Poet Nissim Ezekiel Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

Saying hi-hello, ta-ta, bye-bye, goodbye,
See you again,
Please and thank you
Like an Indian from the villages
Wanting to be modern,
Learning etiquette and manners,
In the pants, shirt and the boots,
With a tie, handkerchief, watch and specs
Rather than dhoti and kurta.

Nissim is trying to see off Pushpa
On her trip to foreign
And Nissim giving tips to her,
Seeing her off at the airport
And Pushpa too smiling,
Sharing the talks,
Again, marking
The vocabulary and sentence-construction
Of geography department teacher’s English
Full of coming and going, eating and drinking,
Somehow carried on spoken English.

A poet of the modern age, he will talk of
Going to the cinema and seeing of the pictures
With his lady love,
Will smile to see the hero kissing
The heroine,
The villain smoking a cigar
And thinking of painted villainy
And both of them amused to see him,
The villain following the hero and the heroine,
An old story coloued again and again.

After the marriage, a tea party will be hosted,
People will come with the gifts,
The modern boy will talk of the honeymoon,
The couple will visit the park, the restaurant and the tourist spot
To the pleasure of Nissim Ezekiel,
The manager or the salesman
Or the caterer.

You wonderful, he will say to her
And the girl will feel shy and coy of hearing,
The cheeks will blush
And Nissim will see,
But God knows who is wonderful,
Nissim or his beloved,
He will just propose before
But will dare not go outside
The periphery of his faith and home.

An alien insider, he can just bask in the warmth of
Modernity and modernism,
A convent-educated boy
Priding over his English
Just like a hosteller or a hotelier,
A Bombayan Jew
Ignorant of Indian thought, culture and tradition,
Religion, spirituality, theology, myth and mysticism.

Lives in India, but dwells he somewhere,
Interprets it differently,
But has definitely some base of his own,
Never to be heckled,
As ahs the verve and warmth of own,
But suffers from the quest for identity
Instead of his use and application of
Irony and realism.

Spoken English is the forte of his,
Gathering a mandate for him
For hale and hearty laughs and caricatures,
Jokes and laughs
Entertained otherwise
And he smiling within to mark
The nuances and idiosyncrasies,
The local variations of English.

On the new year’s eve, he will celebrate and revel in,
Greet and welcome,
Saying,
Happy new year to you,
Will bid good morning,
Good day, good afternoon,
Good night
Like the Indian pink-necked green parrot
Saying from the cage,
As taught to imitatively,
Sita-Ram, Sita-Ram,
Buti do, give the herbal diet, means cereals.

Nissim handshaking, greeting, waving at,
Taking leave off,
Using please and thank you,
Nice to meet you pleasantries,
Good words
And smiling
And going,
A poet of Valentine cards and love letters,
Using so nice of you,
Thank you,
See you again,
Sometimes sorry, sorry,
Please excuse me,
Sometimes using thank you,
Thank you.