The Dance of the Eunuchs
Kamala Das is one of the few major voices in Modern Indian Poetry in English. She uses the English language for her poetci purposes. But she is very Indian in her choice of themes, characters, sentiment and locate. Her poem "The Dance of the Eunuchs" deals with the frustrated life of the Eunuchs throughout the world.
The poet observes the dance of the eunuchs and portrays it using simple language their dance reflects the emptyness of their lives, their life is filled with meloncholy. Happiness is something unknown to them.
The eunuchs dance beneath the fiery guimohar tree. Their wide skerts go round and round. Their anklets fingle. Their long braids fly in the air. Their dark eyes flash. They go on dancing till they bleed in their legs.
There are green tatoos on their cheeks. They have worn jasmines in their hair. Some of them have dark complexion and some others have fair complexion. Their voices are harsh. Their song is melancholic, the drums and some others beat their breasts and mourn. They are their in limbs like the half-burnt logs of the funeral pyres. One can see only a drought and a rottanness in each of them.
The dance is wild and it fills with the air with gloom. The crows watch their dance sitting silently on the tree. The children watch it with their eyes widely opened. All are watching the convulsion of the poor creatures.Even nature sympathises with these poor creatures. The sky crackles. There thunder and lightning. It begins to rain. The rain causes bad smell, the smell of the dust and the wine of lizards and mice.
The poet has created a gloomy atmosphere to portray the pathetic icres of the eunuches. No other poet has brought to loghten the life of the eunuchs than Kamaladas
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