The Railway Clerk is one of the best poems which have come down to us from the poetic pen of Nissim Ezekiel who is highly admired for inculcating in modernism and modernistic trends and techniques into the realms of post-independence Indian English poetry. Poetry to Nissim is wit and humor, knowledge and wisdom, irony and fun, caricature and joke. To caricature and joke is his job. One cannot appreciate without laughing. 

One of Bene-Israeli origin and ancestry, he is a poet of Bombay, urban, city-bred and metropolitan. An alien insider he has nothing to do with Indian myth and mysticism, thought and culture, religion and spirituality.

A fine example of our conversational English, it talks about the way we try to learn the language laboriously. How do we struggle to frame sentences in the paucity of vocabulary, word stock and linguistic traits? Breaking the rules of grammar, we want to speak, try to acquire the language. How do we mumble, fumble and falter in speaking English? Without knowing the language, we want to acquire it. How can we without knowing phonetics and linguistics? 

Here a railway clerk is before us cutting a sorry figure, talking about the hard duty he does and for that what does he gets? Is that sufficient?

Every day he has got to do hard duty from which there is no respite. To be cautious and on the guard is his job. He does not get overtime money too. The wife often keeps calling for money but does not have sufficient money to carry it on the family. Life is hard and difficult. It is strenuous and stressful. The nature of his job is as such that he even cannot earn it extra money. There is no other away of earning, making money. He wishes if he were a bird! He does his duty as per his job. But who is there to admire and appreciate it?  Even though short of time, he sees a film once in a week to keep him happy. He has also a few friends which are but a consolation of some sort. What can they do to him after all?

The first line shows the drudgery and monotony which a clerk suffers from. A railway clerk’s job is a stressful one. It is such a work which is boring and dull as well as you cannot be away from. 

Everyday there is so much work
and I don’t get overtime.

My wife is always asking for more money…
My job is such, no one is giving bribe, …

I wish I was bird…

I am doing my duty,
but who is appreciating?

Nobody, I am telling you…
Once a week, I see film
and then I am happy, but not otherwise.

Also, I have good friends,
that is only consolation.

We do not know who the railway clerk is, where is he from? Is he from the north of India or the south? Where is he posted? Where does the poet meet him?  

The railway clerk’s English is made in India Angrezi which is but a rebuilt specimen. Only the present tense sentences, how can it give scores to the clerk’s English?

If he were a bird, he would have taken flights, he would have tried to take a break. He sometimes thinks about and aspires to be free, but that is not in his lot.