Nissim Ezekiel: Bijay Kant Dubey

 I took her to a cinema, we saw

The lovers kiss, we saw the jealous man

With subtle comradeship upset their plan

And how their love compelled him to withdraw.

----Nissim Ezekiel in the poem ‘An Affair’ from A Time To Change collection

(Nissim Ezekiel, Collected Poems, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, Third impression, 2007, p. 11)

Between the acts of wedded love

A quieter passion flows,

Which keeps the nuptial pattern firm

As passion comes and goes,

And in the soil of wedded love

Rears a white rose.

----In the poem ‘Marriage Poem’ taken from Sixty Poems collection

(Ibid, p.46)

People have discussed Nissim Ezekiel (1924-2004) in their own way, taking his poetry from the first modern poet point of view, making his tryst with destiny in the post-independence period, calling him the beginner of modernism, though there is nothing like that as because K.R.Srinivasa Iyengar himself refers to as one of the new poets and Nissim has been included in ‘The New Poets’ chapter of Indian Writing in English, taking together Shahid Suhrawardy, Manjeri S.Isvaran, P.R.Kaikini, Krishan Shungloo and others even before him. In the beginning, he too like Lal and others used to send poems to C.R.Mandy as for giving a breakthrough in the issues of the Illustarted Weekly of India, which the editor reported to Iyengar by saying that he felt corroded with the bad quality of the verses written by the Indians, but had been still hopeful of getting a talent. Even before Nissim there had been Tagore, Aurobindo and Harindrananth to show the traits of modernism. Apart from them, some were there to make us felt their presence. If we go through the texts of the 1960’s, they will themselves speak of the position. Indian English poetry then had been nowhere. Just the people used to read them in the literary essays section and we used to waver between Indo-Anglian or Indo-Anglican. If we turn over the older syllabuses, we shall come to mark. M.K.Naik’s A History of Indian English Literature itself appeared in 1980 and the first prize ever to an Indian English poet went to Jayanta Mahapatra as for Relationship in 1980. Nissim too had been a writer of some middle order, but evolved in due course of time. It is also true side by side that journalism kept him alive and he felt stimulated from time to time as for being a Bomabayan. Even after the Nobel to Tagore, the men on the syllabus committee for English in different universities wavered in prescribing the poems from Gitanjali to M.A. students, barring sporadic and stray instances. Virtually, from the eighties or the nineties, we have started to keep it going. Something it has been done quite under the advice and suggestion given by the UGC, its peer teams and committees.

Several things have gone into the making of Nissim Ezekiel the poet and his growth and development as a writer of Indian verse. The first is he received his education from a convent school which he speaks of and later on moved to England for a brief stay and returned back to as it happened with R.Parthasarathy. Secondly, he had been a modern man, a Bombayan who grew up in the negation of Aurobindo and his trends. Thirdly, he was a teacher of Bombay University. Fourthly, a freelancer he was and an editor of literary journals. But no other poet is questioned, interrogated so much as he is in his delineation, picturisation and perusal of India, Indian scenes, sites and landscapes. This is as because he fails to understand the myth and psyche of mother India, just views her from a distance, like an alien insider with his outsiderish feeling and emotion. The main thing of being aloof or separated from is his being a Maharashtrian Jew. He has nothing to do with Indian philosohy, spirituality, religion, ethics, morality and metaphysics. The poet as a modern man of the city talks of love marriage, tea parties, honeymoon, love affairs, picnics, outings, valedictions and so on. Outwardly, he appears to be modern, frank and free, but is conservative and orthodox.

There were poets even before Nissim Ezekiel and the tradition has been continuing since, not from him. Think of the time when Ezekiel was not. Just suppose it, feel the vacuum. Many used to write definitely, but dared not publish, as an Indian can be a scholar of English but can never be a Shakespeare, similarly an Englishman can be a scholar of Hindi but can never be a Soor or Tulsi, used to hold true. One should write in one’s own mother tongue? Why to choose the foreign language as the medium of expression? An English woman in a sari used to click before. Even Indian English poetry passed through different tests and ordeals, should it be called Anglo-Indian, Indo-Anglican, Indo-Anglian, Indian poetry in English or Indian English poetry? People debated and discussed over, should the Indians write in English? Finally, the theme of Indianness, a term of some larger connotation came to rescue it. Such a thing was asked in connection with Ezekiel as he had had nothing to do with Indian thought, culture, tradition and philosophy; spirituality, metaphysics and theology. Nissim himself refutes the poetry of Aurobindo and calls himself a convent educated boy writing in English.

On finding none around to publish the books, P.Lal and his friends founded the Writers’ Workshop, Calcutta. Nissim too got the support and benefit from the establishment. A poet of the Bombayan circle of critics, he has definitely got the support of the people otherwise he would not have scaled what we we presume it today. Even in Advanced Literary Essays (Prakash Book Depot, Bareilly, 1961) by Prof.J.N.Mundra and Prof.C.L.Sahni and Quintessence of Literary Essays by W.R.Goodman (Doaba House, New Delhi 1968), we do not find the names of Nissim, Kamala, Jayanta, Ramanujan, Adil and Daruwalla. In Mundra’s book, one can see the names of B.Rajan, Krishan Shungloo, Subho Tagore, Sudhindranath Dutt, V.N.Bhushan, Cyril Modak, Nilima Devi and Adi K. Sett as new poets. In the anthology of poetry, The Golden Treasury of Indo-Anglian Poetry, published from Sahitya Akademi in 1970, Prof. V.K.Gokak presents the poets on a broader scale rather than concentrating on him merely as the harbinger of modernism in Indian English poetry.

Nissim is a poet of the urban space, modern city life and thought-content. A modern hollow man, he can relate to in that way quite easily. Just love and human relationship form the poetic crux of his story. To laugh at, caricature and joke is the job of the poet and he chuckles merely. A faded romantic, he is not so colourful. He has the desire within to fall in love, but draws the steps back too, as societal rigidity and community obligation continue to nourish him otherwise. A Jew he cannot change himself rather than adhering to it, never can imagine of mixing as the ghettos continue to bind him. He beats the band of love-mariage, but consummates it not and he marries as per arranged lines. India too had been in search of modern poets and we got it in their voices. But modernism is not so easy to be delved deep, as because it comes not poetically, but appliances, apparatuses, comforts, experiences, discoveries, inventions, medicines, fashions, designs, spirits and times too have something to say to and to add to. Logic, reason, fact and fiction have dispelled the darkness within. Humanism, liberalism and development too have the stories to tell them. It has definitely taken time in making the people modern one by one.

If one goes through the poems of Nissim Ezekiel, one may come to mark the influences of the English poets which he is so heavily under, as for example the Elizabethan sonneteers and lyric writers, the metaphysicals, the romantics, the Victorians and the moderns may be referred to. Thomas Wyatt, Michael Drayton, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, etc. are some of them whose influences can be definitely felt and marked upon his poetry. The influence of Andrew Marvell, John Milton, George Herbert, John Donne and others can be marked in his psalms. His conversational style has something to owe to T.S.Eliot and Walt Whitman, but his caricature takes to a different plane. The grammar of poesy is certainly not the chief priority of the poet as he intends it not on dabbling in rhetoric and prosody. He just goes on putting them in a free-flowing verse.

