An Entanglement with the Past: Kamala Das' Poem, Farewell to Bombay

This week in Daak:

1. An Entanglement with the Past: Kamala Das' Poem, Farewell to Bombay

2. Revel in Play

3. Daak Recommends

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1. An Entanglement with the Past: Kamala Das' Poem, Farewell to Bombay

There’s a Bengali word, পিছটান (pichutan), which means an entanglement with something from your past which keeps pulling you back even as you try to move forward. We’ve all experienced this kind of painful love, whether for a person or a place. In her poem, “Farewell to Bombay”, Kamala Das gives voice to this bond with a place she’d once called home. As is evident in her lines, her memories of Bombay are not just tied up with the sights, sounds and experiences of the city, but also with an imagined fantasy which she perhaps never got to live. So, her poem is mourning the loss of not just a physical place, but also of someone she once wanted to be.

Farewell to Bombay

I take leave of you, fair city, while tears
Hide somewhere in my adult eyes
And sadness is silent as a stone
In the river’s unmoving 
Core…
It’s goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
To slender shapes behind window panes
Shut against indiscriminate desire
And rain; to yellow moons
So long ignored, so long unloved;
To the birds, flesh-hungry,
Circling in the sky
With shrill and hostile cries; to the crowd
Near the sea, walking or sitting
But always talking, talking
Talking…
I take leave of you, fair city, keep your tears,
Your anger and your smile for others,
Young, who come with unjaded eyes;
Give them your sad-eyed courtesans with tinsel
And jasmine in the hair, your marble
Slabs in morgues, your brittle
Roadside laughter…
It’s goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, 
To the silence and the sounds;
To streets that I never walked
But in dreams, to lips that I never kissed
But in dreams; to children
Lovely as flowers, out of me….
Never born…

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2. Revel in Play

As adults, we often forget to revel in play! Get this set of Raja Ravi Varma-inspired playing cards and introduce play in your gatherings and parties.

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3. Daak Recommends

Listen to Salman Rushdie’s loving tribute to Bombay and read another Daak on Kamala Das’ views on poetry.