Ruminations: Scorpion Encounters by Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca

Scorpions might sound like a strange choice of subject to write about, but somehow, this creature has had a way of crawling into my life story. For such a small creature, it occupies a larger-than-life position. Some things just are like that, and so I feel compelled to write about them. My late father’s best-known poem ‘Night of the Scorpion’, which I am currently translating into Spanish, is what really got me thinking about my different scorpion encounters. Another reason I started sensing the hidden dominance they occupied in my thought process was when a fellow poet from Israel sent me a Hebrew translation of ‘Night of the Scorpion’. Each time I read that poem, or someone mentions it, I am reminded of the many scorpions I have encountered. My memory of these encounters is still fresh, vivid as the day they occurred.