In the fifities, he started to publish, but that could not make a way so easily and he took time in growing up, getting famed. As a poet, he went on evolving and substantiating his stance as because had not been so prolific as we think think of now. Ones or twos added to his poetic corpus. He was definitely not a classicist, scholarly in his write-up, but a modern moving along modern life and culture, city living and urbanity, keeping pace with and this added to his corpus, benefited him in a befitting way. Man and his manners, modern life and society, thought and culture had been the topic of his perusal and he perused that too. Irony was his forte; humour the chief property and he continued to regale with these. The India of rural spaces and scapes, the hamlets dark, thinly populated and scattered across a vast stretch of the land, dotting it with their own solitude and away from being human haunt could not draw his pen towards and he felt helpless in taking to. He was blind to the treasure trove of India, its ancient temples and rich legacy of the land, Indian heritage and culture. We often question with regard to him, how far Indian he is and the quest for identity leaves him not behind. He is no doubt a peculiar type of poet, commemorative of private and personal ethics and reflection.

There is nothing as that to look for sublimity in him. The cinema hall, the theatre, the park, the airport, the dockyard, the picnic spot, the restaurant, the salon, the club and the shopping complex, this is the hub of his city-centric poetry. A poet of Bombay, the ever growing city with the pace of time, the metropolitan to the mega city, engages him. He is a poet of birthday gifts, marriage parties, love letters and goodbye parties. Please, thank you, good morning, good evening, good night, kindly, bye-bye, ta-ta, see you again, etc. are the things of his etiquette and mannerism. The poet as an observer likes to visit the art galleries, put on display and there he may view the pregnant woman seeing the nudes and feeling ashamed of; in the cinema hall, he will like to propose before, but faltering to kiss and at the hotel the semi-nude of the Cuban dancer will come to the rescue of his delight. I love you, I like you, these are the terms recurring in variety and the poet seems to be inclined after. Valentine cards and roses, bouquets of flowers, new year greeting cards, wedding bells jingling and he going with the gifts, all these things lie in muted well. The boyfriend, the girlfriend and the love story, a quest after beauty, an inclination for and infatuation with, the revellings into the realms of fancy and imagination add to his poetic dimension. The best of the hotels and the hostels he seeks to derive from and to give to. An art critic, he can apply modern art to poetry writing.

In the poem, A Woman Obseved, which happens to be in The Exact Name, he pictures a pregnant woman viewing the nudes at the art gallery:

I watch her sadly as

she leaves the place, my eyes

embracing all that sensual

movement bursting through the dress.

(Collected Poems, ibid, p.140)

Christopher Marlowe’s The Passionate Shepherd To His Love, Edmund Spenser’s One Day I Wrote Her Name, Sir Philip Sidney’s Loving in Truth, Sir Thomas Wyatt’s And Wilt Thou Leave Me Thus? and Forget Not Yet , Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress, John Donne’s The Sun Rising, etc. seem to take the canvas away from him and he dwells far, into the realms of love and its dreams and promises.

Holding the tongue in cheek, Nissim chuckles, never to let them into guffaws, just keeps beaming with joy, discerning it all, really a critical person. Maybe it that he is not scholastic, pedantic, classical and great from the old and medieval point of view, but is definitely a great poet, a classical romantic he is no doubt, if to review that from a different perspective of delving. The things which are easily accessible in the English poets are predominant in him and he excels in assimilating them. A romantic poet he is, but differently, without a deceptive appearance. Outwardly, he appears to be ludicrous, humorous, ironical and satiric, pontifical and hypocritical, but from the inward within of his, he is but highly philosophical and metaphysical. It is difficult to judge a talent like that of Ezekiel as because sometimes he appears to be too much trite and hackneyed, but is not so at all.

Sometimes the ordariness of expression takes us aback, sometimes the irony of conversational English punctuated by a foreign learner’s desire to learn and practice spoken English, which is but ludicrous English, one committing mistakes to be proficient in. Such a thing Somerset Maugham too speaks about in his prose-piece, Learning to Write. Several stenos and clerks too turn into knowledgeable persons in the long run. Many lawyers too without having a base in English learn to pefect it in the end. Too much erring and instead of it, the forcible continuation too teaches us awkwardly to be dextetous. Nissim should also take a note of it that the geography department teacher’s somehow carried on English is just the one side of the picture while on the other many of our English tachers fail to deliver in English, speak hesitatingly, haltingly, who later on may take over as or turn into university heads and good professors of English, guides and resource persons.

Nissim’s poetry is an exercise in spoken English, one practising, taking the tips to learn it, one following how do the people use and apply it and that too where in India. English is used in getting the cases and complaints lodged; the diaries being entered into at the police station and they writing in their own way, whatever pidgin-English coming into the mind, the policemen entering into, erring to perfect it. The school, the college, the court campus and all other offices are the places where it is applied in. Some trying to be oversmart too like to converse in English. To use a few English words once was a matter of pride. Even the illiterate villagers used to appreciate and talk of. Even the illiterate peons of the convent schools too in the long run develop their common sense as for understanding the speech. Just through the patriot and his usage of English, Nissim is caricaturing the monkeyish disciples of the iconic, father-figure, Mahatma Gandhi. The British prisoners, but our freedom fighters, in their aping of Gandhi and Gandhism, sometimes seem to have befooled. Some of them had not been freedom fighters, but turned they into as for pension. Some of them were very blunt and were lathi-wielding. Had they been not aggressive, the English too would not have left, is also the other side of the truth. Specially, the half-wits, the half-learned fellows are the butts of his humour. While discussing Nissim’s poems centring round the half-learned people’s English, it comes to the fore, the little-read fathers-in-law taking the interview of the simple and rural girls, asking them, what’s your father’s name, the composition of tea-making and others to be responded back in broken English. Sometimes even the street roamers and loafers, who do not like to read and write, but go on roaming, passing time and spending father’s money, too like to perform well, starting their career from the profession of a salesman or a business executive, an agent of a company or a medical representative.

