My Mother at Sixty-Six by Kamala Das

My Mother at Sixty-Six is a heart touching poem composed by Indian poetess Kamala Das who wrote under the Pen name of ‘Madhavikutti’. Kamala Das is called a confessional poetess. In this poem, Kamala Das expresses her feeling of love and attachments towards her mother.we can imafine the feeling of a daughter when she see off her mother. 

My Mother at Sixty-Six

Mothers are one of the finest creations on this earth. Mothers are God’s greatest gift to humanity. The poetess and through her poem “My mother at Sixty-Six”, she portrays her sudden realisation towards her mother has grown old and may pass away very soon. The poem is based on a beautiful mother-daughter relationship.

About the Kamala Das:

Recognized as one of the India’s foremost poets, Kamala Das was born in Malabar in Kerala on May 31, 1934. she is the daughter of V.M. Nair, and her mother is Nalappatti Balamani Amma, a renowned Malayali Poetess. Her parents were poets, so poetry is in her blood. She came a very orthodox and conservative family. She is a bilingual writer who writes proficiently in Malayam also; she however, achieved wider recognition as an Indo-English poetess with summer in Calcutta (1965). Her poetry reflects the spirit of the modern Indian woman torn between frustrated love and desire for emotional fulfilment. Love and marriage thus, are her themes fed by the roots of her Nayar heritage, her great grandmother, her house in Kerala. She is greatly influenced by Robert Browning’s dramatic quality. She earned the Sahitya Akademi Award for her great work in 1985.   

Her main works:

Kamala Das’s great works in English literature are as follows:

Summer in Calcutta, In Love, Composition, The Suicide, An Intensity, My story, Manas, Alphabet of last,The Descendants, my mother at sixty- six.

Text of the My Mother at Sixty-Six poem:

Driving from my parents’

Home to Cochin last Friday

Morning, I saw my mother,

Beside me,

Doze, open mouthed, her face

Ashen like that

Of a corpse and realised with pain

That she was as old as she

Looked but soon

Put that thought away, and

Looked out at young

Trees sprinting, the merry children spilling

Out of their homes, but after the airport

Security check, standing a few yards

Away, I looked again at her, wan, pale

As a late winter’s moon and felt that old

Familiar ache, my childhood’s fear,

But all I said was see you soon, Amma,

All I did was smile and smile and

Smile……..

 

                     -from Selected Poems (2014)

Difficult words- 

Dose – a short, light sleep

Ashen – very pale

Corpse – a dead body

Sprinting – shooting out of the ground

Spilling – to move out in great numbers

Wan – colourless

Ache - pain   

Hint- driving from……………………smile and smile.

Reference: this beautiful stanza has been taken from the lesson “My mother at Sixty-Six” is composed by most popular Indian English Poetess ‘Kamala Das’.

Context: in this stanza poetess realises a relation between mother and daughter. Further she defines her mother’s old age situation. The poem is one of the finest examples of the human bonding especially that of a mother and daughter.

Explanation:  by this poem poetess express her grief and feelings towards her mother. She feels more pain for her mother ageing. She says that she is sixty-six years old and looks very weak and old. When the poetess was returning from her parent’s home to Cochin, and was on the way to the airport, her mother was light sleeping. She noticed her mother her face is pale like a dead body. She feels that her mother is in the last phrase of her life. So the poetess fells that she will pass away soon and gets scared. To come out of this negative thought, she looked out side of car. The world outside was full of life and activity.  She saw the trees by the road side which seemed to the running into the playground. When she reached the airport, she again looked at her weak mother who looked old and dull like the weak moon in the winter season.  She was compared to the ‘Late winter’s moon’ because the late winter’s moon is calm and vague. Kamala Das also said that the life of childhood and old age. The spontaneous flow of life has been depicted of the both side. The poetess was surrounded by the same fear of losing her mother. She thought that may be this was the last time that she saw her mother alive. It feels that her mother was about to die.

In “My Mother at Sixty-Six poetess captures a message that-                                                                       

          “Ageing is a natural process”

At last poetess was smile……smiles and her smile signifies some shorts of hope, that she is promising to meet her mother again. The poetess wanted to be with her mother again and not want to go. But hiding her tears, the poetess said, “See you soon Amma”.

Central idea of “My mother at Sixty-Six”

The poem “My Mother at Sixty Six” is composed by famous Indian English poetess ‘Kamala Das’. This poem is based on the theme of advancing age and poetess also showed her grief and fear to lose her mother. Though ageing is a natural process yet the fear of separation from our loved and near ones is very painful. This is an emotional poem. The poem talks about the feelings of loneliness that aged people experiences and the feelings of guilt which their off-spring experiences for not being able to be with their parents in their old age. The poem also expresses the feelings of melancholy and pain that a daughter experiences while leaving her mother. It describes the pain and fear of the poet- of losing her mother due to harsh reality of life which is death.

Poetic devices: 

 This poem is full with figures of speech like simile, metaphor, personification, repetition and alliteration.

Simile: it is the comparison of two things by using as, like. Example – ‘her face ashen like that of a corpse’, ‘as a late winter’s moon’.

Metaphor: It is the direct comparison of two things without the use of as or like. Example - ‘The merry children spilling’.

Personification: when we give human characteristic to animals or plants or non- living things. Example- ‘trees sprinting’.

Repetition:  It is the repetition of a word or phrase to create a poetic effect in a poem. Examples- ‘smile and smile and smile’.

Alliteration: It is the repetition of the consonant sounds in a line of the poem. Example ‘my mother, and ‘that thought’, ‘I said was, see you soon’.

Rhyme scheme – the poem does not follow any rhyme or rhythm. It has been written in Free verse.

Imagery – The imagery used is suggestive of both death and youth. The images of ‘young trees and merry children’ are a contrast to the mother.

Language: the language of this poem is very simple but the words, chooses by poetess is impressive. Poem has a deep meaning and message for the youth. This poem is written in a confessional mode.

 Themes:  daughter and mother relationship is the main theme of this poem. The bond between them is unique and remarkable. Death, young age, old age, separation with our loved ones are also the themes of this poem.