My Mother at SixtySix

KAMALA DAS

Kamala Das – as a poet of the first water

Kamala Das is a tale weaver – weaving the rhythm of life

into a tale of soul – a poet who loves to be loved in silence.

She says, "I wanted to fill my life with as many

experiences as I can manage to garner because I do not

believe that one can get born again". This poem is an

example of such experience with oozing agony and

melancholy – beleaguered with modern economic system.

Summary of “My Mother at Sixty-Six”

On a gray day, the speaker leaves her mother as well as her home to win her bread,

while her mother with a long face stands and stares. The speaker easily filters her

glimpses through the plethora of unfamiliar faces. When a bouquet of cheerful

children is caught fluttering in the open with sheer alacrity, revives in her the

smarting childhood agony of a mysterious premonition, that is, losing her mother.

Reviving from the psychological flickers at once, she sees her mother is shielded

inside a pal of benumbed silence. Still the airport hums, as the passengers are

requested to filter through the custom's care. Still a helpless mother, with

wrenching heart and swelling emotion, bids a helpless goodbye to her helpless

daughter.

Strangeness added to beauty

The readers are proud of having read such a poem built on the agony of a

wrenching heart that resides in a child for her mother. The poet looks into the gray

olden age strumming the strings of childhood life. Bringing of the sportive

children restores vivacity into the relationship. So we may without having a tinge

of hesitation say, a mother's love is helplessly trampled under the technological

terror of airplane wheels.

Focus

Mother stands in her life like a tree, on whose branch swings the childhood of the

daughter.

1. Relationship – Relationship is the nucleus of the poem. It seems love

creates an unfading relationship and it wields its brush over at least two

souls and assigns a meadow of agony with a river of fecundity.

2. Nostalgia – The speaker is carried away by her childhood premonition of

losing her mother.

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3. Sense of isolation – A deep sense of never-happened-before isolation

creeps into the heart of the speaker.

4. Time of being nuclear – Poet Eunice de Souza claims that Das has

"mapped out the terrain for post-colonial women in social and linguistic

terms". We fear of losing the mother's touch and smell in time of this

narrow domestic life.

5. Establishment and Ambition – Just to satisfy her economic appetite she

is bound for some handsome income. Poet Eunice de Souza claims that

Das has "mapped out the terrain for post-colonial women in social and

linguistic terms". Yet, a slight touch of establishment and a grown-up

ambition cannot cut off the branch of relationship.

6. Transport of filial piety – A transport of filial piety is observed filtering

through the unfamiliar faces, fettered with custom officers' mandatory

checking.

7. A silent agony – The speaker is overtaken by a terrible numbness. An

awkward silence creeps into her being. She fears looking back at the

slinking childhood of losing her mother's magnanimous shadow. Her

mother is presumably taken to be motionless and still – 'dead' to say in

brief. The destination is worthy of its name too – Cochin – signifying

'sleep' – clearly signifies that the speaker would soon see her mother to be

a denizen of the other world.

8. Vitality of relationship – Children spill over, and yet again spring out

vitality, vivacity and velocity of life. The moment a child is born, the

mother is also born. So losing her mother is nothing but an idiosyncratic

outlook? Her mother is not going to sink in death, since her child keeps

breathing – since other children are still there to make the earth rotate.

Reading between the lines

The daughter evinces her mother silently suffer. She finds her mother

heartbroken... she smiles away her agony though... she accepts her future

loneliness... bereft of mother... having the unluckily lucky opportunity to love her

absence, tread her shadows, and swing into the painfully happy nostalgia of a

hallowed past. At the fag end of the poem, we see the mother stay as a neverending

song in the speaker's heart of comfort, happiness and being. The

destination is worthy of its name – Cochin – signifying 'sleep' – clearly signifies

that the speaker would soon see her mother to be a denizen of the other world.

The debilitated mind of the mother is experiencing a serious symphony. The

airport ongoings of checking and rechecking cannot even drift away the slightest

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wrinkle left on the face with sorrows. Her slow and silent movement is disrupted,

her shadow is brought under the hammering wheels of the airplane. Her unbidden

prayers cling to her all her life.

Poet Eunice de Souza claims that Das has "mapped out the terrain for postcolonial

women in social and linguistic terms".

About the word “Mother”

'Mother' fills the topmost rank in the list of most-used words. She carries the key

of one's soul in her bosoms. The moment a child is born, the mother is also born.

“Being a full-time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs in my field, since the

payment is pure love” (Mildred B. Vermont). A mother is something absolutely

new. A mother is priced of God.

The never-extinguished love

Love is a soothing balm over the wounds of expectation and waiting. That's why

love makes a dare infiltration even if the security of a heart is steel-tightened.

Here, the mother's love steals away with the booty – the soul of her child. Hence,

love is not to mean, but be.

The talking soul of the speaker – the silent monologue vanishes into the fading

half of the day, but the journey continues, as every journey of a relationship need

to be continued... “spilling over”... with optimistic enjoyment abundant.

Appraisal of the Title

The title, “My Mother at Sixty-six” is an excellent example of showing an everunfailing

relationship between a daughter and her mother. Nostalgia smeared in

separation appears to be the default setting of the poem. The title scrutinizes every

mother lumbers towards the age, 66, with care or without care. But this very

mother gets to the same age through the growing eyes of her daughter. The number

66 also points out to the beginning of double quotation marks. It seems Kamala

Das indicates the estrangement has just begun, and it's absolutely way afar to meet

the end. It also sounds a little ambiguous, since the daughter, for the first time,

notices her mother has stepped into the wrong box of sixty six. In some Hermetic

systems, 6 means "beauty," and the speaker's mother appears more beautiful. 6 + 6

= 12, the number of signs in the Zodiac, and so may represent the totality of

Creation. So, sixty-six signifies a mother is the symbol of the totality of Creation