Nissim Ezekiel's 'Night of the Scorpion' is the poet's personal account of his memory of his mother being stung

by a scorpion
when he was a child. He begins by explaining that the scorpion had come in because of heavy rain and had hidden under a sack of
rice. Ezekiel uses alliteration to describe the moment of the sting: 'Parting with his poison'. He alludes to evil in the phrase
'diabolic tail', comparing the scorpion to the devil.

The scorpion departed and, on hearing the news of the deadly sting, villagers came to the house. Ezekiel uses the simile 'like
swarms of flies' to describe their number and behaviour. He states that they 'buzzed the name of God' repeatedly, the
onomatopoeia enabling us to 'hear' the constant noise they made. The scorpion is again seen as the devil in line ten: 'the Evil One'.
We can imagine the fear of the child observing the scene, as the peasants' lanterns created 'giant scorpion shadows' on the walls
of his home. Onomatopoeia is used again as the poet says that these people 'clicked their tongues' whilst searching for the
scorpion. They believed that whenever the scorpion moved, its poison 'moved in Mother's blood'.

Line eighteen is the first in a fourteen-line section which recounts the words of wisdom voiced by the peasants in the hope that
the woman would survive. Five of the lines begin 'May ...' and are clear examples of the religious beliefs held by these villagers.
They refer to past and future lives, absolution of sins, the lessening of evil and the hope that the poison will 'purify' the woman's
flesh and spirit. Ezekiel describes how they surrounded his mother; he saw 'the peace of understanding' in their facial
expressions.

Lines thirty-two and thirty-three form a repetitive pattern in which Ezekiel remembers the arrival of 'More candles, more
lanterns, more neighbours, / more insects' as the rain continued to fall. In line thirty-four he makes the first direct reference to
his mother's suffering, telling us that she 'twisted through and through' and was groaning in pain. He then turns to the reaction of
his father, not a religious man but 'sceptic, rationalist'. On this occasion, however, the man resorted to 'every curse and blessing'
accompanied by various herbal concoctions, such was his desperation. Ezekiel describes in detail that his father actually set alight
to the toe that had been bitten. It must have had a profound effect on the poet as a child; he describes how 'I watched the flame
feeding on my mother', personifying the fire. Ezekiel then watched and listened to a 'holy man' carrying out certain rites to 'tame'
the poison. The poison lost its sting the following night.

The first forty-five lines form one continuous stanza relating the event from start to finish. The poem concludes with a short
three-line stanza in which Ezekiel recalls his mother's reaction to her frightening and painful experience. She spoke of it only
briefly, thanking God and saying how glad she was that the scorpion had chosen to sting her rather than her children. This was
the boundless, selfless love of a mother, and these were words which Ezekiel never forgot.

One of the interesting points about the poem is that Ezekiel narrates it from the point of view of a child who was purely an
observer, not involved as the adults were in taking any action. This allows him to relate the actions and words of the peasants and
his father whilst being detached from them. It is an insight into the behaviour of a small community in India where everyone
becomes involved in one family or one mother's suffering, and all gather to witness the event and contribute a prayer. To the
child it must have seemed as though there was a huge number of people, and the night must have been interminable. His
comparison of the peasants to flies suggests that he would rather they had left the family in peace.

The structure of the poem is very free, with lines of varying lengths and no rhyme scheme. The second stanza that ends the poem
attracts attention for its brevity and emphasises the words of the mother and their effect on the son.

Night of the Scorpion: The poet of ‘Night of the Scorpion’ is Nissim Ezekiel who narrates this poem by remembering his
childhood when his mother was bitten by a scorpion. He says that the continuous rain for ten hours had driven the scorpion into
the house, where it crawled beneath a sack of rice. In the dark room, when his mother entered, the scorpion parted the poison
into her toe in fraction of seconds and probably went out again.

The peasants of the village collected in their house in large numbers like the swarms of flies and buzzed God’s name about
hundred times, praying to stop the movements of the scorpion, as they believed that with every movement of the scorpion, the
poison would move in the mother’s blood. So, with the candles and lanterns, they even searched their house to paralyze the evil
scorpion. But he was not found.

The shadows they formed on the wall, too appeared a scorpion to the poet. The villagers prayed that the scorpion stops and the
sins of mother’s previous birth gets washed away that night or her sufferings might decrease the misfortunes of her next birth.
They said this way the sums of evil might get balanced in this unreal world. They called the world unreal as every thing in this
world is temporary and births and deaths keep occurring in a cycle.

They even prayed to god that the poison purifies her flesh. They sat around the mother groaning in pain. There was peace o
understanding on each face as they felt that she had approached her end. The condition was becoming very messy as more
neighbours were entering the house with more candles and lanterns, the insects were also increasing and the rain too continued.

The poet’s father being a sceptic and rationalist person tried powders, mixtures and herbs to cure the mother. However, he also
tried prayers and blessings as it was a very problematic situation He poured some paraffin upon the bitten toe and burnt it. The
priest was also performing his rites to tame the poison. Finally, after twenty hours, the sting was lost. The mother, after getting
cured, thanked god that the scorpion picked her and spared her children.
Nissim Ezekiel (14 December 1924 – 9 January 2004) was an Indian Jewish poet, playwright, editor and art critic.
He was a foundational figure in postcolonial India's literary history, specifically for Indian writing in English.

He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1983 for his Poetry collection, "Latter-Day Psalms", by the
Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters [1].

[edit] Early life

Ezekiel was born on 14 December 1924 in Mumbai (Maharashtra). His father, Moses Ezekiel, was a professor of
botany at Wilson College, and his mother was principal of her own school. The Ezekiels belonged to Mumbai's
Jewish community, known as the 'Bene Israel' . In 1947, Ezekiel earned an MA in Literature from Wilson College,
Mumbai, University of Mumbai. In 1947-48, he taught English literature and published literary articles. After
dabbling in radical politics for a while, he sailed to London in November 1948. He studied philosophy at Birkbeck
College. After a three and a half years stay, Ezekiel worked his way home as a deck-scrubber aboard a ship
carrying arms to Indochina.

He married Daisy Jacob in 1952. In the same year, Fortune Press (London) published his first collection of poetry,
A Time to Change. He joined The Illustrated Weekly of India as an assistant editor in 1953 and stayed there for
two years. Soon after his return from London, he published his second book of verse Sixty Poems. For the next 10
years, he also worked as a broadcaster on arts and literature for All India Radio.

[edit] Career

Ezekiel's first book, A Time to Change, appeared in 1952. He published another volume of poems, The Unfinished
Man in 1960. After working as an advertising copywriter and general manager of a picture frame company (1954–
59), he co-founded the literary monthly Imprint, in 1961. He became art critic of The Times of India (1964–66)
and edited Poetry India (1966–67). From 1961 to 1972, he headed the English department of Mithibai College,
Mumbai. The Exact Name, his fifth book of poetry was published in 1965. During this period he held short-term
tenure as visiting professor at University of Leeds (1964) and University of Chicago (1967). In 1967, while in
America, he experimented with hallucinogenic drugs, probably as a means to expand his writing skills. He finally
stopped using them in 1972. In 1969, Writers Workshop, Calcutta published his The Three Plays. A year later, he
presented an art series of ten programs for Mumbai television.

On the invitation of the USA government, he embarked on a long tour of the USA in November, 1974. In 1976, he
translated Indira Sant's poetry from Marathi, in collaboration with Vrinda Nabar, and co-edited a fiction and poetry
anthology. His poem The Night Of The Scorpion is used as study material in Indian and British schools. He wrote
a poem based on instruction boards in his favourite Irani café.[2