They came in, though not in impressive numbers, to send off a literary legend. A patriarch who was more loved than feared. A teacher who would make his every lecture insightful, every remark valuable. When the literary world unabashedly worshipped cacophonous cronyism, he created a culture of conversation. The colossus departed quietly.Nissim Ezekiel, India’s most famous Anglo-English poet, who passed away on Friday evening, was laid to rest at Jewish Cemetery, Worli on Sunday. Friends and family members, many of them sporting Jewish skull caps, bid adieu to Ezekiel, the czar of poetry culture in Mumbai.Even as his son Elkana turned away photographers (perhaps he carries a grudge against the press for having criticised Ezekiel’s family after the poet fell ill with Alzheimer’s in 1998), Ezekiel’s last rites were performed with great solemnity.Wrapped in unsewn, scent-daubed shroud, the once livewire Ezekiel lay calm on a bench even as visitors sprinkled his body with soil from Jerusalem, as if connecting the departed soul with his religion’s holiest city.Ariel Ezra, a short, middle-aged priest from Jewish Synagogue at Agripada, joined in by some co-religionists, sent a prayer in Hebrew. Malti, the ayah who nursed Ezekiel through his six terrible years at Dr Dias’ Bandra clinic, sobbed: ‘‘He was like my father.’’Strangely, except for two poets (Adil Jussawala and Ranjit Hoskote), the rest of the Mumbai intelligentsia gave Ezekiel’s funeral a miss. His sister Asha Bhende, daughter Kalpana (another daughter Kavita is away in Canada), niece Geeta and nephew Nandu were among those who attended the funeral.‘‘He was my fondest uncle. I remember attending his poetry readings. We were proud of him,’’ reminisced Geeta, who lives in Washington DC.
