The Patriot
I am standing for peace and non-violence.
Why world is fighting fighting
Why all people of world
Are not following Mahatma Gandhi,
I am simply not understanding.
Ancient Indian Wisdom is 100% correct,
I should say even 200% correct,
But modern generation is neglecting-
Too much going for fashion and foreign thing.
Other day I'm reading newspaper
(Every day I'm reading Times of India
To improve my English Language)
How one goonda fellow
Threw stone at Indirabehn.
Must be student unrest fellow, I am thinking.
Friends, Romans, Countrymen, I am saying (to myself)
Lend me the ears.
Everything is coming -
Regeneration, Remuneration, Contraception.
Be patiently, brothers and sisters.
You want one glass lassi?
Very good for digestion.
With little salt, lovely drink,
Better than wine;
Not that I am ever tasting the wine.
I'm the total teetotaller, completely total,
But I say
Wine is for the drunkards only.
What you think of prospects of world peace?
Pakistan behaving like this,
China behaving like that,
It is making me really sad, I am telling you.
Really, most harassing me.
All men are brothers, no?
In India also
Gujaratis, 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?
But you will visit again
Any time, any day,
I am not believing in ceremony
Always I am enjoying your company.
Commentary
Nissim Ezekiel, a Jew who lives in Bombay, is possibly India’s greatest living poet1.
He’s most famous for his wry commentaries on contemporary India - often written in an exaggerated ‘Indian English’ - note, for instance, the overuse of the present continuous tense in today’s monologue. (Or is it that much of an exaggeration? I meet people who talk like that all the time…).
Today’s poem is in many ways typical of Ezekiel: a wry view of patriotism mixed with some fairly sarcastic political commentary. It appears to have been written around the time of the infamous Emergency in 1977 (which was invoked by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi - to suppress her political rivals, according to some).
That particular Indira regime was marked by lots of corruption, a ‘20 point program’ for regeneration, the forced sterilization of people (to implement a ‘one family, one child’ rule mooted by her power hungry and vicious son Sanjay Gandhi)…
… all as seen through the eyes of an old pedant gossiping over a cup of lassi (sweetened yoghurt) with his neighbor. Also, note the dig at the ‘unity in diversity’ which is official Indian policy. India is a huge mix of several races - most of which speak different languages, wear different clothes …
All in all, though, a refreshing change from blood and thunder jingoism.
— Suresh
Thomas adds
[Note on Indian English]
Like most hybrid dialects, Indian English2 has its own curious set of syntactical structures and odd coinages3. Usually, these result from over-generalizations of rules that hold in the vernacular; for example, many Indian languages use doubled verbs to indicate an ongoing action, hence phrases like “world is fighting fighting” in today’s poem.
Other often-seen idiosyncracies include the following:
“I am simply not understanding” - as Suresh pointed out above, the misuse of the continuous tense is rife in India. And in this poem. “modern generation is neglecting” - another common mistake, the omission of the object of a transitive verb.
“Too much going for fashion” - ‘too much’ is by way of being a universal modifier in Indian English; I use it very often myself <grin>. “Other day I’m reading newspaper” - Hindi doesn’t have articles; hence either their complete omission as in this sentence, or their replacement by numbers, as in “You want one glass lassi?”.
“To improve my English Language” - This one’s a classic: the use of the phrase ‘English Language’, where just ‘English’ will do, is widespread. “One goonda fellow” - Nouns are often used as adjectives, as also in “student unrest fellow”.
“Lend me the ears” - when articles are used, they’re as likely as not to be used incorrectly; as also in “Not that I am ever tasting the wine”. “All men are brothers, no?” - The interrogative ‘no?’ at the end of the sentence is common to many non-native speakers of English.
Please note that I’m not trying to pick holes in the language of today’s poem, nor am I poking fun at Indian English; rather, I’m trying to point out how brilliantly Ezekiel has managed to capture the essence of the latter in the former.
Incidentally, linguaphiles and/or Indophiles might be interested in Hobson-Jobson, the definitive reference on words of Anglo-Indian origin, available online at http://www.bibliomania.com/Reference/HobsonJobson/
Also, the latest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary has a supplement on Indian English; sadly, it isn’t available for public access online (as far as I know; I would be happy to be corrected on this point).
Moreover
Both Martin and I first read Ezekiel’s poem in an anthology titled ‘Panorama: A Selection of Poems’, which we had to study in high school. The choice of poems is astonishingly good - there’s a lovely mix of the famous and the obscure. Highly, highly recommended.
