Nani, by Kamala Das is a poem symbolic in itself of the problem risen due to Castism and nonchalance towards the woman figure. Nani, is a maid who worked for Kamala Das’s family at the time when she was a kid. One day suddenly she hangs herself to death in the privy. Thinking of this as a game that Nani might be on, Kamala Das who was a little girl that time thought that Nani was just trying to amuse them. The fact that Nani was there hanging for three hours is morbid indeed. When Kamala Das asked her Grandmother of the Nani, she refused to have any memory of someone like her. And after that lines of logical and philosophical introspection are laid out unto such truths of life.
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“Nani, the pregnant maid hanged herself
In the privy one day.”
These opening lines of the poem tell us that Nani hung herself with a baby in her womb. Considering that she was a working Dalit class woman, the burden of having a child would’ve made her do so as she wouldn’t have been able to provide for the child. From other sources this also suggests that the maid would’ve gotten pregnant from sexual abuse by her master.
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“…a clumsy puppet, and when the wind blew
Turning her gently on the rope, it seemed
To us who were children then, that Nani
Was doing, to delight us, a comic dance…”
The poetess being a child at the time could not understand what happened here, so she assumed that Nani was playing a puppet game of some sort. This is symbolism to Nani’s job as Nani was only a puppet to the family she worked for, and her life was getting worse and worse day by day.
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“The shrubs grew fast. Before the summer’s end…
…doorway and the walls”
This set of lines suggest the passing away of time without notice. This is very contrasting as someone’s death usually makes the environment a bit gloomy, dull and eerie. Here Nani’s death didn’t have any effect on the people, just as if she wasn’t even a person and all her life was in vain. This makes us question humanity and the caste system which has made people heartless.
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“The privy, so abandoned,
Became an altar then, a sunny shrine,
For a goddess who was dead.”
The above tells us that Nani was a Goddess. This must mean that Nani must’ve been a really good and caring person. So humane that she was eligible for the title of Goddess. It’s in the humanity that we find God, and not in the heavens.
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“Another year or two, and I asked my Grandmother one day,
Don’t you remember Nani, the dark plump one?
Who bathed me near the well…?
Grandmother shifted her reading glasses on her nose, and stared at me.
Nani, she asked, who is she?
With that question ended Nani.
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