I listened to a lovely poem. You too should.

I have often written (like here) about the problems that I encountered, and continue to face, because English is a second language to me.  With the rare exceptional people who have a flair for languages, most of us reconcile ourselves to some aspects of the second language that we simply cannot master.

But, hey, the wonderful thing is that we are fluent in a second language.  What an accomplishment!

Back in the old country, the English language is an integral part of urban life.  Urbane is measured by how much the English language is used!

In such a setting, there are people who want to be in, even if their English proficiency is not up to par.  And there are people who look down on those who lack proficiency--I used to be one of them, sadly!

Once you, dear reader, understand this context, you will be able to appreciate and enjoy the poem “Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa T. S.” by Nissim Ezekiel.

A note on Nissim Ezekiel. 

As with almost every aspect of life, here too I was ignorant.  I had no idea about a Nissim Ezekiel. 

A Google search led me to this obituary tribute from 2004:

Nissim Ezekiel, who has died aged 79, was the father of post-independence Indian verse in English. A prolific dramatist, critic, broadcaster and social commentator, he was professor of English and reader in American literature at Mumbai (formerly Bombay) University during the 1990s, and secretary of the Indian branch of the international writers' organisation PEN.

Ezekiel belonged to Mumbai's tiny, Marathi-speaking Bene Israel Jewish community, which never experienced anti-semitism. They were descended from oil-pressers who sailed from Galilee around 150BC, and, shipwrecked off the Indian subcontinent, settled, intermarried and forgot their Hebrew, yet maintained the Sabbath. There were 20,000 Bene Israel in India 60 years ago; now, only 5,000 remain. Most of Ezekiel's relatives left for Israel; he served as a volunteer at an American-Jewish charity in Bombay.

This part sets it up well for “Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa T. S.”

After 1965, he also began embracing India's English vernacular, and teased its idiosyncrasies in Poster Poems and in The Professor. In the latter he wrote: "Visit please my humble residence also./ I am living just on opposite house's backside."

I would rather that you listened to the poem.