Nissim Ezekiel’s poem “Night of the Scorpion” will always be remembered fondly by generations of Indian school students, particularly those from the ICSE stream. The poem’s multiple themes of good against evil, superstition versus reason, and love conquering everything ( “My mother just said/Thank God the scorpion picked on me/And spared my children”) were not only simple to understand but also easy to grade.
The vivid imagery of village life conjured up by Ezekiel (“I remember the night my mother/ was stung by a scorpion.”) is lost on most readers. Ezekiel’s childhood memories and his community’s roots in the Konkan coast villages inspired this poem (“Ten hours/of steady rain had caused him to crawl/beneath a sack of rice.”), which is based on Ezekiel’s childhood memories and his community’s roots in the Konkan coast villages.
Nissim Ezekiel (b. 1924-d. 2004) belonged to the Bene Israel (children of Israel), the largest Indian Jewish group on the subcontinent, who is best known as shalwar tellis or Saturday oil-pressers in the villages of Raigad district (which includes the north Konkan coast). This is a nod to the community’s traditional village occupation as oil pressers, who didn’t work on Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath.