While reading the poem, Marriage, several things come to the mind’s plane, as such, what is love, what is marriage and what the workings of these. Perhaps love does not remain the same love started earlier. Sacred and sacrosanct love, promised with never to part ways, gets care-worn, anxiety-ridden in due course of time and its duration. Situations and circumstances perturb and perplex it. Human lust and greed unquenchable and hankering after more, propelled by ever changing Nature, seem to take to its own recourse. Similar is the case with husband and wife, lover and beloved, bride and bridegroom. In the sensual and sensuous pleasures of man, lie in the stories of man’s temptation and fall from heaven and Cain’s mark. For sometime, one may feel blissful, but the things which go on affecting will continue to work for fissure and fission and this is the way of the world and of man. Man will definitely get lured towards Eve; they will take the forbidden fruit and be expelled from the garden of bliss and paradise. What Nissim here seeks to say is the temptation for gold, wine and beauty. Nissim’s poem Marriage is almost like Joyce’s sketch, Araby. Something of the daydreaming of Lamb’s Dream Children is here. Just like a newly modern boy, as Gandhiji once used to copy the English in dress, manner and etiquette, Nissim too tries to do that. There is a fascination for Christian life and love, their attitude and manner. His phraseology actually moves around love affair, honeymoon, birthday party and a visit to the cinema hall. Once upon a time people used to rush in to the cinema halls and many a love-story used to culminate and coincide with thereon. Many a college girl, in a tabooed society of ours, used to meet under the pretext of exchanging books and notes. Nissim as a poet too is a lover of this type who will like to visit the cinema hall to share the unsaid feelings of the heart. He just keeps dreaming about love-affair, but can never consummate it.

In the poem, The Couple, the lover appears wonderful to the beloved and vice versa which is no doubt a novel expression to take us by storm. Both of them remain glued to each other, which is but magnetic attraction. Nissim as a modern age city boy has the idea of all that it happens in love. The co-educational convent schools are the best place to study and experience it. Apart from it, a Bombayan he has experience of making love in the park and the garden. Valentine’s Day is specific in this regard, but who will be the Valentine of Nissim?

The first stanza from The Couple may be quoted to illustrate the point:

Indolence and arrogance

were rooted in her primal will,

a woman to fear, not to love,

yet he made love to her

(who can say he loved her?)

and damn the consequences.

(Vilas Sarang, Edited by, Indian English Poetry Since 1950: An Anthology, Disha Books, Orient Longman, Hyderabad, Reprinted 2007, p.44)

The last stanza of the poem throws the light on the poem:

To love her was impossible,

to abandon her unthinkable.

He had to make love to her,

a charade of passion and possession

in which some truth was found in her.

(Ibid, p.44)

By calling her wonderful, Nissim just wants to make her puff with pride and to look back in amazement when the bird gets netted or trapped. The poet has overpraised her to win over and this none can do but a modern like Nissim himself. Both of them keep saying to each other, the beloved hearing it and smiling, which God knows it, who is actually wonderful? One can learn the tactics of love-making from him. How clever is he!

Nissim is a master poet of spoken English and its nuances, specially Indian English speech and accent is the thing of his delineation and he seeks to derive from it, taking it to be the matter of poetry. It is a mistake with the Indians that they like to master grammar rather than taking exercises in language. Such a tendency has been continuing from Panini and his texts. A strict grammarian cannot be a good literary man.

In the poem, which he is so acclaimed for, namely Night of The Scorpion, the poet recrerates an Indian scene, where his mother stung by a scorpion lies unconscious and writhing in pain and burning sensation. The poet sees her so helpless before together with the coming and going peasants. The village folks with the lamps burning dimly and their shadows cast before and the steady rains continuing in for sometime more picture the canvas of the poem. The incessant rains perhaps have forced the scorpion to crawl beneath a knapsack and taking a chance bit it. People search for the creature, but they fail to trace. This is as usual which takes place in every village home.

After the bite, the exorcists and herbalists make a way into the scene. With the village folks in the background as the audience, the mother at the centre of all activity, the herbalist applies the herbal paste to chill and comfort the bite. The priestly men try to tame the poison through mantric incantation while his father, a sceptic and a rationalist applies the paraffin oil and gives a lit match stick to it. The flames feed upon for a while. In the midst of all this, one can overhear the people talking of bhoga, we mean suffering. Such a thing it had been in her previous karma and now it has got lessened. Someone ends on a note of benediction that it is a harbinger of the lessening of sin if be any in the next birth. There is an Indian calculation of past karma and dharma in Night of The Scorpion poem and here one can find it how he is at home in the use of indirect Indianness.

Nissim as an observer holds a low profile, he goes on marking all this with his mother at the centre of all that hectic activity and the specialists treating in their own way and the well-wishers and neighbours wishing Godspeed and recovery while the villain at large, we mean the wicked scorpion with the diabolic tail, the catalist of all that absconding, whom the curses even cannot curse. Nissim as a Jewish man marks the Indian scene and happening in the aftermath of a scorpion bite in the poem, Night of The Scorpion.

In the poem, Background, Casually, the poet in a funny way tries to introduce himself, by calling, how ‘A poet-rascal-clown was born’, one of lean and thin structure, he makes a way through the diverse majority communities, his being a mugging Jew, whom the Christians will take otherwise, the Hindus in their own. As a boy, he failed to spin a top, nor could he fly the kites so smoothly. This brings enough joy for him to feel, be it the developed or undeveloped place, he is happy to be where he is now.

One from from Shanwar Teli caste, Saturday oil-presser caste, his experience tells a different tale, how did the hooded bullocks make the rounds as for crushing seeds for bread. Their ancestors took to oil pressing soon after their arrival in India. A rabbi-saint, instead of his wish or trial, he can never be, he is what he ahd to be. Nissim Ezekiel’s Background, Casually is more powerful and beautiful than that of Kamala Das’ An Introduction. To turn and twist and present the things is the job of Nissim and he does it so eloquently. To take the matters lightly and jocularly and to regale and to recreate is his poetic art, craft and technique.

Nissim seems to be serving, offering Indian chutney or European sauce and this can be felt in his poem Goodbye Party For Miss Pushpa T. S., as it is in other poems too. God knows, who is this Pushpa? Is she a sister or a girl of acquaintance in disguise? Nissim all the time keeps us in the dark with regard to identity, letting it go, changing the topic quite often to bemuse us. Here, just using coming, going, eating or sleeping, he recreates the whole scene. Pushpa is going to foreign and he is there to see her off. Pushpa is smiling and smiling to hear the English of Nissim as and when he says it that there is not only external sweetness in her, but some internal sweetness too is therein. We do not know it if the others have found or not, but he is good at pumping and puncturing. He can make one climb the palm tree and drink juice and at the same time has the guts of cutting the tree underneath. The juice-taker will come to feel what lies in the pleasure of taking at the cost of excitement.

To read Nissim Ezekiel is to smile sometimes, burst into a laughter all alone. Peculiar things he says them in a peculiar and humourous way. There is of course something of a commentator or an advertiser or an anchorman in him; an announcer he can recreate us entertainingly. Even if one asks him to pray or keep silence for a few moments by closing the eyes, he cannot keep still rather will make you burst into a laughter through his antics and activities.

The conservative husbands of the purdahwalli wives will themselves will love to read him if they get a chance to go through his verses, as for example, the poem entitled In India, taken from The Exact Name :

The wives of India sit apart.

They do not drink,

they do not talk,

of course, they do not kiss.

The men are quite at home

among the foreign styles

(what fun the flirting is!)

I myself, decorously,

press a thigh or two in sly innocence.

