Literary Profile: Kamala Das (1934-2009)
The poem Blood is a deeply personal, autobiographical piece that reflects on the poet's ancestral home in Kerala, her relationship with her great-grandmother, and the inevitable decay of both the physical structure and the feudal way of life it represented. It explores the conflict between traditional heritage and modern urban existence.
The poem opens with a nostalgic recollection of childhood. The poet and her brother played on the sands, drawing birds and animals, representing a time of innocence. This peace is interrupted by the great-grandmother's lament about their three-hundred-year-old ancestral house . The house is described as falling to pieces: cracked walls, fallen tiles, whining windows, and rats scampering through holes. The snake-shrine , once a place of reverence, is now dark with weeds, and the snake-gods have lichen on their hoods, symbolizing the neglect of tradition.
"O it hurts me she cried, / Wiping a reddened eye / For I love this house, it hurts me much / To watch it die."
Literary Interpretation & Contextual Significance: The great-grandmother's grief is not just for a physical structure, but for the passing of an era, a lineage, and a way of life. The house is personified as a dying entity, establishing a deep emotional bond between the human inhabitants and the physical space.
Moved by her great-grandmother's tears, the young poet promises that when she grows up and becomes rich, she will rebuild the fallen walls and restore the ancient house. The great-grandmother smiles, comforted by this simple gesture. The poet describes her great-grandmother as a simple woman, "fed on God," whose life was deeply spiritual. She recounts stories of her grandmother's youth: riding an elephant to the Siva shrine, her precious jewel box, fine brocades, perfumes, and her brief, tragic marriage to a prince who died of fever in her arms. These stories instill a sense of aristocratic pride and the myth of having the "oldest blood" in the world—blood that is "thin and clear and fine," contrasted sharply with the "thick" and "muddy" blood of the poor and the newly rich.
The narrative shifts to the great-grandmother's death at eighty-six. She dies wearied by compromise, her body ravaged by arthritis. The poet, now older, has learned "lessons of defeat" and realized that growing rich is a difficult feat, making her childhood promise impossible to keep. As the great-grandmother is cremated, the house itself seems to react: the windows close like dying eyes, the pillars groan, and the dark rooms heave a sigh. The poet leaves the ancestral home, the shrine, the sands, and the "wide rabid mouth of the Arabian Sea" to seek a life in other towns, leaving the house to its fate.
Years later, living in distant towns, the poet is haunted by the memory of the decaying house. She knows that rats run through the darkened halls and white ants (termites) have raised "strange totems of burial" on the walls. She feels a deep sense of guilt and seeks forgiveness from her ancestor ("O mother's mother's mother"), admitting she has "plucked your soul / Like a pip from a fruit / And have flung it into your pyre." Yet, she defends her "blood"—the ancient, noble blood that still flows within her, remembering the gems, the gold, the perfumes, and the stately elephant rides of her heritage.
The poem operates on several thematic levels:
| Literary Device / Colloquial Phrase | Exact Textual Example / Quote | Contextual Meaning & Subtext | Pedagogical / Stylistic Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personification | "The windows whine and groan" / "The house was crouching / On its elbows then" | The house is depicted as a living, suffering organism that shares the physical decline and mortality of the great-grandmother. | Creates a haunting, gothic atmosphere and emphasizes the symbiotic relationship between the family and their ancestral home. |
| Simile | "A blood thin and clear and fine" vs "blood thick as gruel / And muddy as a ditch" | Contrasts the idealized, noble ancestry of the poet's family with the perceived vulgarity of the lower classes and the newly rich. | Highlights the theme of class prejudice and the feudal pride passed down through generations. |
| Metaphor | "I have plucked your soul / Like a pip from a fruit / And have flung it into your pyre" | The poet describes her abandonment of the ancestral home and its memories as an act of destruction, discarding her heritage. | Conveys intense guilt, remorse, and the painful necessity of breaking away from the past to survive in the modern world. |
| Visual Imagery | "The snake-shrine is dark with weeds / And all the snake-gods in the shrine / Have lichen on their hoods." | A vivid description of the neglected family shrine, once a center of worship and cultural identity. | Symbolizes the fading of religious traditions, cultural neglect, and the inevitable passage of time. |
The authenticity comes from the precise, sensory details: cracked and rain-moistened walls, fallen tiles, whining windows, rats scampering from holes, and a weed-choked snake-shrine. These details reflect the real-world decay of traditional Kerala homesteads (Taravads) due to economic shifts and migration, drawing directly from Kamala Das's personal experiences at her ancestral home in Punnayurkulam.
The poem highlights the decline of the feudal aristocracy, the matrilineal heritage of Kerala (indicated by the focus on the great-grandmother), the rigid class distinctions based on lineage ("oldest blood"), and the rise of a new mercantile class ("new-rich men") replacing the old landed gentry.
Yes. Tradition is represented by the 300-year-old house, the snake-shrine, the grandmother's simple faith, and her stories of royal grandeur. Modernity is represented by the poet's urban life, her "lessons of defeat," the struggle to grow rich, and her ultimate abandonment of the ancestral home for other towns.
While the poet respects her grandmother, her revolt is subtle and realistic. She acknowledges that "to grow rich / Was a difficult feat," showing the impracticality of maintaining feudal grandeur in the modern world. She also refers to her act of leaving as "callous" and "selfish," recognizing that survival in the modern world requires abandoning the dead past.
The lines describing the blood of the poor and the new-rich as "thick as gruel / And muddy as a ditch" reveal the stark class distinctions of the era. By presenting these views as part of her grandmother's traditional mindset, the poet critically exposes the arrogance of feudal class superiority.