Padmavati the Harlot and Other Stories

by Kamala Suraiyya Das

One of the pioneers of feminist writing in India, Kamala Das is known for her provocative writing on female sexuality and desire. Padmavati the harlot and other Stories includes some of her very best fiction. In ‘a little kitten’, a newly married woman finds her life turning dull and insipid as the tedium of marriage begins to settle in. An old woman believes she is a princess and is delighted to be courted by three suitors in ‘the princess of avanti’. a man realizes, too late, that he is in love with the woman he is breaking up with in ‘the sea lounge’. in these and other Stories, Kamala Das is bold and unflinching in her exploration of themes such as violence, desire, sex, marriage, family, communalism, and death.
Foreword by jaisurya Das.

Genres: Feminism, Short Stories, Fiction, India

110 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published March 1, 1992

About the author

See also Madhavikutty
Kamala Suraiyya (born Kamala; 31 March 1934 – 31 May 2009), also known by her one-time pen name Madhavikutty and Kamala Das, was an Indian English poet and littérateur and at the same time a leading Malayalam author from Kerala, India. Her popularity in Kerala is based chiefly on her short stories and autobiography, while her oeuvre in English, written under the name Kamala Das, is noted for the poems and explicit autobiography.

Her open and honest treatment of female sexuality, free from any sense of guilt, infused her writing with power, but also marked her as an iconoclast in her generation. On 31 May 2009, aged 75, she died at a hospital in Pune. Das has earned considerable respect in recent years.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[alterego_bookaholic (Upasana Singh) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t think I have read anything that is altogether intimate, opulent, raging, searching & mind numbing as the short stories in this book. The stories will take you on an astounding journey disclosing the different facets of human desire and some cringing reality of the world which unfortunately everyone does not have the luxury to elude from.

“The Princess of Avanti” a short story of three pages was enough to bowl my mind over and I assume anyone reading it will understand why. The desires of human beings which is usually related to as fantasy has no structure, reason or direction. We still hear so many heinous things through various mediums today and it still appalls us, the extent of sinister darkness that lies within people cannot be comprehended and that’s what I could gauge through this tale.

Love & Lust are two sides of the same coin and that’s what is narrated in a very raw, unflinching manner in few stories but “A Little Kitten” was mind-blowing. A newly married couple where the wife’s world revolves around her husband but the marital bliss seems to fade with each passing day after the honeymoon period. What entails is a clash of ego, attention deficit, wandering heart and a reciprocating climax. “A doll for the child prostitute”, “The Sea Lounge”, “The young man with the pitted face’’ and few other stories introduce you to the core of human frailty and at the end of the book they will definitely cling to you for quiet sometime.

Unexpected cliff-hanging moments not a light read which usually short stories are expected to be. I could go on raving about all the 19 stories here even the ones which ends in 2 pages. It maybe brutal but they are palpable to another level and the content is not limited to and might not be for every reader out here, nevertheless I am going to recommend this. Am thrilled with the authors unswerving uncensored narrative and am drawn to read more of her work.

[Megha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd hopefully be able to write about this book when I read it again in the years to come - which I am definitely going to.

Cheers to Subhankar Roy for getting me a copy. I am definitely treasuring this one!

[Reading_ Tamishly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of nineteen short stories by Kamala Das

A book for mature readers

Community riots, abuse, more focused on women/daughters/girls in general

1. Moongphali 4 🌟

2. That Woman 3 🌟

3. The Princess of Avanti 3 🌟

4. The Sea Lounge 5 🌟

5. Padmavati the Harlot 2 🌟

6. Equity Shares 4 🌟

7. The Young Man with the Pitted Face 4 🌟

8. December 5 🌟

9. A Little Kitten 3 🌟

10. Darjeeling 3 🌟

11. The Sign of the Lion 4 🌟

12. Sanatan Choudhuri's Wife 3 🌟

13. The Coroner 3 🌟

14. Iqbal 3 🌟

15. The Tattered Blanket 5 🌟

16. Leukemia 4 🌟

17. A Doll for the Child Prostitute 3 🌟

18. Walls 4 🌟

19. Grandfather 5 🌟

[Jyotsna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good set of short stories revolving around women. Recommend this.