The party is a great success.

( Collected Poems, p.133)

To read Nissim Ezekiel is to come to feel it that he is not a yogi, but a bhogi and whoever claims it to be solely, it is really difficult to be. God knows, who is whose guru? Sometimes even the saints fail to keep themselves in control; we mean the pseudo-sadhus and their leaked in stories of life. In one poem, the poet sees the world full of girls and poetry as the language of lovers and he finding it in his prosaic poetry and the poem is none but The Language of Lovers for our kind pereusal. Under the pretext of putting the words through the mouth of a foolish critic, he clears the things of his heart tactically. The Egoists’ Prayers even twist and turn the dialogues taking place between him and God and it is quite clear that he can never be devout and dutiful as the personal works are too many to devote to and he is definitely not one among the chosen few to be mindful of his duties.

The Patriot: Nissim Ezekiel

 By: Bijay Kant Dubey

Understanding Gandhi and Gandhigiri, What Is It Gandhism And Gandhianness: A Study In Nissim Ezekiel’s The Patriot (A Post-truth Evaluation)

I am standing for peace and non-violence.

Why world is fighting fighting

Why all people of world

Are not following Mahatma Gandhi,

I am simply not understanding.

Ancient Indian Wisdom is 100% correct,

I should say even 200% correct,

But modern generation is neglecting -

Too much going for fashion and foreign thing.

Other day I'm reading newspaper

(Every day I'm reading Times of India

To improve my English Language)

How one goonda fellow

Threw stone at Indirabehn.

Must be student unrest fellow, I am thinking.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, I am saying (to myself)

Lend me the ears.

Everything is coming -

Regeneration, Remuneration, Contraception.

Be patiently, brothers and sisters.

You want one glass lassi?

Very good for digestion.

With little salt, lovely drink,

Better than wine;

Not that I am ever tasting the wine.

I'm the total teetotaller, completely total,

But I say

Wine is for the drunkards only.

What you think of prospects of world peace?

Pakistan behaving like this,

China behaving like that,

It is making me really sad, I am telling you.

Really, most harassing me.

All men are brothers, no?

In India also

Gujaratis, Maharashtrians, Hindiwallahs

All brothers -

Though some are having funny habits.

Still, you tolerate me,

I tolerate you,

One day Ram Rajya is surely coming.

You are going?

But you will visit again

Any time, any day,

I am not believing in ceremony

Always I am enjoying your company.

The Patriot is one of those poems of Nissim Ezekiel which remind us of the use and application of wit, humour and irony, fun, pun and caricature as he does in his other poems in Background Casually, Goodbye Party For Miss Pushpa T.S., The Railway Clerk, The Professor and so on other than Marriage, Enterprise and Philosophy where the moral sense is so strong writing with a didactic purpose to instruct and impart. But in the poems dealing with the sense of humour and irony, he has tried to take up conversational English as the medium of his expression as Kipling has, Khushwant Singh too has. Here the patriot is not the Irish ragged man as the patriot of Lady Gregory in The Rising of The Moon one-act play nor the loyal Irish sergeant working for the British who too is not less than in duty and loyalties.

Let us see who is loyal to whom and working under whose obligation? Whose allegiance where is it? What it colonial, post-colonial. How the pre-Gandhian, the post-Gandhian stages? How was the freedom struggle and who fought for whom?

If he was a freedom fighter for us, he was but a rebel, a revolutionary in the eyes of the British. A Gandhian shisya, he was no doubt a follower of Gandhi and Gandhian principles rather than knowing other political gurus morally so sound.

So a Gandhian patriot, freedom fighter, an Indian patriot, freedom fighter here is the point of deliberation and the poet has chosen him for delving deeply into the freedom stories. If to see it differently, Gandhian politics too is not less than a spectacle so theatrical to be staged and enacted. Gandhian drama is no less than a romance where the followers and the old man with the danda and the charkha enacted it well. Something was definitely serious and something was definitely amusing. Let us see in the age of post-truth evaluation. Let us see the poem colonizing and de-colonizing the spirit. Let us read it from the insider and the outsider points of view as Nissim Ezekiel too was not an Indian, but an alien insider, a Jew living in India just like the British.

Who is what fighter time will say that. When they fought for freedom, the time had been of theirs. But when India became free, India switched it from Gandhi to Nehru and the power was transferred. Gandhi too did not take the responsibility of leading the nation, left it into the hands of Nehru willing to sit on chair from the beginning. It fell into our duty to take the nation as we liked it to re-build.

The Patriot is a portrait of an Indian patriot, a freedom fighter, a Gandhian follower into the footsteps of Gandhi, a Ram-bhakta hanuman, one going by the Gandhian principles as shown thorough the emblem, the replica, Gandhiji ke tin bandar, bura mat dekho, bur mat kaho, bura mat shuno.

In the poem The Patriot we see the criticism of Gandhi, Gandhism and Gandhian followers. What do the critics say, the critics of Gandhi say it in his life-time, how do they say it now too as everything is not in praise. Kabir too talks of keeping a critic stationed in a cottage specially built and thatched for him in the courtyard of his house. Do not be upset with. Let us see what does a humorist also say it about? The humorist too has a say and style of his own as we cannot glue to ideals and values all the time. Can we remain serious for all the time? Jokes, humours, laughters and comics too have warmth of their own. We need to laugh too, we need to be happy sometimes offloading the load and taxation of day-to-day life, shrugging off the monotony and drudgery as we feel it in common life.

Do the look-alike people not give the poses and postures of Gandhi on the eve of Gandhi Jayanti? Some children too part like little Gandhijis with the dhoti, lathi and specs. And from Gandhi we have found it Gandhigiri as a modern idiom. So, the matter keeps turning around in this way or that way. If we go by Sudhir Kakar, he will definitely psycho-analyse Gandhi and his relations going by Freud and Jung. Orwell too has talked of him critically s well as logically the secret of his gat milk.

The Gandhian mass of that time was but a superstitious mass, a casteist mass believing in karma-dharma, Rahu-Kertu and fate-lines totally new to logic and reasoning and the India they lived in was a slumbering nation. Superstitions used to do the rounds combined with racism, ethnic divide, casteism, fatalism, inaction, lethargy, illiteracy, poverty, hunger, underclothing, food problem, living below the poverty line. Pundits, astrologers and palmists, oracle-hearers, soothsayers and fortune-tellers pleased them all.

Side by side it is also a fact that Nissim Ezekiel is but an alien insider and he has seen India just as a foreigner sees India, but all the foreigners are not alike too. A Jew he went by his urbanity and modernity and from modern city-living he viewed it all. He was conservative and orthodox as he came not to feel it India, ancient Indian wisdom and thought so heartily and remained a minority man unto the end in some respect although he taught us to be modern and up-to-date.

