Nissim Ezekiel, an Indian Jewish poet, playwright, editor, and art critic was one of the foundational figures of post-independence Indian Poetry in English. Ezekiel is considered the Father of Modern English Poetry.  Ezekiel was honoured by the Sahitya Akademi award in 1983 and the Padma Shri in 1988. These are just two of his many accolades. He was Vice-Principal of Mithibai College, Mumbai and Professor at the University of Bombay, until his retirement. He also edited The Indian P.E.N.
 
Usha Kishore talks to Ezekiel’s daughter, Kavita about the Jewish elements in his Poetry. 
 
Usha Kishore (UK):  Shalom Kavita, I am delighted to be able to speak to you about your esteemed father, the late Nissim Ezekiel and his work.
 
Kavita Ezekiel (KE): Thank you Usha. It is a pleasure to speak with you about my late father’s work.
 
UK: Let me begin with Indian Jews. The Indian Jewish identity cannot be considered in a western context.  The American Jewish author Nathan Katz[1] feels that Jewish history is at its happiest in India as there has been no religious persecution, unlike Europe and elsewhere in the world.  What do you feel?
 
KE: Growing up, I never experienced any kind of religious persecution. I was never conscious of being Jewish as something separate from the rest of India. We mingled freely with everyone - Muslims, Christians, Parsees, Anglo Indians and Hindus. I always felt that people were very interested in my Jewish heritage.  About the only time, I remember being judged for being Jewish was in school when we were studying The Merchant of Venice, when classmates teased me and called me ‘Shylock.’ Also, at boarding school, when I was nine years old, I was accused of ‘killing Christ’ and I wrote a poem called ‘The Crucifixion’.  I take this to be the consequence of stereotypes engendered through literature.  And, studying the Bible at a Christian school, exerted a strong influence on children to stigmatize the only Jewish student in the classroom. Looking back, I now realize that it was childish ignorance, but at the time, it was hurtful and insensitive. Ironically, I had a similar experience to the one my father describes in the poem, ‘Background, Casually,’ except I attended a school run by Protestant Christian missionaries.

I went to Roman Catholic School
A mugging Jew among the wolves.
They told me I had killed Christ. 
                        (‘Background, Casually)

The distinctive experience of Jews was that they were held in high esteem and never faced discrimination in India. In the later part of the 18^th Century, many Bene Israelis moved to Bombay (Mumbai), Ahmedabad, Karachi and Calcutta and distinguished themselves in many fields such as Education, Law and the Armed Forces, including the British Army’s ‘Native Forces’, and its successor, the Indian Army.  Ezekiel highlights his ancestry in the most defining poem of his life, ‘Background, Casually’:

One among them fought and taught
A Major bearing British arms.
He told my father sad stories
Of the Boer War…

UK: Nathan Katz opines that the Indian Jewish identity is created by the community’s interaction with the Hindus and other Indian religions. Do you agree with this?

KE: I don’t know if the Indian Jewish identity is created exclusively by the community’s interaction with the Hindus and other Indian religions. They had a pretty strong sense of their own identity. Certainly, the close relationship with the Hindus might have influenced their identity and was largely because the Bene Israeli Jews blended seamlessly into the cultural milieu, while retaining their own customs and traditions. They spoke Marathi alongside English, ate Indian foods, the women wore sarees, and did not experience any anti-Semitism. Prayers were recited in Hebrew, and regular visits to the synagogue on festival days was part of their cultural identity. They were accepted by the Hindus with all these traditions. The Bene Israeli Jews inter-married with Catholics, Parsees and Muslims as well.  Whenever I had asked my father whether we were ‘Jewish Indian’ or ‘Indian Jewish’, he had always replied ‘Both’!
 
UK: I feel that Ezekiel does not explore the cultural mechanisms that define India’s diverse Jewish identities, but he responds to the changing cultural and political atmosphere of Independent India. Do you agree?
 
KE: While Nissim Ezekiel was conscious and aware of the diverse Jewish identities in India, the dominant themes in his poetry and writings were mainly concerned with India and ‘Indianness.’ I don’t think that the political changes or atmosphere of ‘independent India’ necessarily took centre stage in his poetry. He was immersed in the experience of being human, of change, of his own inner struggles, but wrote as an observer, detached from the experience.
 
UK: Do you think that Ezekiel’s poetry addresses the minority status of the Indian Jews and their exodus from India and also provides a dialogic response to Hinduism? 
 
