My Story Quotes

“The obsession with sin destroyed the mind of several girls who were at the beginning of their adolescence, normal and easy-going. If there was a dearth of sin, sin at any cost had to be manufactured, because forgiving the sinners was a therapeutic exercise, popular with the rabidly virtuous.”
― Kamala Das, My Story

“No wonder the women of the best Nair families never mentioned sex. It was their principal phobia. They associated it with violence and bloodshed. They had been fed on the stories of Ravana who perished due to his desire for Sita and of Kichaka, who was torn to death by Draupadi's legal husband Bhima only because he coveted her. It was customary for a Nair girl to marry when she was hardly out of her childhood and it was also customary for the much older husband to give her a rude shockby his sexual haste on the wedding night.

The only heroine whose sex life seemed comparatively untumultuous was Radha who waited on the banks of Jamuna for her blue-skinned lover. But she was another's wife and so an adulteress. In the orbit of licit sex, there seemed to be only crudeness and violence.”
― Kamala Das, My Story