Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca is a poet, teacher and the daughter of Nissim Ezekiel, widely regarded as the father of modern Indian poetry in English. Kavita means ‘Poem’ in Sanskrit. Born in Bombay into a Bene Israel family, Kavita grew up in multilingual family, encouraged to respect the many faiths in her community, and where her father made a deliberate choice not to follow the wave of Bene Israel emigration to Israel. His reason: if everyone goes, who stays and does something for this country? That question runs through this whole conversation.
Kavita now lives in Calgary, where she writes and teaches. Her poetry draws on her Bene Israel heritage, her multilingual childhood, and the kitchens, synagogues and village visits that shaped her sense of who she is. In this episode, she reads her poem Give Me Oil in My Lamp, which quietly captures what Jewish identity can look like when it has nothing to prove.
Nissim Ezekiel (1924-2004): Indian poet widely regarded as the father of modern Indian poetry in English. Born in Bombay into a Bene Israel family, he published his first collection A Time to Change in 1952 and went on to define a new idiom for Indian writing: rooted in the everyday, sceptical of abstraction, deeply Indian and specifically Jewish at the same time.
Bene Israel: One of the oldest Jewish communities in India, traditionally believed to have arrived on the Konkan coast of Maharashtra over two thousand years ago, possibly following a shipwreck. The community developed distinct traditions, including Marathi as a communal language and the malida ceremony.
Aliyah: Hebrew for ascent, and a word used for immigration to Israel. Following the Partition of India, and through the 1950s, a significant number of Bene Israel families made aliyah, reducing the Mumbai community considerably.
Konkan: The coastal strip of western India running through Maharashtra. The traditional homeland of the Bene Israel community and the setting of the shipwreck legend that forms part of Bene Israel origin stories. The village of Alibag, which features in Kavita's poem, sits near this coast.
If this conversation connected with you, these episodes are close neighbours:
A Jalebi and Challah Sandwich (Season 1, Episode 2): Penny interviews Eylan about his own Bene Israel and Ashkenazi heritage. The place to start if you want the context behind this episode.
Memory as Resistance (Season 2, Episode 7): Eliaz Reuben-Dandeker, Bene Israel historian and artist based in Israel, on preserving what remains of Bene Israel material culture and memory.
Being Seen Matters (Season 2, Episode 1): Yaffa Judah on her Bene Israel, Moroccan and English heritage, and the work of making mixed Jewish identity legible in British communal life.
Identity is Overrated (Season 1, Episode 7): Dr Ophira Gamliel on Yemeni heritage, Asian Jewish communities, and the politics of Jewish languages.
Nissim Ezekiel's work is collected in Collected Poems 1952-1988 (Oxford University Press). This Times of India article celebrates his centenary.
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