[Chitra Ahanthem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Padmavati the Harlot & Other Stories by Kamala Das is a very slim collection that bursts with 19 heady stories that examine the nature of human relationships in relation to desire, the push and pull of sex as a need over and above humane emotions. The author examines the nature of social order through various social structures like marital relationships and family ties, the predilections of men and women both and how children also become victims in the adult world that they are forced to be part of.

The collection is a good primer for readers who have not read any other works by Kamala Das but works equally well for readers who are familiar with her writings. Her writing is sharp when it needs to be, casually flippant when required, parts written in amused contempt but overall, putting into sharp focus the way social hypocrisy prevails in the name of what must look acceptable while in reality, things are murky and ugly. The first story in the collection is poignant in the way it ties two major violent communal incidents in India: the Partition and the 1984 riots that targeted the Sikhs, ending on a bitter sweet note. 

There are very short stories like 'The Princess of Avanti' that starts on a track that will leave you unprepared for what follows while 'A Doll for the Child Prostitute' is a longer short story that will take readers through a tumult of emotions: from despair to disgust to seeing humanity can and does exist in the most lowly of places where sex is purchased and the bodies of women and children are up for sale. If you are looking for writings by women that look at female agency, social constructs and giving voice to women, this is right up your alley.

[Smriti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obviously well written and so much respect to Kamala Das as a writer. My only gripe would be that a lot of the short stories felt almost incomplete - I craved to know more, what happened next. It was almost like we were shown a vignette and thats it. However, there were many that were sooo well done. She really understood humanity and human nature at its core and wasn't ashamed to show it for what it was.

3.5 stars for me.

[Mantosh Patnaik · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I absolutely loved about this book, is the fact that Kamala Das, keeps her stories like a vase of stem cuttings adorned with thorns, unapologetically. These stories definitely stub your thoughts and conscience and draw blood. They might seem disturbing to some, but they feel lived, taken off the life and experiences of real people and not simply characters from thin air.

[Ruby · Rating 4 out of 5]

One book that kept me awake all night... I asked my sis to keep lights on!!

[Ashok Krishna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heart-wrenching ! :-(

[Nikhil Vishnu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kamala Das never disappoints and this book is no exception.

There is a dish in kerala sadya called "Kurukku kalan". This dish is made out of curd. Every bit of extra water is taken out of curd by cooking it very slow for hours. A tiny drop of well cooked "Kalan" is enough to give you good sour punch in your mouth.

Every story in this book feels like a well cooked "Kalan".

[Anushmita Chakraborty · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Padmavati the Harlot & Other Stories' shines light on new perspectives of family life, prostitution, old age, and the relationship between parent and child.

In the story 'Grandfather', we look at the scene of an old father pleading his daughter to take him back with her. The daughter, bound by her responsibilities and duties to her new family, i.e., her husband and child, sits helpless and muffles her sobs on the edge of her saree. The father pleads and pleads, but the daughter can do nothing. Even when she protests saying that he is her father and she ought to take care of him, her husband revolts stating that he too had a father. When they take leave of the old man, she promises him to come back in June. But the old man stays silent and lets them go without further pleadings. The woman knows in her heart, that he would not make it to June. But she has no option but to leave him there.

Kamala Das explores the darker side of sex, family life and love. She puts men's characters to the test in her stories and puts forward perspectives of diverse women being slighted by men and deprived of freedom in their daily lives. In the story 'A Doll for the Child Prostitute', women are praised for their emotionless demeanor. The less emotional a woman can be, the better she is. Thus, women are depraved of the freedom of expressing emotion.

The books opens new doors for your ways of thinking and makes you feel connected to the lives of all these women.

