[Reader-list] Remembering Nissim

[jane bhandari]

Dear Shivam,
 
I have just read your obituary of Nissim Ezekiel.
 
It was sad that so few writers attended his funeral. I
would have come myself but was in Delhi at the time.
Funerals rarely give anybody much time to rearrange
one's life.
 
Adil Jussawalla and myself organised a private reading
of Nissim's poems on behalf of Loquations at NCPA A/V
Room on February 3rd. Asha and Nandoo Bhende attended,
among others, and the turnout was quite good. I was
moved by Asha's reading of a letter Nissim wrote to
her on the occasion of her marriage, which he was
unable to attend.
 
Perhaps the Loquations reading should have been
publicised better; though some members of the press
were invited. But those that attended (and selected
and read their favourite poems) came out of a genuine
desire to pay homage to a great poet, and at the time
we were not thinking of publicity. This was a private
farewell. The poems read were  presented in a souvenir
anthology to the participants and copies sent to those
who had requested poems but were unable to attend. A
few copies still remain, if you would care to have
one.
 
Subsequently The Book Review asked me to do a
posthumous review of his Collected Poems. I append the
first para below:
 
"It was in my daughter’s English literature textbook:
‘Goodbye to Miss Pushpa TP’ was my first encounter
with Nissim Ezekiel’s poetry. ‘Very Indian Poems in
Indian English’ might nowadays sound like tasteless
wit to the politically hypersensitive, but to me they
were authentic. They were the voices I heard on TV and
radio, the every-day speech of people for whom English
was not a first language, written by an Indian for
whom English was the language in which he had been
educated, was probably spoken at home more than his
mother tongue, and was the language in which he would
teach and write for most of his life. In an era when
command of English was a necessity if one was to get
on in life, a new class had emerged, of Indians who
spoke English rather than the vernacular, and were
comfortable with it. This is where Nissim sits in
Indian English literature: wholly and comfortably in
command of English, even as he tenderly pokes a little
gentle fun at those for whom English is not their
first language. In fact Nissim’s ‘Indian English’
poems are only a tiny part of his work, even though
they are most often quoted. With wit and irony, Nissim
wrote about his world, his ambiguous attitude to
religion, his loves - and his poems. Every poet writes
a few poems about writing poems in his lifetime.
Nissim wrote more than most."
 
I came to India in the late 60's, and it was some time
before I discovered, via my childrens' English books,
poets such as Nissim, Dom Moraes, Ramanujan, and
Eunice DeSousa. In the last five or six years I have
begun writing my own poetry. After being infected by
Nissim and his compatriots, one could hardly do less,
even if it comes a little late in life.
 
I mourn his passing. I never met him; I am sorry that
this was so. He must have been a fascinating man. As a
woman, reading his love-poems makes me wish I had
known him twenty years ago.  
 
Jane Bhandari
 



	
	
		
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