Do the sculptors not make the busts and torsos of Gandhi? They too study it well before carving, chiselling the sculptures. Do the costume-directors not think of cloth and dressing before giving a look to the troupes? Everyone has got an art of own. Had the British been otherwise, they would have eliminated Gandhi, but they too used to love and like him whatever say we about their suppression and oppression. India too was a White man’s burden is nothing to be shrugged off and denied; its poverty and backwardness as it had regressed during the medieval age while on the other hand they also liked it not to settle here and to accept it as their own motherland.

The patriot says it in the poem that he is all for Gandhism, Gandhian principles and philosophy. He abides by the precepts and lessons given by him; what the master has about non-violence,  peace and truth, ahimsha, shantih and satya and he cannot understand why are there so much troubles in the world, why does the world keep fighting in between, what the causes of enmity and tussle. Why do they not look into the matter, come to the table and settle it amicably as per the Gandhian philosophy and politics? Why do they not derive from him as his is ancient wisdom what he has from Indian thought and tradition. Indian wisdom is hundred percent correct. What to say about hundred, it is even more than, two hundred percent correct. But the modern generation is completely unaware of that as they like to go matter the European manner and style, fashion and clothing avoiding the native, swadeshi and khadi things, neglecting Bhartiyata. Take it my example, I keep reading the Times of India daily as for to improve my English, the patriot puts it before. Why do they not do it? When will their English be strong? What he knows it, the present generation knows it not. The patriot is also sorry to say how someone has hurled a stone on Indira Behan. Is it correct to hurl? This is not the proper way of showing discontent. They are but miscreants, rogues; goons and goondaism is not the all. We too understand it that the age is changing, the times are also not so. They are in the need of job and employment. Student unrest must be redressed. Generation, regeneration, these are bound to go by and we cannot check the flux of time. In order to be cool and healthy, we must take lassi rather than wine which but many have become addicted to which is but a perverse habit we have lapsed into. We must abstain from. Wine is for the drunkards, not for the common people. We are all one, the Maharashtrians, the Gujaratis and the Hindiwallahs. We are brothers and sisters, as you might heard, mere bhayion aur behano, a leader addressing with all that in the likewise manner. Why do China and Pakistan behave like this? Why are they so disturbing? This is just by the way he said all that. There is nothing to worry. The funny things must be said in the funniest way and he has all that just by the way. When will the Ram Rajya come? This is the last wish to see. When will the heaven come upon the earth and the men be executing their works sinlessly? Will he able to live up to see or not, God knows it, the Almighty, who is above and over us can say it all.

The Patriot is a caricature of Indian English as well as the patriot the protagonist or spokesman under our discussion. How do we speak English as ours is Hindustani English, how do we tag and join to express with inadequate vocabulary and syntax. We labour for an expression as English is not our tongue.

The patriot is not a rugged Irish freedom fighter, but an Indian Gandhian in his attire and with a danda striding from Dandi March to the attending of the Round Table Conference, but later on drawing pension too for being a fighter and one will naturally if one grows old and runs out of time. How long will philosophy and principle keep serving one if one is in old age and harness?

The man who is not a Gandhi critic, a Gandhist or a lover of Gandhian way and art of living may not take to the criticism of it. The poem entitled The Patriot is as such if we sit to evaluate and assess it in the right perspective it is but a poem of Gandhi and Gandhism, Gandhian studies and Gandhian philosophy. The point may be it that Nissim a modern boy has tried to understand Gandhism in his modern way following the ironical, jocular technique. Only the pure Gandhists will explain Gandhi this too cannot be. The poet here through the freedom fighter, the patriot is saying the things of his heart and mind, making it a criticism of the followers. Did Subhas Chandra Bose not differ with Gandhi? Subhas was a Shakta as he was from whereas Gandhi adhered to the Vaishnava tradition and believe you it or not, the diet too plays a role in giving to temperament. It was a mistake of Gandhi he sided with Nehru rather than Bose. But Bose too was of the rebellious temperament whereas Gandhi was simple and lowly. One may question definitely after going through the whole panorama whether there leaders before Gandhi. One doubt if Gandhism was a drama, even though not, it seemed to be to some extent, the call given and the people following in large numbers, taking to as the Bible’s words. Sometimes we do not like it the overacting of Gandhi, the inspector came, asked to write and the teacher told him to copy from, but he did not which but does not appeal to as one should show one too much. On this point we may question, why did you make the teacher trapped and held guilty? Why did Gandhi not study it well before coming to class? The dichotomy to feel, was Gandhi a politician or was he a saint, what was he?  Was it not pagletgiri to stay half-clothed during the winter shivering with cold, a gimmick in itself? But in pagletgirti lies it Gandhigiri, the tenacity to do it anyhow; the power of endurance and sustenance very important for survival strategies and struggle for existence.

 

Frankly speaking, I too had the chances of meeting and sharing with the freedom fighters, but could not adjust with them, the old trendy Indian thoughts. Some of them were really Gandhians, but many of them illiterate and foolish, stubborn and obstinate. Needless to say a few of them appeared to be hypocritical and pontifical. But some of them were no doubt gentle and noble.

Is Gandhism for the Gandhian scholars or for all? Anybody can give opinion on it as I think it so. Let them also see who want to criticize him, make a fresh evaluation of his. What is in a name? What in the image iconic or rudimentary? The iconography of Gandhi, how to idolize it, Gandhi as in a book of biography and life stories; Gandhi in the autobiography? Gandhi was not Gandhi, but it was the followers who made him great. Had the critics been not, could he have been Gandhi, what we see him today? Let the humorist too imitate him and emulate him. Did he not the English ways and manners of life when he was in England? Gandhi in dhoti and shawl and specs is it not all. There was a Gandhi dressed like an Englishman in the coat and the pants of the earlier stages which but we have forgotten it, the husband of Kasturba Gandhi.

What is patriotism? Who is a patriot? Does the definition of it change it too from time to time? If a freedom fighter outlives, how will the people view him? The poem is a discussion on patriotism and leader worship.

Once Gandhi used to defend the people in South Africa as a lawyer and had been connected with in many ways. Now when the statue has been removed from Ghana Univ. campus, the time too has come for our arguments instead of the fact that time keeps positioning and repositioning things whatever be our proposition or disposition.

Nissim Ezekiel too would have been aware of the strength and robust physique of the Indian patriots who would have driven the British from just with the body built from taking milk, ghee, mattha, sherbet and lassi and the Indian danda in hands. It is also a fact some of them very rural, blunt and litigant beyond doubt. Suppose if give you wine to him you might have to take a danda which Nissim knows it not. The poet speaks about Indirabehn but we are not sure of what sort of sister is it Miss Pushpa whom he is going to bid goodbye and to see her off at the airport.

Let us see how the patriot not, but Nissim Ezekiel in the disguise of him begins the dialogue:

I am standing for peace and non-violence.

Why world is fighting fighting

Why all people of world

Are not following Mahatma Gandhi,

I am simply not understanding.

