[Reader-list] Ezekiel: modes no longer preoccupied with the self

[Shivam Vij]

Note on Nissim's Very Indian Poems in Indian English

Rajeev S. Patke

Ezekiel's poems in Indian English show him venturing
successfully into modes no longer preoccupied with the
self, in which he can empathise better with the
unsympathetic aspects of his linguistic and cultural
milieu. In these poems, what is being said is
refracted through how it is said. The ugly can be
taken on its own terms when its self-conceit is
treated with derision, while derision is made
tolerable when lances by sympathy. Exaggeration hovers
just this side of distortion, imitation never quite
slips into full caricature. The humour is benign
because the butt of each joke is non-malignant, even
if the joke nurses a little malice:


In India also
Gujaraties, 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?


('The Patriot')

What makes these Indian archetypes funny is not merely
how they mangle the language, but how they lack in
self-awareness. What makes them human is the warmth
and feeling behind the sentiments they express, which
even the disfigured language will not hide. The
expressive possibilities exploited in these poems may
be limited (in comparison to what poets from Africa or
the Caribbean have shown possible in dialect, patois,
pidgin, and creole); they may verge on the
sentimental; also, they could easily lead to an effect
of the ad nauseam. But they also break the
stranglehold exercised on poetic style by the notion
of a standard language. in them, performance exceeds
competence. To have opened this small account with
rag-bag syndicate of the ostensibly sub-standard forms
of linguistic practice, allowing poetry to explore
parts of the human structure it had not earlier known
it could accommodate or inhabit, is no small part of
Ezekiel's contribution to post-Independence investment
in poetry.


.....................................................


Rajeev S. Patke is Associate Professor of English,
National University of Singapore.


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