ABOUT KAMALA DAS
Dear Friend,
I feel like responding to your note on our Madhavikkutty alias Kamala Suraiah.
This is what you wrote in your weekly round up:
QUOTE
1. Remember Thikkurisi Sukumaran Nair's comments and columns on Madahavikkutty turned Kamala Surayya. Last week she revealed many things to Taslima Nasrin, which TS divulged to the media without missing even a punctuation mark. This week, it is the turn of Actor, Writer, Mantravadi, Revisionist - Madambu Kunjukuttan. MK categorically states that KS confessed to him that she was lured into high hopes of getting a nomination for NOBEL PRIZE, from Organisation of Islamic Countries and the Arab league and citizen ship in Saudi Arabia, if she accepted the offer to join Islam and the old age companionship of a prominent Muslim League politician. -FRIEND
UNQUOTE
Now let us look at this a bit impartially.

Kamala Das is a reasonably good poet, who wrote some good verse, very bad prose and made a lot of controversial and inconsistent statements which did not qualify to come to public domain. What she does in private is her business, but she always had this urge to make her fantasies public, thus misusing the love given to her by her poetry fans.
She has made some amazing statements-

"I liked the purdah which Muslim women wore. I liked the orthodox lifestyle of Muslim women."
"A woman in purdah is respected. No one touches you or teases you if you wear one. You get total protection."
"I don't want freedom. ... Freedom had become a burden for me. I want guidelines to regulate and discipline my life. I want a master to protect me. I wanted protection and not freedom. I want to be subservient to Allah."

I think she got her basic Qumran a bit jumbled up.
What did Qumran say?

"... They (wives) are your garments (cover) and you are their garments (cover) ..."

"The believers, men and women, are protectors (Awliya: meaning protector, guardian, caretaker, friend; not masters) one of another. ..."

The Prophet said: "... Surely women are the twins of men."

Kamalaji has done some good work in her literary pursuit to make Malayalis to be proud of her. But, when anyone starts looking up to her for social, philosophical or intellectual guidance, it becomes something of a joke. It is like going to Lulu Prasad for an explanation on Panchakoshavivekam.
KAMALA DAS's conversion to Islam in 1999 and the advertising of it, is not, empathizing with a minority, or championing the cause of the underprivileged, but simply the most recent in a series of flamboyant gestures that have been a hallmark of her life and writing

Kamala’s flamboyance has nothing to do with religious affiliation but more with an uncontrolled need for public acknowledgment of her idiosyncrasies, unmindful of the fact that icons with big public image should have some regard for the consequences of publicizing their private fantasies and half baked philosophies.
But, to be fair to her personality, when she embraced ISLAM, she was 65.So, the love story with an aging politician is hard to believe even if she owned the story and even with the salt pinch of COMPANIONSHIP. And, since when Islamic countries started deciding NOBEL PRIZE??
A.P.Jayanthram.