In Humanimal, the author looks into the story of Kamala and Amala, living with wolves in India. The author tries to attempt to get the audience to “see” and be present with vivid descriptions of the jungle. The writer says “like a liquid metal — the jungle” (9) and “of the branches where the leaves are (9).” It is to have the character’s come to life, using the descriptions of how wolves would move about. She draws close to an alphabet depicting reality so it can be “exhausted,” asking the reader, from the first paragraph of the book to its end: “Can you see it?” (9). “Humanimal 2,” is written in prose form; each paragraph of the poem is either numbered or lettered. She is trying to get the reader to understand what is happening, but not as if they are reading, but from a first-person point of view.
The author jumps around throughout the writing. She goes to visit the site where Kamala and Amala briefly lived “as girls,” her own father’s journey to England from India, and the ridicule the author witnessed upon coming to England from India. She talks about her father’s childhood in India where “his feet resembled those of a goat’s” and talks about India’s independence in 1947 (35). Kapil is often asked by the Indian locals if she is from “France…”American”… or from “another country,” and feels her difference through skin color and language (18). Although her father went from India to England, she feels like an outsider in her father’s country. The journey her father untook gave the author better opportunities, but left a void in her culturally and historically. She does not understand the culture, but attempts to close the gap by asking a Calcutta native and film student from Paris.
The story tries to bring the audience into the story, imagining how a wolf or wolf-child would see the world. “I am a wolf with my sore hips…she opens up her coat like two wings and I step into her cloth heart, her cleft of matted fur” (11). The author is describing some features of the wolf and her mother to provide a literal image to the audience. The author’s writing merges time, borders, animals, human beings into the storyline of reality. For example, there is a picture of a map which shows an injury in her father’s leg from a street beating (20,21). This merges into a map of India — trying to intersect the two stories into one. It is about the body incorporating borders, the forest and flesh intertwining. Similarly it is about the author trying to create a cohesive narrative utilizing different time periods and different characters.
The book’s genre is difficult to understand. “The film-makers…hire the local folkloric theater…to re-enact the capture of a girl by a wolf” (29). The author is visiting the jungle and is using a local theater group to tell the story of how the girls were captured and then raised by wolves. It is a comparison of wolves to humans and the many similarities and differences that come in between the life of animals and the life of humans. The author notes: “chronologies only record the bad days, the attempted escapes” (13). Kapil is saying it is hard for her to imagine the retrieval of the girls, as stories only record the attempted escapes. The author tries to tell the audience about “this is corrective therapy; the fascia hardening over a lifetime then split in order to reset it” (14) indicating the hardships for the girls to return to being “girls”. It speaks of the transformation from animals back to humans and the restorative power of physical therapy.
The story claims that the two girls were found by a man named Joseph who found them in a cave and how he tried to bring them back from the wild life to the real world now, but it didn’t work. Joseph killed the wolf and gave the two girls human food, but they declined to take it because they were so used to living with the wolves.
Questions:
- Why do you think the author chooses to write the poem in prose form?
- The poet tells the audience about some features of a wolf, how they walk, how there fur is, and where they sleep. If there was one characteristic of a wolf you could obtain — what would it be? Why?
- How do you think the poet’s father’s journey has shaped the poet’s outlook of the world and India in general? Does she expect to feel more welcomed?
