NIGHT OF THE SCORPION

                                                                                                                         Nissim Ezekiel

           

            Night of the Scorpion is a poem written by Nissim Ezekiel who is one of the leading Indian poets. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award. The poem depicts two levels of understanding. One describes mother’s selfless love for her children. On the second level, the poem presents a charming picture of the innocent world of illiterate and superstitious villagers of India.

            The poem opens with the poet’s reminiscence of a childhood experience. One night, when there was a steady rain, a scorpion had crept into the poet’s house. It crawled behind a bag of rice. It stung his mother and went again into the rain. All the neighboring farmers came like swarms of bees. They uttered the names of God to minimize the movement of the Scorpion. They believed that the poison would move in the mother's veins with the movements of scorpion. They began to search for it with candles and lanterns. They could not find the scorpion.

            The poor farmers said that the sins of her earlier birth would be washed away with this suffering  and it would reduce the misfortunes of her next birth. They also felt that the sin gained in this birth would be diminished by this pain. They said that poison would also purify her physical and spiritual ambition. His mother was lying on the ground wriggling her body out of pain.

            The poet’s father was a septic rationalist. He had been trying all kinds of  powders, herbs and mixtures. He even poured a little paraffin upon the bitten toe and put a match. However, after twenty hours the pain subsided. The poet’s mother thanked God, that the Scorpion spared her children and had chosen to sting her.

            The poem, thus, brings out the mother's pure love for her children and also describes the superstitions and ignorant practices followed by the villagers.