[Suraj Kumar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spanning just over 100 pages, Padmavati The Harlot and Other Stories brings together myriad of human emotions and feelings. The stories collected here bring forth the different aspects of what it means to be human in a raw and candid manner. Almost all the stories have a feminist undertone, embodied mostly in the characters that are often frustrated from life but still bold, fierce, outspoken and unapologetic. The lives depicted in these stories have had some gains and suffered some losses, and it is through these transactions that Das provides a critique of world that her characters inhabit. This is also Das’s own world and this also our own world.

This anthology is suitable for taking along on a vacation or for a journey, so that you read one story at a time. There are a total of 19 stories in the collection. The ones that stand our for me are “The Princess of Avanti”, “A Little Kitten” and “A Doll for the Child Prostitute”. While I feel that this book is definitely worth a place on your shelf, I did. not enjoy it as much as I had expected, or as other readers have enjoyed.

My Rating: ***(3/5)

[Natasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book left me numb with the depth of raw emotion that Kamala Das could squeeze into stories which were just a couple of pages long. Lust, longing, love. Hope, despair. The sordidness of human experience. Passion, rejection, redemption.
Except "the doll for the child prostitute", the other stories were really short- the story was sketched out, and you were left with a palette of emotions which swirled around your mind after you finished the story.
The title story was the one that left the deepest impact on me. A woman who retained her faith despite being knocked down every time she tried to get up; only to be betrayed again when her faith was at it's strongest.
The complicated love stories of "Iqbal", the stark reality of "moongfali", the self centered protagonist of "the tattered blanket", the heartbreaking "leukemia", the sense of loss and longing of "the sea lodge". Each story is brilliant in its own way.
Certainly a writer I am going to read more of.

[Zuicy Beauty Akoijam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Padmavati the Harlot & Other Stories is an unflinching writing of Kamala Das on female sexuality, desire, violence, marriage, communalism and the suffering of Indian women.
The book is a collection of 19 short stories- short and crisp but will leave you gasping and provoking a lot of questions. My personal favourites amongst the 19 are Padmavati the Harlot, The Princess of Avanti, A Little Kitten , Darjeeling and A Doll for the Child Prostitute.
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In 'Padmavati The Harlot' , the titular story, a middle aged prostitute sells her body to look after her family only to be ostracized by them. She always has wanted to come to the temple to see the Lord, but the 'gods' there treated her no better!
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The story 'A Doll For The Child Prostitute' sheds light on life, struggles and emotions of women at brothel through a 12 year old girl, Rukmini, who is sold by her mother there.
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In the story 'Darjeeling' a young woman had a heart attack and was brought to ICU. When asked by doctor to her husband if she suffered from any mental strain, to it the husband replied that she was not the worrying type and that it was he who did all the worrying at home. This brings to surface the hidden mental health problems women suffer.
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Kamala Das writing is free flowing with intense rawness. But I find few of the stories incomplete and flat. Like in the stories 'A Young Man with the Pitted Face', 'December' ,'That Woman' I wish the author could have drawn and capture more moments to give the stories more life of their own.

[Charvi (Tea with C) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This anthology reads like a collection of random snippets of the human psyche. A tad unsuitably categorised as a collection of short stories - these are not for the emotionally faint hearted nor for those who like closure or adherence to structured prose. Some of these stories read more like poetry, while some like scenes from a short film.
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With a seemingly intentional lack of uniformity in pacing, the vivid recounting keeps you off balance just enough so as to absorb so much from barely two three pages. All stories, but one, are extremely brief but not a single word is wasted or superfluous; not one emotion evoked is predictable. Packed with a variety of thought provoking nudges, the brevity might work for some, leave others craving for more, or both. It left me pleasantly confounded most times.
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If you appreciate the sorcery of good writing, for the sake of the craft, and enjoy quick insights into human nature, with or without context, this will appeal to you. The stories range across themes of feminism, social commentary, desire, violence, death, marriage, family, and other pertinent narratives.

