ABOUT A HORSE

About a Horse

The reins put me off. That direct link to slavery. 

A master designing a halter especially for his slave. Adjustable.

And I think the mare knew this. And sensed I was no leader. 

Or maybe she forgot about me, light-boned girl child on her 

inverted lap. All she heard was the lowing of a distant cow, 

and some nascent memory of her own made her bolt. 

It’s always been this way. I signal weakness.

You don’t need to be human 

to know I am scared of you. 

You can be animal too. 

There were many of us there that day.

But when it was you bolting, and me 

clinging on, my fingers in your mane, my thighs 

gripping your haunches, where did they go? 

Where were you going? 

How did we survive?

The irony was this: we had come to the end of our time 

together. We had had our neat and tidy

trot around the rough red tracks, and now we were gathering 

to part. My brothers had had their gallops (they preferred 

gallops, I did not; you were chosen for your sedate pace)

and I was ready for solid ground

but

I was tied to you: my feet in your stirrups. I was already leaning, 

arms outstretched for the lifting up, over, down

when you decided to run.

How long do horses live? You were a hill station, holiday 

treat horse. You were real; there is a picture of us. 

I was always scared. You were always gentle. 

Until that day. 

I wish I could remember your name. But what then? 

You never knew mine - did you?

Did I call out your name when I begged you to 

stop? You heard nothing, it seemed, only wind,

and whatever was driving you on. Did you hear

me scream, Bachao! Bachao! because I could see 

hill station women, babies wrapped snug, safe 

in their mother’s arms, and I was, you were,

thundering further and further from mine?

It wasn’t my mother who saved me. Or a stranger’s. 

It was you. All I had to do was hold on

until you ran out of fear, and I heard your heartbeats

allargando, adagio, adagissimo. Last week, I thought of you 

during a Beethoven concert, and talked about you 

in the interval, and tried to convey something of our ride 

into nothingness and how everything became clear 

when you finally cantered to a halt.

He found us there, your trainer, but I can’t remember my rescue. 

You were docile by then, chewing wild grass by the verge, 

acting as though nothing had happened,

as though you often ran for your life, and to your 

death: a ritual

you practiced for some final victory.

© Shaista Tayabali, 2015

Entered in dverse poets pub for their Open Link night and will also be published on herstory blog.

ON MY MOTHER'S PALATE

It begins with my mother. Food always begins
with my mother. It tires me when people ask
if I can cook a curry.
As if all we eat is curry.
As if a country the size of a continent
could ever, only, would ever, only,
feed itself on curry.

I began to hate that word long years
ago. When it boxed my mother in.
When there was never room to explain
she is Parsi. Zoroastrian. A portraitist
describing food on a plate
the way she carves paint onto canvas.
Her palette is sometimes pastel, and
sometimes oil; a mix of ochre (mustard or rai);
coriander for greens: peas, lime, okra, French beans;
purple aubergines.

Eggs for any day, any possible way:
her grandmother (and my grandmother)
both believed in butter.
Generations of Julia Child doppelgangers.
Girlhood was for sali, salty potato matchsticks;
sev mamra, rice puff popping,
chocolate ice cream for Sunday mornings.

Now, on special occasions, or just for love,
hours of building biryani, sifting, sieving daal,
and preparing every roti.
Pomfret if she can find it, lightly fried with salt and pepper.
And on the side, cachumber.
Cachuber? (Here the rare parental disagreement.)
Every birthday garlanded with a carefully burned
white palace of semolina, milk, sugar, petals,
raisins. She calls it rava or ravo, depending.

A small tribe, the Parsis, in a vast civilisation;
in a country swimming in flavour, they make their meals
as moreish as my father's people do. The bedouin
desert tribes still thrum beneath the meat
that hangs off girded steel.
You have to garment your fingers
to really taste your food, and share a single thali
without disturbing the portions.

When I was a boy, he begins, but the memory is too much
for a cold November day in England.
I remember, he tries again, his fingers curling,
savouring mutton as it melts, paya, haleem,
falooda with chiku, thick buffalo cream.
It is May when he speaks, gulmohar season.
In the heat, scarlet tiger claws watch the drip of mango
run down his chin - King Alphonso, the best -
and bursting her stays, sitaphul - Custard Queen of apples.

Quinoa is recommended to the girl with the wolf
disease: mashed avocado, maca, kale, apple cider vinegar.
Cacao helps to sweeten spinach, chia, goji,
but even as I juice and blend, my heart belongs
somewhere else, with someone else's palate.

In her conservatory, she tends bougainvillea and hibiscus,
coaxing Indus valley plants to befriend their cooler companions.
And up from her kitchen, magic weaves her spell.
Food never tastes as well
as when my mother makes it.

(c) Shaista Tayabali
a dverse poetry prompt

THROUGH A GLASS, LIGHTLY

Death
is just a game
of hide and seek

Artwork by Jack Vettriano via magpie tales

Now you see me
Now you don't

Look for me
and you will find
somewhere
in the galleries of your mind
a memory

Set it free.

Look up and smile -

The face in the window
is me.


© Shaista Tayabali

When I was little, England was many things, but every year it arrived, in a practical fashion, in my aunt's suitcase. Ladies' thingamies for my mother from Marks & Spencer, Hello! magazines, endlessly fabulous sweeties (the swirly lollipops!!) and clean fresh tidiness. Many relatives came to the Big House in Bombay, from various parts of the world including England, but my Aunt Saida, living in Belsize Park, smoking the odd cigarette with the grace of Kelly, was particularly fascinating to me. She was a single mother from the early 60s onwards, and the loss of her husband from a massive heart attack, so early in their marriage, always gave her the air of a Woman Who Could Manage Anything.

Oh The 70s

When I first came to London as an impressionable fifteen-year old, sans parents, I loved watching her park, and just avoid swearing at the difficulty of finding a space. I learnt how to make a ready meal from Waitrose or Sainsbury look appetising - toss a salad! I learnt to keep her bathroom neat to her standards (terrifying!) and watch a woman enjoy a glass of wine/ sherry/ whisky and a deep profound drag of tobacco while dissecting life, other relatives and the intricacies of her relationship with her only sister. Her hazel eyes could go misty with emotion or daggers angry given the right conversation - yet she always maintained that elegance and dignity that defines certain women.   
Aunty passed away today after a sudden heart attack. A full life, of course, packed with Drama. Her death marks the passing of the last of my Father's siblings.