Background Casually is an autobiographical written by Indian poet, Nissim Ezekiel. The poem is divided into three phases of poet, childhood life, marriage life and about his writing career. Background Casually was published in poet’s collection “Hymns and Darkness”.
Background Casually Poem By Nissim Ezekiel
Summary of Background Casually By Nissim Ezekiel
The story of poem begins with poet, poet had great passion for poetry writing since his childhood. But physically he was so weak that anyone could scare him. In childhood, poet calls himself a mixture of three personality traits, quiet, rascal and a mixture of clown.
Everyone used to make fun of him due to which he was not able to eat, sleep and play properly. When poet was a child he don’t even know how to fly a kite. The poet was born in poor Jewish family, he was sent to Roman catholic school to study where Christian, Hindu and Muslim used to make fun of him.
He was intelligent in study but as poet was from Jewish caste he was treated very badly by everyone. They make fun of his family by telling them a killer of Jesus.
In school, Poet was the only person who was reading Bible thoroughly and later on he was awarded with Prize for it. Muslim boys were so jealous of poet that they beat him harshly. The poet cannot able to fight with those Muslim boys as they were very strong. One day, boys cross all their limits and started scaring poet with sharp knife.
In poet’s family everyone used to do prayer on every Friday evening. My parents scolds me that I’m not focusing on religious duties nowadays. When I come to an age of 22, my parents feels like that I should go abroad for higher studies.
As my parents had no money to sent me abroad, they took a help of family friend to send me abroad. I went to England for studies and there I took a room in basement for rent. I had three friends in my room which is me, my poetry and poverty.
Time passes in London but poet had no friends in London even after spending 2 years there. Finally, poet comes into a contact of woman who shows him is true men identity. After some time, poet realizes he made no progress in London since 2 years. As poet was only w wasting his time in London so he decides to return to India. Afterwards, poet returns to India but he does not feel like home in India.
He can’t accept India as his home because he was only bullied there. In India, poet gets married and changed his job after marriage. After marriage, poet realizes that he had made a big mistake. The poet’s Hindu friends have not changed they still treat him like they treated him before. It is because poet belongs to lower caste family so Hindu never accepted him equal to them.
In third part of poem, poet talks about his poetry career like how he started writing poetry. The poet had one ancestor who served in British Army. When poet get know that he has an ancestor who served in British Army as a Major, he was not able to sleep at night because he was having nightmares at night.
But those bad dreams ends up giving good words to poet which he uses in his poetry. The poet had such a beautiful words in his dream that he uses in his poetry. At first, I did not know what to write and how to write and will readers understand my poem or not. Later on, he started writing his poetry carefree. Through writing poems, poet also learns how to commercialize his poems.