This, for me, was a book I read fast but thought about slowly.

[Bhagyashree]

Women's stories and of human suffering..!

[Deepika · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25⭐

[Akilesh Sridharan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kamala Das (KD) is an exceptional writer of short stories and poems in both English and Malayalam. I was introduced to her through My Story, her memoir, and Aami, the Malayalam biopic, beautifully enacted by Manju Warrier.

Her writings were, and still is, diverse, touching upon the topics of women’s issues, societal disparities, politics, female sexuality, and childcare.

This collection of 19 short stories has a similar trademark treatment from KD, with some short and a few long ones that left a great impact upon reading.

I picked this long-pending short story collection in order to get out of my reading slump and for other reasons, but it proved to be wrong and turned out to be stories of women with great emotional depths from a wide spectrum of societal backgrounds—from a queen to a prostitute to a child in a brothel to a dying woman in her last days.

My favourite story, of course, is the titular story of a harlot who visits a temple to get the blessing of the Lord after so many years but only to be treated for who she is and what her profession is.

The longish story—A Doll for the Child Prostitute—is an arresting one, with such nuanced writing of the life of the pros and the treatment they undergo from the lady boss woman of the brothel, and the lifestyle they live was depicted with such perfection that it makes us squirm to never even dream about the men these women deal with on a daily basis.

Other likeable stories in this collection include Moongphali, a story about Hindu-Sikh riots during Indra’s assassination and how women in the family escape from the killer with the help of an old peanut seller; Sanatan Choudhuri’s Wife, a story about a doubt-mongering husband; The Tattered Blanket, an emotional tale of an old, senile mother missing her only son, who has long forgotten his roots to find his greener pastures; and The Princess of Avanti, yet another peculiar story of a deranged old woman who is abused in a public park by three hooligans taking advantage of her mental instability.

Overall, these stories, at least a few of them, will linger in your mind even after you have finished reading the entire collection. I recommend KD for any beginner who loves poems and stories that are rooted in a feminist angle with strong social commentary.

[Contemporary_literary_threads · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess Kamala Das' works is the right window to look inside the heart of women of the 80s and 90s even in today's day and age; she maintains the sensitivity and sensuality of a woman in a single story, which is outstandingly brilliant. Her stories are victims of the circumstances they're being drawn. There is no outer force that acts like a villain. Instead, her protagonist turns into one. Her flawed characters make us question whether we love or hate them?

In "Padmavati the Harlot and other stories", nineteen stories, an expedition into women's sexuality, desire, freedom and infidelities. Das doesn't shy away or try a sober way to depict themes of sex, marriage, family, communalism and death. She did not bother about the time the stories were published.

Her bite-sized stories like 'Moongphali' set the tension right off of Indira Gandhi's assassination. In 'Sea Lounge', a man realises he is too late in love with the woman he is breaking up with. In 'Princess of Avanti', an elderly woman believes she is a princess and is delighted to be courted by three strange suitors.
In 'Doll for a child prostitute', which is the lengthiest story in this book, an old policeman finally realises he is too old to woo himself with the charms of a brothel.

Kamala Das stories do not shout or raise slogans about feminism, but she draws the picture about it through her characters. On the other hand, many stories in this anthology did not appeal to me. They fell flat in terms of losing the depth of it in translation. Or maybe it is because a few stories were mere an episode and not a complete tale.

But her characters have left an impression on me. I hope to read her long pieces as well.

[Krutika · Rating 4 out of 5]

🌺/ Padmavati the Harlot and Other Stories by Kamala Das

Time and again I come across books that reaffirm the fact that only a woman can write about another one with such precision and depth. When I asked other readers about their favourite short stories, quite a few recommended this particular book and I knew instantly that I'd end up reading it sooner than later. This collection of short stories was originally published the year I was born, 1992 and it somehow still manages to shake the literary world the same even after all these years. Although this was my first time reading Das's writing, it became instantly clear to me that her stories carry a certain amount of authority, demanding the readers to pay their full attention to her words. These 19 stories, although short in nature are capable of leaving behind an impact on the audience. As it did to me.