KE: Nissim Ezekiel was aware of the exodus of Indian Jews, but he does not write about it.  I remember him clearly saying about the desire of Indians to emigrate ‘west’ to ‘make it.’  I quote him: ‘Who will remain to do something for India?’ There is no ‘dialogic response’ to any faith. The writing of poetry was central to his life. He always taught me that the important truths of life are expressed in all religions, be it Hinduism, Islam, Judaism or Christianity. My father was also widely read in the sacred texts of all religions and interested in different ways of approaching the search for truth. He chose to remain in India, a country he loved deeply, as do I, and our family did not emigrate to Israel.

I have made my commitments now.
This is one: to stay where I am,
As others choose to give themselves
In some remote and backward place.
My backward place is where I am.    
                                    (‘Background, Casually’)

UK: How does Ezekiel’s poetry reflect on his Jewish identity?  Do the issues of identity and alienation figure in his work?
 
KE: There is no overt ‘Jewish identity’ which emerges as a theme anywhere in Nissim Ezekiel’s poetry. No doubt, being born Jewish influenced his use of language and the feeling that the man is actuallypraying to his God in many of his poems. Irrespective of religion, anyone could relate to those ‘prayers’.  It does not mean that the sentiments expressed e.g. in Latter Day Psalms, are in any sense ‘Jewish’.  At the end of ‘The Latter Day Psalms,’ he does say “Now I am through with the Psalms/they are part of my flesh.”Much later in life, towards the end, Ezekiel began to read the Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism).  But I recall that his interests in religious texts were eclectic, not driven by religious sentiment, but the keen inquiry of an avid learner, devoid of any pre-judgement. In his poem ‘Jewish Wedding in Bombay’, he mentions that his father:

… himself had drifted into the liberal
creed but without much conviction, taking us all with him.
My mother was very proud of being ‘progressive.’

UK: Can the poem, ‘Background Casually’ be considered the poetic autobiography of Ezekiel, highlighting the issues of identity and alienation, nationality and marginality?
 
KE: The poem is clearly autobiographical and the themes you mention do occur naturally, since they were an integral part of the poet’s experiences. Ezekiel outlines his struggle for personal identity, as he tries to socialize with students from diverse faiths in school.He is also bullied by the boys from different faiths as he describes it ‘a mugging Jew among the wolves.’ The search for identity continues:

At home on Friday night the prayers
Were said. My morals had declined.
I heard of Yoga and of Zen.
Could I, perhaps be rabbi-saint?
The more I searched, the less I found.

However, Ezekiel has always identified himself with India and felt completely at home there. There was no conflict with a search for nationality. Many poems speak of his Indianness. I don’t think he ever felt marginalized. Ezekiel was a natural outsider, being born Jewish, but an insider, as he loved his country, and particularly the city he was born and raised in, which was Bombay.  He highlights this in Poster Poems’:

I’ve never been a refugee
Except of the spirit,
A loved and troubled country
Which is my home and enemy.

UK: The poem ‘Background Casually’ refers to: My ancestors among the castes/ Were aliens crushing seed for bread/ (The hooded bullock made his rounds). Am I right in thinking that this is the reference to Ezekiel’s cultural connections and the Shanwarteli community?
 
KE: Yes, you are right; the quote is a reference to the Bene Israeli community, who were oil-pressers.  The reference to ‘aliens’ signifies that they clearly were outsiders to the local community.  The term ‘Bene-Israel’ refers to the largest of the three Jewish communities in India (the other two are Cochin and Bagdhadi Jews).  According to legend, they descended from ‘Seven Couples’ who were the remnants of a shipwreck near the village of Navgaon, on the Konkan coast in India, near Mumbai. Because of the centrality of the Prophet Elijah in their oral traditions, their ancestors may have lived in the time of Elijah in Israel and their arrival in India dates anywhere between the 8th century BCE and 6^th century CE.  They became assimilated in the coastal communities, taking up farming, carpentry and mainly, oil pressing.  Because they observed the Jewish Sabbath and did not work on Saturdays, they came to be known as ‘Shanwar Telis’ or ‘Saturday Oil Pressers’.  Today, the Bene Israeli number about 5000 in India and 40,000 in Israel, after an exodus of Jews from India in the 1950 and 60s.
 
UK: How does your work as a poet reflect your Jewish identity?
 
