Background Casually is an autobiography written by Indian poet Nissim Ezekiel. The poem is divided into three phases of the poet’s life, childhood life, married life and his writing career. Background Casually was published in the poet’s collection “Hymns and Darkness”.
Background Casually Poem By Nissim Ezekiel
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Summary of Background Casually By Nissim Ezekiel
The story of the poem begins with poet, the poet was very fond of writing poetry since childhood. But physically he was so weak that anyone could scare him. In childhood, poet calls himself a mixture of three personality traits, cool, rogue and jester.
Everyone used to make fun of him due to which he did not know how to eat, sleep and play properly. When the poet was a child, he did not even know how to fly a kite. The poet was born in a poor Jewish family, he was sent to a Roman Catholic school to study where Christians, Hindus and Muslims used to make fun of him.
He was intelligent in studies but being of Jewish caste, everyone treated him very badly. People used to make fun of his family and used to say that he is the murderer of Jesus.
In school, the poet was the only person who read the Bible well and was later awarded a prize for it. The Muslim boys were so jealous of the poet that they beat him badly. The poet could not fight those Muslim boys as they were very strong. One day, the boys crossed all their limits and started threatening the poet with a sharp knife.
Every Friday evening everyone in the poet’s family used to pray. My parents used to scold me that I am not paying attention to religious activities these days. When I turned 22, my parents felt that I should go abroad for higher education.
My parents did not have money to send me abroad, so they took the help of a family friend to send me abroad. I went to England to study and there I rented a room in the basement. I had three friends in my room, me, my poetry and poverty.
Time passed in London but the poet had no friends even after spending 2 years in London. Finally, the poet comes in contact with a woman who reveals to him his true masculine identity. After some time, the poet realizes that he has not made any progress in London for 2 years. Since the poet was only wasting his time in London, he decides to return to India. After this, the poet returns to India but he does not feel like home in India.
He cannot consider India as his home because there he was only bullied. In India the poet gets married and after marriage he changes his job. After marriage the poet realizes that he has made a big mistake. The Hindu friends of the poet have not changed, they still treat him the same way as they used to do earlier. This is because the poet is from a low caste family so the Hindus never consider him their equal.
In the third part of the poem the poet talks about his poetry career that how he started writing poetry. One of the ancestors of the poet was serving in the British army. When the poet came to know that one of his ancestors was serving in the British army at the rank of Major, he could not sleep at night because he used to have nightmares at night.
But those nightmares gave the poet good words which he uses in his poetry. The poet got such beautiful words in his dream which he uses in his poetry. At first I did not know what to write and how to write and whether the readers will understand my poetry or not. Later, he started writing his poems without any worries. Through writing poems, the poet also learns how to commercialize his poems.
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