Kamala Das writes mostly with women at the centre stage, where the characters play different roles, from being fallen, loved, defeated, desired and vicious too. It doesn't take long to understand that Das exposes men of their lustful eyes and demeaning remarks on women. She's unforgiving in certain stories, one being 'A Doll for the Child Prostitute' and the other titles 'The Princess of Avanti', both in which women are misused and ravaged by men. She explores sexuality, and the myriad of emotions that attach themselves to it. Her stories carry different themes, while one speaks of the Anti Sikh Riots in 1984, the very next one addresses the role of a mistress. But the highlight, remains the title story. It's brilliant in the way it is brutal.

Das's short stories are a real treat to those who wish to see her as a writer. Pick this up and you'll not be disappointed.

Thank you for the copy @alephbookco

[Divya Pal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mainly about women on the “fringes of society”, suffering iniquities at the hands of a paternalistic and misogynistic community. The longest story, A Doll for the Child Prostitute is a heart-rending account about children forced into prostitution

But they hardly knew the significance of the sexual act. For them, it came as occasional punishment meted out for some obscure reason. Perhaps the mistake they committed was that they were born as girls in a society that regarded the female as a burden, a liability. The two girls resented the frequent interruptions during their game of squares and even while the coarse men, old enough to be their grandfathers, took pleasure off their young bodies, the children’s minds were away, hopping in the large squares of the chalked diagram on the floor on the porch.

Many are poignant vignettes of the daily drudge

He would sit among them steeped in loneliness. He was like a Ravi Varma model propped against Picasso’s Guernica. There was disharmony

Distressing but immensely readable stories.

[Tiyasha Chaudhury · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I were to write a guide on how to read a compilation of short stories, I would go against my mind and not do it. There is no write or wrong way. Short stories, unlike novels, at times demand morals beyond the morals stated. May demand (mostly do) comprehensive attention deeper than the flow of the storytelling that the author intended.
And, in Padmavati The Harlot and Other Stories authored by Kamala Das, the above things were what the words demanded.

There is no specific pace to the stories, neither are they too descriptive. I had already stated on my Instagram Stories that they stories are not too much or minimalist in details but just enough! And I needed that; as a boost to my reading pace and a boost to my way of reading. I try to become comfortable with the text but this time I was lesser in the analysis and more in the alchemy.

[Monalisa Sethi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely loved all the 19 tales in the book. The exploration of sex, sexuality, gender, and desire, by the author, in the book, is very provocative and humbling at the same time. There were some uneven patches in the plots of a couple of those tales, but "A doll for the child prostitute" and "The Princess of Avanti" are my absolute favourites. The author's writing embosses something very deep and permanent in the reader's heart. I felt as if I were living the lives of her characters through their stories. Excellent storytelling.

[Sabia khan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Padmavati the Harlot & Other Stories

A Beautiful collection of short stories by Kamala Das, a pioneer of Feminism.

The stories are about women's who changed their path leaving behind their husbands, lovers or men's in their lives. A deep sense of realisation, women empowerment, sexual desire, strong emotions and much more about women hits with each story .

[Anuradha Kodali · Rating 5 out of 5]

She kissed my father’s feet twice and left saying that there is nothing of mine remaining here. This is an excerpt from one of the short stories, That Woman. Kamala Das reiterated her literary brilliance and feminist fierceness through these stories while balancing selfishness and compassion as she evokes our conscience to fly off the ground, unbalanced and free.

[Prasanth Sunderasan · Rating 5 out of 5]

These is a story collection in which every story which makes you ponder over what just has happened for quite some time before moving on to the next story. A treasury of really important stories that need to be told and demands to be read.

[Bhuvana Chowdary · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing style was normal. The stories triggered my fight or flight response so hard.