Celebrating the centenary of Nissim Ezekiel who is hailed as the father of modern Indian poetry in English with a book, his daughter Kavita recalls his connect with the city, and how he inspired generational poets with his camaraderie
illustration/Uday Mohite
“Peace at all costs”
…
In my father’s mantra,
I find peace.
In all languages, peace is peace
Shanti, Paz, Pace, Shalom, Paix.”
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Poet and educator Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca invokes her father in her poem, ‘Peace at All Costs’. When we ask her about some of her fondest memories of him, she promptly inquires, “Just one or two?” The late poet Nissim Ezekiel, who passed away in 2004, is remembered today through the many ways he touched people’s lives. Some knew him as a mentor, some as a friend, most grew up reading his poems, reciting the words of Night of the Scorpion in Indian classrooms. Literature students studied his work further in their lectures. They would remember him as one of the pioneers of modern Indian poetry
in English.
Kavita with Daisy and Nissim; (right) Nissim Ezekiel at The Poetry Circle session. Pic Courtesy/Menka Shivdasani
To Kavita, his eldest daughter, he was, most of all, “a gentle father, who never complained,” and always encouraged his children’s interests. Kavita loved music. The Ezekiels played it on their Philips turntable recorder, which he had purchased. “We would listen to The Mamas and The Papas,” once even winning an album as an award for a quiz on the radio. Ezekiel would walk briskly to the letterbox close to their Breach Candy home, so that “her postcard with the answer got there promptly. Daddy loved his children.” Ezekiel loved all children. In a poem, ‘Those Bombay Sundays’, Kavita recalls the early days of the black-and-white TV, when all the little ones from the neighbourhood would line up to watch the six-o-clock Hindi movie with him. ‘Daddy …/kept a few handkerchiefs ready,/for the ones with the runny noses…/“Please come again,” he responded to their thanks.’
To honour him, on his 100th birth anniversary this year, Canada-based Kavita has curated an anthology titled Nissim
Ezekiel: Poet and Father (Pippa Rann Books & Media). It is a compilation of tributes in the form of essays, interviews, poems, and photographs, shared by those who had met, worked with, or studied under him. “I wrote to several people. Some replied, some didn’t. I sent a set of questions to those who wrote to me… just to get them started,” she shares. Ezekiel’s legacy echoes in the works of many poets and academics like Gieve Patel, Adil Jussawalla, Menka Shivdasani, Jeet Thayil and Shanta Acharya, who contributed to the book and began their journey much after him.
The Ezekiel family watches a play
From the 1970s to the 1990s, English poetry flourished in Bombay (now Mumbai). “At his Indian PEN office in New Marine Lines, my father would leave his doors open to young poets and students,” Kavita recalls. It would become a meeting space for The Poetry Circle, an initiative co-founded by Shivdasani, Akil Contractor, and Nitin Mukadam in 1986 to encourage young poets. Instead of the usual circulars through which one was informed of the meetings, now there was an understanding among the members of the circle that every second Saturday one was to gather at Ezekiel’s office. He was a regular at the readings. At one of them, he wrote:
‘Stop praising me, my friends.
Let me learn
to live without teaching,
until I find my soul—
or even lose it
on that different road.’
A Bene Israeli Thanksgiving feast by Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca to be served at Nissim’s birth anniversary. Pics Courtesy/Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca
“I owe him a great deal. I was 16 when I first met him,” recalls Shivdasani, who found a life-long mentor and friend in him. Ezekiel loved Bombay. “It was home to my father. He never wanted to leave,” says Kavita. “I have the same emotional connection to it as my father had, and that Bombay will always be my home, I was born and raised there. It’s hard for me to say Mumbai.” She reminisces about the time she spent with him in the city. From their house, they would “walk to the ice cream store. We would call it the Irani store. We also visited the Hanging Gardens frequently on holidays. My father loved to walk. After work, from his office at the Theosophy Hall, he would walk to the Churchgate station, and pick up mid-day and bring it back for us.” She adds, “He never forced us to read anything, but he insisted that we read the newspaper. He would say, “You have to know what’s happening in the real world.” A 2021 news article in mid-day by features editor Fiona Fernandez, which explored Kavita’s collaboration with poet-architect Mustansir Dalvi for the Marathi translations of two of Ezekiel’s poems and an ode to him, forms part of the anthology.
Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca
The collection contains photographs, including many of the Ezekiels. In one, the family is seated to watch a play; the four attendees are grandma Diana, Kalpana (Kavita’s sibling), Kavita, and Ezekiel. They sit close to each other — an older woman in the background seems to identify the man in the suit and peeks from behind, taken in by his dignified presence. In another from a wedding, young Ezekiel sits with a knee resting on the floor, the other raised above, balancing little Kavita. Her head rests comfortably against his chest. In all, it is hard to miss his quiet demeanour. He smiles “gently from his fragile glasses”, and one can almost hear him whisper to us, peace at all costs.
Available on Amazon
Attend Remembering Nissim Ezekiel: Poetry reading and conversations about the bard, organised by the literary club of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai.
ON Monday, December 16; 5 pm
AT Durbar Hall, The Asiatic Society of Mumbai, Shahid Bhagat Singh Marg, Fort.
FREE
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