THE PATRIOT

-NISSIM EZEKIEL

THJHRT
 WHO IS A PATRIOT ??
• A patriot was someone who loves their
country and supports it, but won't blindly
follow whatever their country's government
does. -John Q Moron
 ABOUT NISSIM EZEKIEL!!
• Nissim Ezekiel was an Indian Jewish poet,
playwright, editor and art critic.

• He was a foundational figure in postcolonial

India's literary history, specifically for indian
writing in English.

• He's most famous for his wry commentaries on

contemporary India - often written in an
exaggerated 'Indian English'
•
• His father, Moses Ezekiel, was a professor of
botany at Wilson College, and his mother was
principal of her own school.

• The Ezekiels belonged to Mumbai's Jewish

community, known as the 'Bene Israel'

• 1947, Ezekiel earned an BA in Literature from

Wilson College, Mumbai, University of Mumbai

• His 1ST poetry was published in 1952 called

“the bad day”
 IMAGE OF INDIA IN NISSIM
EZEKIEL’S POETRIES !!
☺In Hour of need to depict the Indianness or Indian
sensibility Nissim Ezekiel is one of the last notable
poets of the last 50s and 60s, who reveals the
genuine Indian temperament, Indian sensibility that
can be consider as the true Indianness .
☺In an autobiographical poem ‘Background Casually’ he
himself being Jew-a minority in India depicts the
trouble and traumas that he underwent throughout his
life. He ridicules the cast barriers that make the
people confine in to the narrow domestic wall .
 About his other poems.
• In order to state his Indianness , he chooses to
portray some familiar Indian scene. In the poem
‘In India’, he portrays the squalor, heat and
ugliness of an Indian Metropolis.” The barbaric
city sick with slums”-
“ Always in the sun’s eye,
here among the beggars,
Hawkers, pavement sleepers,
Hutment dwellers, slums etc”
 Contd…
• Ezekiel’s Indianness can be seen from the way
he has described a flood in Bihar.
“ the villagers ran to them
they slapped their bellies
and whined;
“ I have not eaten for three days”
“ my husband has been washed away”
“ my parents have abandoned me,”
“ my son is dying,”
“ I cannot find my daughter.””
 The –ing!!
• Ezekiel has experimented with the use of
typical Indian English. the poems reveals
the common Indian mistakes of using
present progressive tense in place of the
simple present. The suffix,’-ing’ is used in
a wrong manner unnecessarily; this is very
typical for Indian users of English. It also
brings out the random pour of Indian
speech.
 The grammer !!
• The usual compound form is 'Hinglish', a
portmanteau of 'Hindi' and 'English’

• Like most hybrid dialects, Indian English has its

own curious set of structures

• Indian languages use doubled verbs to indicate

an ongoing action, hence phrases like "world is
fighting fighting" in today's poem.
• "I am simply not understanding" - the misuse of
the continuous tense is rife in India.
• "modern generation is neglecting" - another
common mistake, the omission of the object of a
transitive verb.
• "Other day I'm reading newspaper" - Hindi
doesn't have articles; hence eithertheir complete
omission as in this sentence, or their
replacement by numbers, as
• "You want one glass lassi?".
• To improve my English Language" - This one's a
classic
• "One goonda fellow" - Nouns are often used as
adjectives, as also in "studentunrest fellow".
• "All men are brothers, no?" - The interrogative
'no?' at the end of the sentence
• is common to many non-native speakers of
English.