Author. Though her overtly erotic poetry, short stories, and novels often defied the conservative conventions of Indian society, she opened the life of her native land to the outside world. Born into a distinguished Hindu literary family (her father was an editor and her mother an award-winning poet), she was raised mostly in Calcutta, and began writing poetry at around age six. Married at 15 to K.M. Das, she wrote short stories in her native Malayalam under the name Madhavikutly; though the open sexual content brought critisism, her work was commercially successful. Around the same time, she began to write poetry in English as K. Das. Her 1964 "The Sirens" earned her the Asian Poetry Prize; her first collection, "Summer In Calcutta" (1965), won the Kent Award, given for Asian writing in English. Probably her best known book was the 1976 "My Story", classified as either a novel or an autobiography, which dealt with the plight of women in a sexist society; the next year, she was to publish "The Alphabet of Lust", dealing with much the same theme. Short-listed for the Nobel Prize in 1984, Das continued to write in both her native language and in English; the 1994 novel "Neermathalam Pootha Kalam" won the Vayalar Award for writing in Malayalam. Disdaining the label "feminist", she nevertheless headed an organization providing legal services and educational assistance to poor women. At her husband's death in 1999, she made a controversial conversion to Islam, and changed her name to Surayya (sometimes rendered "Suraiyya"). Despite the mixed feelings of her readers, her literary output remained well received. Even in death, she continued to defy societal norms; women were allowed to prepare her body, and her burial was attended by a mixed group of prominent Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and Jews.