The Exact Name: A Testimony to Nissim Ezekiel’s realisation of Indian Social Panorama

Abstract

Nissim Ezekiel is an acclaimed Indian English poet. He is primarily viewed as a poet with urban sensibilities, a poet with an alien consciousness and a poet with a sceptical eye to Indian codes, conducts and manners. But Ezekiel’s fifth poetic volume entitled ‘The Exact Name’ speaks volume of his ‘sense of belonging’. His feeling of alienation often yields to his native consciousness. The poems in this volume reflect the poet’s awareness of Indian social scenario that marks a step towards his emotional identification with the core of Indian sensibility. Cast in a modern setting his poetic persona seems to be sick with the ‘frightening and sickening aspects of urban life’. He often finds it inconvenient to cope up with the make-belief world of the city and the atheist self of Ezekiel feels compelled to make way to his new self devoted to God in order to ‘calm the self of its disquiet’. His attention so long attached to urban sensibility is directed to some deeper consciousness. The paper in question seeks to locate how The Exact Name offers to readers Ezekiel’s poetic persona delving deep into both urban and rural sensibilities in order to come to terms with Indian social panorama.