The Best of Kamal Das
Kamala Suraiyya Biography
Kamala
Das was born in Punnayurkulam, Thrissur District in Kerala, on March
31, 1934, to V. M. Nair, a former managing editor of the
widely-circulated Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi, and Nalappatt Balamani Amma, a renowned Malayali poetess.
She spent her childhood between Calcutta, where her father was employed
as a senior officer in the Walford Transport Company that
sold Bentley and Rolls Royce automobiles, and the Nalappatt ancestral
home in Punnayurkulam.
Like her mother, Kamala Das also excelled in writing. Her love of poetry
began at an early age through the influence of her great uncle,
Nalappatt Narayana Menon, a prominent writer.
At the age of 15, she got married to bank officer Madhava Das, who
encouraged her writing interests, and she started writing and publishing
both in English and in Malayalam. Calcutta in the 1960s was a tumultous
time for the arts, and Kamala Das was one of the many voices that came
up and started appearing in cult anthologies along with a generation of
Indian English poets.