Ancient Indian Wisdom is 100% correct,

I should say even 200% correct,

The conversation replete with Indianness makes us burst into laughter and we cannot hold ourselves from laughing. We smile to read the lines and hear the patriot speaking. This is how the Indians talk; how they speak in English laboriously.

Let us see what the patriot feels about the modern generation:

But modern generation is neglecting -

Too much going for fashion and foreign thing.

Other day I'm reading newspaper

(Every day I'm reading Times of India

To improve my English Language)

How one goonda fellow

Threw stone at Indirabehn.

Must be student unrest fellow, I am thinking.

The patriot shows it that he can even go through the Times of India. One should not take him otherwise. He is even now trying his best to improve his English. But what it pains him most is this that one goonda fellow has thrown stone at Indirabehn which he should not have. But who is this Indira Gandhi? She is but the daughter of Nehru whom Gandhi used to love and like most as his political heir.

Friends, countrymen, comrades and Romans whoever be you, one must heed to him and try to see his experience of serving the nation as he can feel the pulse of the nation and the world:

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, I am saying (to myself)

Lend me the ears.

Everything is coming -

Regeneration, Remuneration, Contraception.

The patriot addresses as my dear brothers and sisters and advises to be patient and bearing upon with:

Be patiently, brothers and sisters.

You want one glass lassi?

Very good for digestion.

With little salt, lovely drink,

Better than wine;

Not that I am ever tasting the wine.

He will never counsel to take wine. It is better to take lassi, sherbet and milk. If one does not get cow milk, one may goat milk as Gandhi used to take and this the secret of his strength.

Take the example of his as he abstains from everything and is a teetotaller:

I'm the total teetotaller, completely total,

But I say

Wine is for the drunkards only.

Wine, alcohol, liquor are only for the drunkards and drunkenness is at the root of all evils. Where is the current generation going to? If they fall into bad habits, what will they do? If they take fast foods, how will their body develop?

Apart from a patriot, he too thinks of world politics as he might have heard during the Gandhian period about the Great Wars and other European nations, even going beyond the saat samudras in idea:

What you think of prospects of world peace?

Pakistan behaving like this,

China behaving like that,

It is making me really sad, I am telling you.

Really, most harassing me.

But the activities of China and Pakistan disturb him most. It saddens him when he sees them invading or attacking or engaged in warfare:

India is of all, all are but brothers and sisters, be they the Hindiwallahs, Banglawallahs or any other so on:

All men are brothers, no?

In India also

Gujaratis, Maharashtrians, Hindiwallahs

All brothers -

Though some are having funny habits.

Still, you tolerate me,

I tolerate you,

Instead of regional and provincial differences seen in terms of food, costume, living, manner, speaking, gesture, look and accent, the things must be tolerated and sorted out cordially.

The Gandhian or Indian dream of Ram Rajya he has not forgotten it:

One day Ram Rajya is surely coming.

You are going?

But you will visit again

Any time, any day,

I am not believing in ceremony

Always I am enjoying your company.

When will the Ram Rajya dawn upon? Where is it? Is it not a utopia? Whenever he finds time to meet him, he can the patriot as there is nothing that to stay withdrawn and secluded from. He is ever ready to counsel and advise if one feels to get it from; ever ready to share his experiences and feelings. The listener is welcome to meet and his doors are open for him, any time, any day he may visit him. He does not believe in ceremonious meetings just meant for the freedom fighters and patriots to meet them on the dais. The patriot likes to enjoy the company rather than anything and what else to do with too.   

It will better if we go through the two stanzas of ‘The Patriot’ written by Robert Browning:

Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun

To give it my loving friends to keep!

Nought man could do, have I left undone:

And you see my harvest, what I reap

This very day, now a year is run.

There's nobody on the house-tops now---

Just a palsied few at the windows set;

For the best of the sight is, all allow,

At the Shambles' Gate---or, better yet,

By the very scaffold's foot, I trow.

But the patriot of Robert Browning taking a U-turn and that too through a dramatic monologue   deplores for the bravery shown as because nothing stays it here and everything is but circumstantial, occasional and situational and opinions keep varying from time to time and none can say it what will it remain what.

Enterprise: Nissim Ezekiel

By: Bijay Kant Dubey

It started as a pilgrimage

Exalting minds and making all

The burdens light, The second stage

Explored but did not test the call.

The sun beat down to match our rage. 5 

We stood it very well, I thought ,

Observed and put down copious notes

On things the peasants sold and bought

The way of serpents and of goats.

Three cities where a sage had taught  10

But when the differences arose

On how to cross a desert patch,

We lost a friend whose stylish prose

Was quite the best of all our batch.

A shadow falls on us and grows . 15

Another phase was reached when we

Were twice attacked , and lost our way.

A section claimed its liberty

To leave the group. I tried to pray .

Our leader said he smelt  the sea 20

We noticed nothing as we went ,

A straggling crowd of little hope,

Ignoring what the thunder meant ,

Deprived of common needs like soap.

Some were broken , some merely bent. 25

When, finally , we reached the place ,

We hardly know why we were there.

The trip had darkened every face,

Our deeds were neither great nor rare.

Home is where we have to gather grace.

United we stand, divided we fall, is the precept with which the whole edifice of the enterprise is built upon and the moment the fissures and frictions start raking it, the establishment begins to totter and fall one by one and the same is carried forward here in this poem titled, Enterprise.  When the enterprise saw the light of the day, the like-minded people collaborating with one another lent a hand to establish it and did the works with so much cordiality and co-ordination to put the venture on a footing of its own sparing so much of their precious time and labour. But there came a stage when suspense started clawing at, doubts cracked the walls of its foundation, whispers went viral, viruses of distrust affected them badly and the plasters of mutual trust came up for utter scrutiny, critical purview and disintegration, as the dry flakes started scattering as crusts.

This is when an industry is started, an enterprise made with its own prospering time to give, standing in expectation to the industry developed and financially established, labour given, efforts made and the things supervised provided there is some good will nurturing it. But there also comes a time when mutual distrust makes forays into it; whispers do the rounds and the establishment comes to a halt to be in shambles or productions stopped. This is but human nature, human frailty. Man is not above his nature and shortcomings and these are inherent in him.  Nissim Ezekiel in a very holy and allegorical way starts the discussion to make us understand the value of good thoughts and ideas, noble minds and hearts while doing one thing or taking to one’s own understanding, but there lie in the weaknesses of man planning for his fall. It is easy to disintegrate, but it is very difficult to enjoin. To see it in the Tolstoyan terms, if good virtues continue to nourish, as his stories tell us, it will last and if the bad things start taking over, the whole industry will topple and fall down. Kabir also asks of keeping the critic in his house making him seated in a cottage built for him especially, but he should be good and constructive, not the bad critic. Nissim has also perhaps tried to learn through the concept of the Seven Deadly Sins. But has not given any scope to the doubting Thomases. Had it been Indian Trishankus, Three-forked  Skeptical Ones with ‘Tin ticket mahawickat’ (Three tickets a mismatch) great danger theory, it would have wreaked havoc with these rustic background astronomical and palmistry believing inactive, fatalistic, idle-seeking superstitious and suspicious people.

