An Introduction - poem by Kamala Das in Bengali

I don't know politics but I know the names Of those in power, and can repeat them like Days of week, or names of months, beginning with Nehru. I amIndian, very brown, born inMalabar, I speak three languages, write in Two, dream in one. Don't write in English, they said, English is Not your mother-tongue. Why not leave Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins, Every one of you? Why not let me speak in Any language I like? The language I speak, Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses All mine, mine alone. It is half English, halfIndian, funny perhaps, but it is honest, It is as human as I am human, don't You see? It voices my joys, my longings, my Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing Is to crows or roaring to the lions, it Is human speech, the speech of the mind that is Here and not there, a mind that sees and hears and Is aware. Not the deaf, blind speech Of trees in storm or of monsoon clouds or of rain or the Incoherent mutterings of the blazing Funeral pyre.