KE: Several of my poems in the last few years are based on Jewish themes. As I grow older, I have also begun to explore my Jewish roots, and my poetry is an attempt to come to terms with my cultural heritage. The poems are influenced less by me being religiously Jewish, and more by the memories of growing up in a Jewish home, with all its rituals, traditions, beliefs, festivals. At the Christian school, I attended, I learned much from the Bible with a focus on the New Testament. A couple of my poems, like ‘Alibaug’ and ‘Miracles’ have Christian references. ‘Alibaug’ is a poem with a specifically Jewish theme, set in the then predominantly Jewish village of my childhood, where my uncle owned a grain mill. Alibaug has changed much now, with all the rich people buying homes there, and the hotels that have sprung up.

I think a good portion of the Jewish prayers being in Hebrew made it difficult for me and could havecontributed to my lack of knowledge of the essence of Judaism. In recent years, I have been deeply affected by the Holocaust – reading about the persecution of Jews, their suffering and the senseless slaughter of 6 million people. 

Several of my poems over the last few years are based on Jewish themes as a reflection of my exploration of my Jewish roots and cultural heritage. The poem ‘Alibaug’, is one example.

I miss Alibaug
I don’t know when I can return
To the land of my ancestors
The land of the Shanwartelis, the Oil pressers

Having attended a Christian-missionary school in Bombay, the teachings of Jesus were a strong influence on my life. The poem ‘Alibaug’, makes reference to a story I loved.

I had heard of Jesus in school
Of how He walked on water
And His command to still the storm,
I remember praying to have that kind of faith

My poems ‘I Still sing The Shema’ and Light of the Sabbath,’ based on Jewish themes have been recently published in Indian Literature and Harbinger Asylum. 

‘I Still sing The Shema’[2]:

 
I watch movies about the Holocaust I cannot bear to watch; I become an enraged bull
I leave the room and re-enter like the Matador determined to conquer the beast
I wish I had The Matador’s nerve and skill.
 
‘Light of the Sabbath’[3]:

Each Friday evening, we squeezed
The purple grapes of Faith
And each Saturday she read
All one hundred and fifty Psalms

UK: How has your father’s work influenced your poetry?
 
KE: My father’s work has influenced my poetry in a sort of unconscious way. I had the ‘lived life with him,’ so many of the ideas, values, and attitudes to life he passed on to me, find expression in my poems. Of course, the style and format of my poetry is different. I have my own voice, and am so glad to have discovered it, and am continuing to hone my craft. So many of the themes I write about, for example the theme of Nature, have been influenced by my father.Every poem I write makes either a direct or indirect reference to him.  Of course, being raised by him, deep down in my subconscious mind, things surface, and get written into the poetry.Both of us use amore direct and colloquial style and write a great deal about ordinary things. Whatever shapes my life, shapes my poetry, and of course that has been the same for him, as for all poets. My father has played such an important role in my life that of course things he taught me, are a permanent part of my psyche. He was a true intellectual, though. I have never tried to imitate him, nor do I feel like I am walking in his shadow. Rather, I know that I am walking alongside him, sharing space with him in the world of poetry, if ever so slightly. It is amazing and humbling to have a poet of his stature as a father. He always spoke of his faith in my potential, and my hope is to fulfil that potential, and preserve his legacy, which is more important to me, in many ways, than my own writing.

Suppose I were a Shooting Star
I would want to be seen
That would be my only meaning
What is there after all
In shooting across the sky
And being burnt up…
                                 (‘The Eternal Ego Speaks’, from Ezekiel’s Poster Poems)
 
My father loved the stars
There was a surge in the twinkle in his eyes
Like a gently rising ocean tide
When he spoke of the stars,
Shooting stars were his favorite…
 
(From ‘The Many Things My Father Loved’by Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca)

UK: Kavita, Thank you very much for this enlightening interview.  Your father will always be remembered for his eclectic verse and his dynamic poetic sensibility. Best Wishes with your writing and future poetry collections.
 
KE: Thank you Usha. I have enjoyed this conversation with you.    
 
An excerpt from Kavita’s memoir, about Jewishness, has recently been published in the October issue of SETU magazine.[4]

 

[1] Nathan Katz, Who are the Jews of India? (California:  University of California Press, 2000).

[2] Published in Indian Literature (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, July / August 2020)

[3] Harbinger Asylum (Fall Issue, 2020)

[4] https://www.setumag.com/2020/09/banana-lane-childhood-memoir.html