We are also made to believe, as if we were undertaking a pilgrimage, as the story of the poem is illustrated in an allegorical way, telling us about the nurturing of good moral thoughts and ideas, be it any sphere of life. The integrity of character, the solidarity of understanding and the desire of standing together with are all important in life rather than dismissing it at one go all that is good in us which is but easy to break, but difficult to recreate. There is something of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales in it, something of Kolatkar’s Jejuri.

The enterprise starts with a promise and hope wishing to cater to the needs and demands and establishing as a new venture or set-up, members lend a hand to it as for whatever they can for its well-being. Just like the pilgrims they set out on the journey of the enterprise taking it as a noble challenge. The minds already in exaltation of doing or furthering it cross over the things lightly which it may come onto its way, lightening the burden of each other and keeping the novice industry in mind.

The second stage explores the possibilities rather than bothering about the test of the call. The sun beats down to match the rage and they make the sweat for to be borne for it. Standing together with, they try to bear it down vicissitudes with so much so fortitude. They maintain the ledger books and notes keeping the account of all that spent or delivered or produced calculating it in the best possible manner the balances, profits and expenses whatever the peasants buy or take to, entering in the minutest way as the goats and serpents go the way, visiting three cities where the good sage lessoned he and deriving from his precepts.

Apart from the enterprise running, doing the rounds, doubts and suspense start creeping into and seem to be on the prowl like the beasts of prey. Differences start, rifts widen among the members when there arises a problem with regard to crossing it over, that is how to cross the desert patch and in tackling it, the friends as members for the industry, miss a fellow so famed for his stylish prose and clear handling who is perhaps in the words of the writer the best of their batch. As shadow beings to fall over them and grows it deeper to strike, they start leaving the company one by one.

This is not the end of the story, what it happens during the pilgrimage is more interesting than the make-believe things as the people like it not to tell the real things. Another phase is reached as a milestone when some of the members are attacked and they lose their ways. A section claims liberty and declares them independent and leaves the group. The poet tries to pray so that the things may be patched up. The leader of the group smells the sea to cross over to. But the other members see it nothing but a staggering crowd of little hope, ignoring what did it the thunder say it, he deprives of even small necessities. Some take it very bad and feel broken inwardly while keeping them bent and lowly to hear all that what one likes to as his a time to say and the business too is a collective venture.

When the pilgrimage reaches the final stage, they find it that it is good for nothing. They hardly come to feel it why they are actually there. The trip darkens the face of everybody as their deeds had been neither great nor rare. The home is there where there is grace, where there is peace and happiness and if it is not then that is not a home even after being a home. That house does not remain a house, that establishment not an establishment if quarrels rake it badly and the members keep blaming and conspiring against one another. There must be some reasons for bonding and trust which must fasten it altogether, but we as human beings fail to keep it up.

Enterprise is really a very good poem from Nissim Ezekiel. This life is like a pilgrimage or everything that do we will be done if our intentions are noble and good and if not, the work will not be executed so is the case with here. Every work that we start must look like a pilgrimage, every enterprise that we collaborate with  will run as long as our intentions are clear held by mutual trust, faith and bonding and the moment mistrust creeps in or somebody does it the backbiting to be taken into, the industry will start tottering and coming to a close unexpectedly. As long as we are good and noble, the things will flourish and prosper and the moment grow we suspicious of each other, the bonding will come to a naught.

Really, Nissim Ezekiel outwits us here with his wit and humour not, but with allegory and metaphor, his sense of knowledge and wisdom, virtue and judgement. Where does it lie in virtue really? What is it goodness? How to be charitable and philanthropic? There is something in it which it is in George Herbert and John Bunyan. How to be right and dutiful? How to take good counsel into confidence? How to be a man?

Let us see what it remains in the end, the residues of meaning:

The trip had darkened every face,

Our deeds were neither great nor rare.

Home is where we have to gather grace.

The journey which is started with good hope does not remain it unto the end as because it is but human nature and so the change of our taste. His mind and mood, heart and nobility too change it under the situations and circumstances. Few can really stand before. He is really a pilgrim who takes it just as a pilgrimage every work of life, personal or impersonal.

It is not the Indian sage whose counsel Nissim would have minded to take into consideration; it is definitely the Western counsel, wisdom that he counts upon here in this poem so beautifully explained and so allegorically narrated.

Enterprise as a poem from Nissim Ezekiel, so metaphorical and so much allegorical, outdoes it other poems in terms of wisdom that it lessons, jurisprudence it teaches, vision it lends to. The poem gives us a good moral advice with the virtues held aloft. Why did the enterprise gather a momentum as they braved it all in making it stand? And why did it fall? It failed for lack of trust, confidence and goodness of heart.

Night of the Scorpion: Nissim Ezekiel

By: Bijay Kant Dubey

I remember the night my mother

was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours

of steady rain had driven him

to crawl beneath a sack of rice.

Parting with his poison - flash

of diabolic tail in the dark room -

he risked the rain again.

The peasants came like swarms of flies

and buzzed the name of God a hundred times

to paralyse the Evil One.

With candles and with lanterns

throwing giant scorpion shadows

on the mud-baked walls

they searched for him: he was not found.

They clicked their tongues.

With every movement that the scorpion made his poison moved in Mother's blood, they said.

May he sit still, they said

May the sins of your previous birth

be burned away tonight, they said.

May your suffering decrease

the misfortunes of your next birth, they said.

May the sum of all evil

balanced in this unreal world

against the sum of good

become diminished by your pain.

May the poison purify your flesh

of desire, and your spirit of ambition,

they said, and they sat around

on the floor with my mother in the centre,

the peace of understanding on each face.

More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours,

more insects, and the endless rain.

My mother twisted through and through,

groaning on a mat.

My father, sceptic, rationalist,

trying every curse and blessing,

powder, mixture, herb and hybrid.

He even poured a little paraffin

upon the bitten toe and put a match to it.

I watched the flame feeding on my mother.

I watched the holy man perform his rites to tame the poison with an incantation.

After twenty hours

it lost its sting.

My mother only said

Thank God the scorpion picked on me

And spared my children.

Night of the Scorpion is one of those poems of Nissim Ezekiel which have been admired, read and discussed in the anthologies of Indian poetry in English with so much profit and pleasure as well as have engaged the critics as for critical analysis and elucidation. Nissim Ezekiel as a poet is one of the post-independence period of Indian poetry in English who is famed for as the poster boy of modernism. A Maharashtrian Jew, he is a modern poet of modern poetic idea and expression who aims at clarity going along the colloquial idiom. In a very conversational style of his own, he tells the things commonly. Shorn off Indian thought and tradition, metaphysics and spirituality, ethos and history, myth and mysticism, he takes the things in his usual way as he sees them happening around commonly. A poet of Bombay and the cityscape, he is modern and urban. An alien insider, he can just talk about a visit to the cinema hall, the theatre, the park, the    picnic spot; he can about birthday gift and party, wedding ring, wedding party and love marriage. There is something of the identity crisis which he suffers it no doubt, but is peculiarly Indian. 

