The Visitor by Nissim Ezekiel - Summary - Explanation

The narrator notices a crow at his window, cawing exactly three times. It exhibits sinister look in its eyes and posture. It stares the narrator in an awkward manner like it is trying to say something to him. He compared it with "a nagging woman" who dominates with her personality and voice wherever she goes.

The crow's cawing of exact three times hints the narrator that a visitor is going to come over his house. In Indian culture, there is a belief that a crow's arrival marks the arrival of a guest. Believing it, this knowledge of a coming visitor keeps looming in his head while sleeping. He begins to prepare his house to make way for a visitor. The idea of having a guest prevents him to be attentive to his "muddy clothes". He knows that he will have to compromise on his own terms with the choices or preferences of the guest.

The narrator waits all day for his upcoming visitor. He thinks about the belief and wonders if the visitor would be "an angel in disguise" or perhaps, his heart's "temptation" in different form intending to ruin his sleep and comfortable life.

The reality doesn't resonate with his expectations. The visitor comes but he brings or offers nothing relevant to the narrator. He visits the narrator to pass his time. They smoke cigarettes and converse but their talk is frivolous and has no weigh. It seems that the narrator is not interested in neither the person nor his talks.

Now the narrator introspects and comes to know that his expectations were entirely untrue and baseless. He points that our mind has a miraculous power to imagine things which we desire. But the reality is crude and monotonous, a life where he visualizes the drawings in the carpet and the arrival and departure of both sexual fulfilment and seasons. He fails to see the ordinary things in his life.