The Rediff Interview/Kamala Das

'I don't think any genius can survive caught in the machine of formal education'

Have you written any poems recently?

When I was in Canada six months ago, my hostess gave me a study, plenty of paper, a Dictaphone and asked me to do some work at night. Then I wrote 23 poems for her! I was staying in a country home in Quebec and it helped. I felt happy and relieved. I felt the way was cleared and I could go back to poetry. Coming back to India, again no time at all. Poetry got shelved again.

Do you feel like going somewhere like that to write poetry?

Yes, I do, I do. If someone's there to fund my holiday! I would come back with a book of poems. But do you think there is anyone who considers my poetry to be worth such a fund? I have no idea at all.

You have had very little formal education. But your poems are being taught in various universities all over the world. Do you sometimes feel amused about it?

I feel amused, blissful. I feel if I had completed my education, if I had gone to university to learn and not to each as I am doing now, I would have been an excellent professor of English! That's all. This way, it's soothing to find my verse being taught. So when I go to universities, I go to lecture on poetry. And I am picking up an honorary D Litt here and there (laughs). That's also very good.

Anyway, I didn't cost my parents any money. I think this is more satisfactory than any formal education. I feel formal education here makes mediocrity's out of everybody. I don't think any genius can survive caught in the machine of formal education.

It works like a bulldozer with which everybody is brought to a low level. They won't tolerate brilliance, they won't tolerate independent thinking. I don't believe that one can be a pundit, great scholar, by digesting what other scholars have written. I think we must find our own conclusions from our experiences.

Did you feel the same as a child also?

As a child, of course I wasn't very happy in school because I could not manage mathematics. That became quite a hell for me. I was good in English, History.. Now I wouldn't dream of visiting any school. When colleges and universities call me, I go and lecture but when schools call me I shy off. I am still afraid of maths teachers! They haunt me, they frighten me.

How do the students of those universities where you go to lecture receive you? What kind of questions do they ask?

I don't know what they expect to find in me. They certainly find me refreshing. Probably they have had all these scholars visiting them. Fortunately, I am quite different because I don't do much reading. After I think, Richmal Crompton and Louisa Alcott, I stopped reading.

Thank God!

So I was not influenced by the big minds.When you present something to the readers, you are not going to complete it. Every perfect piece is incomplete because it is for the readers to complete it. I leave certain gaps deliberately so that the reader will fill the gaps with his or her experience and make something perfect out of it.

So, you feel lack of formal education has helped you in many ways.

I am sure. For my kind of writing, it certainly has been helpful. Well, I see some scholars getting awards, being honoured because they have quoted from scholarly works. I don't like to write such books. I have always been short sighted. I have weak eyes. I feelI am a little more interesting than most of the people they write about.

So, it is enough for me to delve into myself and come out with some conclusions, some judgement, some revelation. And I surprise myself. I do, sometimes. That is why I don't feel my age. I don't do things that are expected of an old woman. My neighbours wonder why I don't go to the temple in the mornings and smear my forehead with sandal paste. It is not that I don't have devotion to God. My faceless God will not reside in one place alone.