Poetry Analysis: Nissim Ezekiel’s “The Professor”

This satirical poem can be aptly termed as a monologue, as the professor speaks and the listener does not say a word. Just as in “Goodbye Party for Miss. Pushpa T. S.” the poet mocks Indianisms in English, and adaptation of the language to adopt to the native language structure.It highlights mother-tongue interference. It caricatures the geography professor, Mr.Sheth, as he converses in English with one of his former students. A professor is the one who teaches, and should be in proper command of the medium he utilizes. Therefore, it is indeed ironical.
Far from pertaining to any academic subject, the Professor showcases his family achievements. He is indeed boastful as he poses his sons as social trophies to be displayed, as he asserts:

Are well settled in life.
One is Sales Manager,
One is Bank Manager,
Both have cars

He states that though he is healthy, he is retired. Therefore he projects retirement (generally) not as personal choice but something born of compulsion. He shows himself to be an exception. The poet also mocks the Indian tradition of having rhyming names for their kids. ‘Sarala and Tarala,’ he says, are married. He puts this forth with an air of satisfaction. In Indian society, the end-point for girls is (considered) to get married. Boys, on the other hand, are meant to have (or rather project) high-paying jobs. Thus both the sexes are victims of society. The poet yet again jibes at Indian English when he says:

You won’t believe but I have eleven grandchildren.
How many issues you have? Three?
He makes a string of mistakes in grammar and usage as he states:
Other also doing well, though not so well.
Every family must have black sheep.

Though he advocates family planning, he does not seem to adopt it. Indians are also obsessed with the use of the present continuous tense instead of simple present tense:

We are keeping up. Our progress is progressing.
Old values are going, new values are coming.
Everything is happening with leaps and bounds.
I am going out rarely, now and then

His choice of words is quite humorous. It appears to be a direct translation of the native language, with the same structure and tone. At the same time the poem is stuffed with cliches and insipidity. The tone is serious, though subject is trivial as with the mock-heroic style. Indian English does have its stock usages as the speaker earlier asks: “No issues?” Their conversation does not even verge on academic topics. Though the poet utilizes a number of figures of speech, the language is ineffectual, ungrammatical and unidiomatic.

The professor that he professes to be neither proves to be a good one academically, nor a morally supportive one, as he is incorrigibly egocentric, obsessed with his own matters. The tendency of Indians to exaggerate (or use hyperbole) idiomatically for emphasis is also apparent:

-Now you are man of weight and consequence.
-Everything is happening with leaps and bounds.
-Our progress is progressing. -This year I am sixty-nine.”
-You were so thin, like stick.
He resorts to the Indian mania of comparing people to objects:

You were so thin, like stick,
Now you are man of weight and consequence.
That is good joke.

And of course, it is a good joke. Indians resort to vulgarisms unknowingly in their endeavor to sound sophisticated:

If you are coming again this side by chance,
Visit please my humble residence also.
I am living just on opposite house’s backside

© Rukhaya MK 2012

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