— Thomas
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Suresh goes on to ask, “Is the man still alive? He turned eighty a few years ago”; to which I reply, yes, he’s alive, but he suffers from an advanced case of Alzheimer’s disease and is in institutional care. ↩
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The usual compound form is ‘Hinglish’, a portmanteau of ‘Hindi’ and ‘English’. Truth to say, though, there are almost as many forms of Indian English as there are Indian languages, which is why I’ve chosen not to be more specific in my nomenclature. ↩
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Odd, that is, to native speakers of English. To Indians, they sound perfectly natural: witness my astonishment on finding out (just a few months ago) that ‘black money’ [4] was not a phrase in currency [5] elsewhere in the world. ↩
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Martin DeMello · 29 November 2000
One mistake - Hinglish != Indian English. The former is a blend of Hindi and English, freely intermingling syntactic and lexical elements from both. The latter is a dialect (or several) of English, influenced by various Indian languages and certainly with the tendency to lapse into Hinglish, but distinct from it.
The poem is an example of exaggerated IE, and apart from the odd loanword has nothing to do with Hinglish.
martin
Arindam Mukherjee · 20 February 2002
The interrogative -no? at the end of a sentence including the interrogative -yeah? is pretty common among people in london -native english speakers
Arindam Mukherjee
Ashok Gupta · 2 July 2003
Hello,
My first reaction ,sorry to say was negative.It is almost as if the poet was making fun of the Indians ( more so Gujaratis) who speak English differently.
Not all get equal opportunities in this world.Some of us who have struggled through the regional/local language of instruction system do not speak English as well as the ones like Nissim who must have studied in English Medium schools.
The peom has no message or poetic content and in my opinion is mediocre Ashok Gupta
PS.If anyome knows where to publish English Poems in India( print or net) ,please let me know.I will be obliged.
Albert Barton · 12 January 2004
Hate to do this, but, yes I do agree with Ashok Gupta that this meandering spoof on India’s Political Problems and Indian English does seem to be rather useless, apart from providing the odd laugh from westeners who would, not recognising the subtle satire, be convinced that the Jew was trying his best English… all the same, I beleve if you haven’t got the hang of a language, you shouldn’t try it al all, Mr Gupta. I have been severely admonished for my amateur tries at Marathi by cops, and my hindi always causes huge amounts of laughter, even when, i’m slowly begining to find out, it’s perfectly understandable. People are happier laughing at me rather than trying to help me out with that particular language, it seems.
shringa_murali · 13 March 2005
Mr issim ezekiel died ion the 9th of march,2004, contrary to your info that he is in institutional care.he died at the age of 79.
Anand Sengupta · 25 August 2005
Can you please let me know where to buy the book ‘Panorama - A collection of poems’. I have been looking for quite a while now, and haven’t been able to locate it.
Thanks,
Anand.
Vidya · 22 October 2005
This poem was published in the anthology “Contemporary Indian Poetry in English” edited by Saleem Peeradina in 1972 under the title ‘Very Indian poem in Indian English’. The very title indicates that the poet has made a conscious effort to take a dig at the typical Indian attitude of feeling proud about one’s ‘knowledge’ of English yet being critical of the English culture. The greatest hypocrisy of the average Indian lies in subscribing to Gandhian ideals but not following them in one’s life. Ironically, unlike the speaker in the poem, Gandhi was a man of action but this person is “All words and no action”!
Nissim Ezekiel stands apart from other contemporaries due to his persistent use of irony in all poems. One of those rare Ezekiel poem that lacked irony and was rather positive was ‘Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher’, where he draws a brilliant analogy between these three roles. The above poem is an instance of Nissim’s detachment from India. All who are familiar with the genre called Indian Writing in English would know, how many writers felt alienated in India due to an identity crisis. Ezekiel’s attitude is not that of an anglophile feeling scorn for the seemingly ‘inferior’ Indians, but the frustration of an Indian wanting to break out of the hypocritical attitudes in society. The use of wry humour in this poem reflects the poet’s sarcasm as he observes the people about him carefully.
Instead of being critical about Ezekiel’s ways one must enjoy the poem for having so brilliantly captured the idiosyncrasies of an average Indian. I am sure all Indians endowed with the capacity to laugh at their own follies would enjoy this poem as a harmless joke only and not take offence! However one must not forget that Ezekiel did start feeling at home in India, and his sarcasm had reduced to a great extent as he grew old. I am quoting from his poem, Background Casually,
“The Indian landscape sears my eyes.
I have become a part of it.”
But whether he was really content to be a part of it would continue to be questioned.
Vidya Venkat.