What is the summary of the poem The old playhouse?

Answer 1

Description of old play house by kamala das Kamala Das : The Old Playhouse- A critical appreciation

Kamala Das is once again occupied with herself. Her quest for a fulfilling relationship brings a loi of pain and disenchantment. She complains against her men's incapability to offer anything but lust. These volumes reflect the poet's growing interest in the spiritual and the mythical longings.

Kamala Das in her poem 'The Old Play House' looks into the nature of lust and disillusionment. In this context, she explores the male personality as well as her own anguished self. It is the psychology of her inner self, which gets its focus in her poems. Love is the slice of life for Kamala Das. She seems to be obsessed with the idea that feminine self is a mere toy in the unfeeling hands of the male. Her ego-self has declared man nothing more than a beast.

She wants integrity between her physical as well as her inner self. She did not come to her husband's house to lye only beneath his 'boneless-self to feed his 'monstrous ego'. She says :

"...It was not together knowledge of yet another man that 1 came to you but to learn what I was and by learning to learn to grow, but every lesson your gave was about yourself .........."].

This is the despair of her lovely-married self. She yearns for receiving love. But her husband does not lend her fondling hands, instead he exploits her tender physical self and destroys her mind. She says :

"... You embalmed/My poor lust with your bittersweet juices,/you called me wife"

Kamla Das' protest is not merely against the superficiality of married-self but against the essential nature of Hindu domestic life, which tames, the 'swallow' and permits free exhibition of the male ego in all its manifestations. A sad mood of protest against man's inhumanity is a common feature of her poems in which frustration keeps running on. As Parthasarthy opines :"The despair is infectious. Few of her poems have, in fact, escaped it".

The old play house and several other poems are addressed to 'you', to the husband. He wants to encompass her action, movement and activity of which her young self is desirous. The poetic self does not like this just as her young self does not like him or his ways. His 'monstrous ego' comes under fire, since it has totally reduced her and disappointed her. As a result, her mind becomes an old-play*house with all its lights put-out. She says :"You called me wife,/It was taught to break saccharine into your tea and/To offer at the right moment the vitamins cowering./Beneath your monstrous ego, I ate the magic loaf/And became a dwarf'.As a young wife Kamala Das does all the house hold Chores. The dominated husband tries to take her like a bird and makes her an object of his sexual torture. The expressions like '1 ate the magic loaf and 'became a dwarf show that her young self is being crushed. In case of Kamla Das, the journey of married life becomes too difficult. Her sorrow-stricken spirit realizes this torture in her poem. She says :"... Other

journeys are all so easy but not inward one ...".Not only her husband wants to torture her but society also wants to make her stand among the 'Categorizers'. Her feminine self became disgusted v/hen she started moving about in society wearing a male dress. She feels devoid of her feminine self. She says : "Dress in Saree, be girl, Be wife they said, Be embroiderer, be cook, Be a quarreler with servants, Fit in, oh,Belong ... Do not set On walls or peep in through Our lace-draped windows. Be Amy, or be Kamla or, Better /Still, be Madhavikutty. It is time to choose a name, a role ...".

She asserts her feminine identity. Her young self refuses to be called by such names as - Amy, Kamla, Madhavikutty or as a cook, embroiderer. She does not want to be recognized as 'Fit in'.

Her poetry shows that Kami a Das has to make her identity. She has to create a place for herself in a public world, in her home and even in her own bedroom. But every time she finds face of repulsion and Horror. A husband is always considered such a sheltering tree that a woman can not afford to live without him. She says : "A husband is like a sheltering tree, without the tree you are dangerously unprotected ... equally logically and vulnerable and so you have to keep the tree alive and flourishing, even if you have to water it with deceit arid lives. This is too followed, equally logically ...".A Clash between artistic self and personal self is at work here. "... Kamla Das is pre-eminently a poet of love and pain, one stalking the other through a new neurotic world. There is an all pervasive sense of hurt throughout love, the lazy animal hungers of the flesh. Hurt and humiliation ...". "The Old Play House" also voices her protest against the male domination and the resultant humiliation. . Kamala Das is exclusively concerned with the personal experience of love in her poetry. "For her ideal love is the fulfilment of the levels of body and mind. It is the experience beyond sex through sex. The tragic failure to get love in terms of sexual-spiritual fulfilment from the husband leads her to search for it elsewhere. Each relationship only intensifies her disappointment faced with the sense of absolute frustration and loneliness" Though she seeks the perfection of masculine being in every lover, it ends in failure because of the impossibility of realizing this ideal in human form. The experience of frustration sets the psyche in the attitude of rebellion.

Answer 2

Kamala Das in her poem 'The Old Play House' looks into the nature of lust and disillusionment. In this context, she explores the male personality as well as her own anguished self. It is the psychology of her inner self, which gets its focus in her poems. Love is the slice of life for Kamala Das. She seems to be obsessed with the idea that feminine self is a mere toy in the unfeeling hands of the male. Her ego-self has declared man nothing more than a beast.

She wants integrity between her physical as well as her inner self. She did not come to her husband's house to lye only beneath his 'boneless-self to feed his 'monstrous ego'. She says :

"...It was not together knowledge of yet another man that 1 came to you but to learn what I was and by learning to learn to grow, but every lesson your gave was about yourself .........."].

This is the despair of her lovely-married self. She yearns for receiving love. But her husband does not lend her fondling hands, instead he exploits her tender physical self and destroys her mind. She says :

"... You embalmed/My poor lust with your bittersweet juices,/you called me wife"

Kamla Das' protest is not merely against the superficiality of married-self but against the essential nature of Hindu domestic life, which tames, the 'swallow' and permits free exhibition of the male ego in all its manifestations. A sad mood of protest against man's inhumanity is a common feature of her poems in which frustration keeps running on. As Parthasarthy opines :"The despair is infectious. Few of her poems have, in fact, escaped it".

'The Old Play House' is addressed to 'you', to the husband. He wants to encompass her action, movement and activity of which her young self is desirous. The poetic self does not like this just as her young self does not like him or his ways. His 'monstrous ego' comes under fire, since it has totally reduced her and disappointed her. As a result, her mind becomes an old-play*house with all its lights put-out. She says :"You called me wife,/It was taught to break saccharine into your tea and/To offer at the right moment the vitamins cowering./Beneath your monstrous ego, I ate the magic loaf/And became a dwarf'.As a young wife Kamala Das does all the house hold Chores. The dominated husband tries to take her like a bird and makes her an object of his sexual torture. The expressions like '1 ate the magic loaf and 'became a dwarf show that her young self is being crushed. In case of Kamla Das, the journey of married life becomes too difficult. Her sorrow-stricken spirit realizes this torture in her poem. She says :"... Other

journeys are all so easy but not inward one ...".Not only her husband wants to torture her but society also wants to make her stand among the 'Categorizers'. Her feminine self became disgusted v/hen she started moving about in society wearing a male dress. She feels devoid of her feminine self. She says : "Dress in Saree, be girl, Be wife they said, Be embroiderer, be cook, Be a quarreler with servants, Fit in, oh,Belong ... Do not set On walls or peep in through Our lace-draped windows. Be Amy, or be Kamla or, Better /Still, be Madhavikutty. It is time to choose a name, a role ...".