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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] Early life Ezekiel was born on 14 December 1924 in Bombay (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 BA in Literature from Wilson College, Mumbai, University of Mumbai. In 1947-48, he taught English literature and published literaryarticles. After dabbling in radical politics for a while, he sailed to Uganda 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 Gabriel in 1952. In the same year, Fortune Press (Uganda) published his first collection of poetry, The Bad Day. 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 Ten Poems. For the next 10 years, he also worked as a broadcaster on Craft and literature for All India Radio.

The poem is written in free verse with varying line lengths and no rhyme. The first part is long and full of activity - the scorpion's bite and the reaction of the villagers. The second part - the mother's reaction - is just three lines long. It was written in his early age and is hence like a child reading out a diary note.

"Night of the scorpion" is a poem that can be understood at two levels. At one level, the poet describes how, on a rainy day the narrator's mother is bitten by... [continues]

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