is given unto us and respect it.