The poet remembers the night his mother was stung by a scorpion which might have hidden behind a sack of rice as for the rains continuing steadily for several hours. But having bitten her, it parted with risking again. The people too came and searched for, but in vain, as they could not trace it. But when the bite started corroding the self of the mother, the news spread it around and the people from the nearby started coming just like the swarms of flies and in bunches and batches buzzing the name of God to paralyze the effect and to pray for her recovery. With candles throwing giant shadows cast against the mud-baked walls, they searched for it, but could not find it. They clicked their tongues with regard to the further movement of the scorpion and the increase in pain. Had it sat still, the pain could have been stable.  

A few of them asked not to disturb the scorpion while a few talked of the previous sin and its dispensation while a few talked of karma and dharma, good and bad and their balancing while the others said about the lessening of misfortunes and the purification of the flesh and for granting of one more life or time. With his mother lying at the centre lying on the floor, they went on discussing and debating, the villagerly countryside rural Indian folks. But all them of them had been just with the good wish of seeing her recovered and the faces too showed the peace of understanding shining on each of them.

His mother twisted through and through on a mat while bearing the pain with the men and women wishing her early recovery. It had been a rainy night of endless rain and the people had been with more and more lanterns and candles in their hands to see her writhing in pain. But his father, a sceptic and rationalist of his type, thought in his own way, tried and applied everything as far possible, be it curse or blessing, powder, mixture, herb or hybrid. The holy man tried to tame the pain through mantras. The herbalist tried to apply the paste on the bitten toe to give some relief. But in the end of all, his father burnt the matchstick to put it over the paraffin oil applied toe and the fire flames went on feeding upon for a few seconds.

The pain mitigated after twenty hours and she regained her consciousness. But when she came to her sense, she thanked God as for picking her and sparing her children which but every mother will like to say it.

Night of The Scorpion as a poem is about the night on which the mother of the poet was stung by a scorpion, people coming from the area to see her, wishing for recovery, the exorcist trying their best to tame the poison, the herbalist putting the paste on the bitten toe and his rationalist father putting the paraffin oil over with a match-stick lighting the fire and the flames feeding upon to mitigate the pain.

Night of The Scorpion which aims at clarity in expression and is evocative of Indian rural imagery is definitely one of the representative poems of Nissim Ezekiel, an Indian poet of Bene-Israeli origin writing in English. A poet of the sixties, he employs a modern idiom for his poetic expression and is conversational in his style. Just through the scorpion-bite he says it all which the others have failed to say. Such a thing it is in Huxley's visit of Benares and Orwell's essay on Gandhi.

Night of The Scorpion as a typical Indian poem describes a rainy night of incessant rain when the mother of the poet was stung by a scorpion which might have taken refuge beneath a knapsack or might have crawled somewhere back to its safety penetrated against the backdrop of an Indian crowd of villagers and peasants uneducated and typically rural and the through the whispers and mutterings of the crowds coming and going one can sense their thoughts and views, their belief in karma and dharma, balancing of the previous sin and letting the things rest in peace. Nissim sees the mother writhing in pain, at the centre of hectic activity. The exorcist is busy with taming the pain with mantras, the herbalist applying the herbal paste on the bitten toe and the rationalist father with the paraffin oil sprinkled over and lighting over and the fire flames feeding upon. The villagers and peasants with the lamps into their hands, casting shadows over the muddy walls and the rains fallen take the centrestage from us. People searching for the scorpion and some asking to let it be with its restricted movement keeping it undisturbed give twists to the drama of the story and if it moves, this may cause evil for her. So let it be at peace. Why to disturb it? This is but Indian philosophy. To bite is its dharma. If one is mean and vile, will others be? The non-violence of Mahavira, the peace of Goutam Buddha, how to dismiss them? The other thing too is this that we are so much inactive, irrational and illogical and superstitious. Is our superstition not our inaction?

Nissim has a style of beginning a poem and this is as if we were reading a narrative:

I remember the night my mother

was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours

of steady rain had driven him

to crawl beneath a sack of rice.

The second stanza break shows the scorpion with the diabolic tail, biting and hiding away somewhere, gone missing and untracked:

Parting with his poison - flash

of diabolic tail in the dark room -

he risked the rain again.

Parting with the poison flash, the diabolic tail in the dark room add to the poem with the crooked appearance of the bizarre and grotesque creature and the evil purpose of it which but cannot change its nature.

The third stanza break tells of the movement of people coming and crowding the space with the   lanterns and candles into their hands, praying for and whispering:

With candles and with lanterns

throwing giant scorpion shadows

on the mud-baked walls

they searched for him: he was not found.

They clicked their tongues.

With every movement that the scorpion made his poison moved in Mother's blood, they said.

The rural folks, especially the womenfolk start the discussion really with regard to Indian life and living, age-old belief-system and thinking, opening a plethora of thoughts with regard to good and bad, previous birth and this birth, right and wrong, karma and dharma, unseen fate and its writ, time and its situations. They also think it, if the scorpion is disturbed and it moves away, the pain may increase.

May he sit still, they said

May the sins of your previous birth

be burned away tonight, they said.

May your suffering decrease

the misfortunes of your next birth, they said.

May the sum of all evil

balanced in this unreal world

The discussions they are doing are but very interesting and dramatic too which is but a specialty of India and its idle gossips, but not always without meaning.

against the sum of good

become diminished by your pain.

May the poison purify your flesh

of desire, and your spirit of ambition,

they said, and they sat around

on the floor with my mother in the centre,

the peace of understanding on each face.

More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours,

more insects, and the endless rain.

My mother twisted through and through,

groaning on a mat.

The picture of a father known for scientist temperament also works as a catalyst for this all:

My father, sceptic, rationalist,

trying every curse and blessing,

powder, mixture, herb and hybrid.

He even poured a little paraffin

upon the bitten toe and put a match to it.

We also need such a fellow to be really educated and up-to-date. Sometimes ignorance misleads it.

The below-mentioned lines show the anxiety and helplessness of a son waiting for her mother’s recovery:

I watched the flame feeding on my mother.

I watched the holy man perform his rites to tame the poison with an incantation.

After twenty hours

it lost its sting.

The holy man here may be a pundit, a sadhu, a gunin or an ojha. ‘I watched the flame feeding on my mother’, is no doubt a beautiful line full of meaning and idea and expectation. What man thinks and what it happens. There is something as the writ of destiny.

The last lines show the inner wishes of a mother, what she thinks and feels it within her motherly heart for her children:

My mother only said

Thank God the scorpion picked on me

And spared my children.

It has rightly been said, a mother can never be a bad and indifferent mother. The last lines tend towards a benediction. The poem is not only interesting to read, but is dramatic too, so scenic and picturesque as well.