Nissim Ezekiel (1924-2004)

Nissim Ezekiel is one such poet who suffered the alienation feeling most, Some sort of rootlessness and uneasiness in being here And the nativity question baffled him As for to be called Indian And he was not, Indian in sentiment, feeling and emotion, Thought, culture and tradition racially, As his mind dwelt it afar, Indian philosophy, spirituality, morality and ethics Never lured him, lured him So with its Vedism, Upanishadism and Puranism, Nor did the things of Indology and Oriental studies As most of the modern Indian poets are today. A modern poet, he was of the post-1947 period, the post-fifties As he started writing from then, A Bombayan, a city dweller of cosmopolitan Bombay Of airports and shipyards, Living in Bombay and dreaming from And the India of villages with its soul in them Never the enchantment of Nissim, Who chose to dwell far from And this took him to England And he returned back to After spending three and a half years there, Studying Philosophy at Birbeck College, London. A Time To Change, Sixty Poems, The Third, The Unfinished Man, The Exact Name, Hymns in Darkness, The Unfinished Man, Latter-Day Psalms, The works published from time to time Tell of his literary attainment Into the poetic field laced with wit, irony and humour And caricature, Writing about Indianness and its hollow ethics, Society, culture and jokes, Realistic portrayal and discussion, His understanding of India Just like an outsider’s viewpoint. A Maharashtrian Jew, instead of his attachment with the city of his birth, The growing island that saw he, He marked the nation as an alien insider And his view was outsiderish And if not, he was like the modern Hollow man, shallow man, Exulting in urbanization, industrialization and commercialization, Talking of city life and culture, Professorship and literary journalism continued side by side And this added to In getting name and fame. Though he was a poet mostly, he wrote one slender book of playlets And just on the basis of that thinner stuff, We call him a playwright And this happens in Indian English writings As there is a dearth of And English is a foreign tongue And it is difficult to master a foreign language And to be write in an alien tongue Though many of the good oldies did not get a chance, Nor did they dare to show As the age had not been in their favour. Then the people used to say, one should write in one’s own mother tongue, But the definition changed Drastically in the changed scenario and context, Editor C.M.Mandy gave a chance to many of the new writers And their bad verses With a view to imparting strength and verve To promote Indian English verse And Nissim too served as an assistant editor, Later on edited Imprint And the Indian P.E.N. It took time in developing, Nissim went on trying to hone in His sporadically written verses, Meagre in output, not at all bulky, Some poems meaningful, some meaningless And as thus peddled he The stuffs of his own, Applying modern contexts of deliberation, Approach and assimilation, Fact and fiction, wit and intellect, Psychology and philosophy added to His idea of new poetry And he tried to think in a novel way, Indian or un-Indian or otherwise. We generally ask with regard to him, how far Indian is he in his Picturisation and presentation of India, Indian ethos and milieu, What is Indian in his poetry And it is the theme of Indianness, Ironical and realistic, Which finally bails him out And it is true he failed to understand The ethos of India, But has portrayed it realistically Like a Western man, Seeing and presenting And cracking the joke And humour was his spirit. Instead of his frailties and foibles, he was a great poet As he contributed to an evolving literature, Came of age, Added to realistically and ironically, Bagged the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1983 and the Padma Shri in 1988 A notable acknowledgement of his creative contribution, A formerly head of the deptt of English of Mithibhai College from 1961 to 72 Before witching over to Bombay Univ. English Deptt. fnally And taught for a short tenure at the Univ of Leeds and the Univ of Pondicherry As visiting professor, A broadcaster on literature and arts for sometime for All Indian Radio, An art critic, an editor, a prose writer he was Writing conversationally-inspired poetry In a very technical and spirited way.