CARL GUSTAV IN MY GARDEN

Sometimes we hear the train, Dad and I, as we perambulate the length of the garden. Sometimes we  hear only wind. I see the tops of trees, ours, but not ours; they could be found anywhere, in any other clearing.

May is rounding out her month and soon June will be sent our way. Is your honeysuckle out? We have the scent of Syringha, planted for Shelagh...

I woke up this morning with a burning left eye, and now even after the sun has set, the rice is on the stove, and the song thrush is harmonising her final duets, I have the look of a badger about me.

Delftia some weeks ago, and now Klebsiella - ought I to take comfort in the strange fact that even my colonisations of bacteria have poetic names? My immunology nurse mentioned the word ‘strange’ over and over again. ‘These are strange times,’ she said. Strange, strange, strange.

My heart does funny loops and a bell is tolling like an echo in some distant yet ever near place. Do you hear this bell too? The Great Bell in Buddhism is a reminder to return to ourselves. This quieter bell seems more sinister, pulling us away from ourselves. To where?

I am reading Laurens Jan van der Post on his friend Jung. My dearest Colette sent me her copy of ‘Jung and the Story of our Time’. I feel I have already loosened the binding of this 1976 Penguin edition as I carry the book around with me, and move forward, and return to passages, and read aloud to Dad. ‘Hopkins! Schweitzer! Meister Eckehart!’ He hails these old friends as they are mentioned. Reading of the great ‘thuses of life’, what the fourteenth century Dominican mystic Meister Eckehart called istigkeit, the ‘isness’ of time and place, what Buddha called tathagata or ‘suchness’ - I am glad of mystery and the uncomfortable comfort of consciousness.

What are you reading now? And does it bring you comfort?

EASY GRACE

My beloved father Chotu turned 80 today. It took him by surprise, the age. Suddenly this strange number. You don't expect 80. Weren't you 40 only a few years ago when your first born arrived, bright eyed and cherubic? And now, four grandchildren… but always, the beautiful Perveen by his side.

Happy birthday Popsy!

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

BLOSSOM ON GREEN GABLES

A week into April and it is beginning to look a lot like summer might, just might, roll her majestic skirts into England.
It has been a difficult year for me so far, and I can't say it has become any easier, but a few excitements have come my way and those have distracted me from the meaner intent of the two warring diseases at hand.

It hasn't been the easiest of times for my father either. Sometimes the endless darkness catches up with him. En désespoir, he decided to listen to audiobook versions of Harry Potter and Anne of Green Gables. The Potter hasn't really held him, although he gave his best attention to the understanding of Quidditch. Anne of the gables, the green gables of Prince Edward Island? Now she has of course enchanted him. Suddenly, blossom, and the return of my father's smile. Still a little hesitant, but there is hope. There's always hope where there's Anne Shirley…

This evening I reminded myself of a loyal dog awaiting her beloveds. I kept scurrying to the window to check whether a taxi had drawn up. Not yet. Now? Not yet... The taxi containing several precious bodies of Brother, Sister, Twin Niece 1 and Twin Niece 2. It's the sort of thing Anne was always doing… waiting for Matthew to arrive, waiting for Marilla to decide she didn't mind a girl after all, waiting for Gilbert to wake up and notice the red hair was auburn now. Definitely auburn...

BEWARE THE IDES

Somehow it is already the middle of March, the day that did not bode well for a certain Roman Emperor. What would Caesar make of his day of doom transforming into Mothering Sunday? Into cards and flowers and cups of tea, lovingly made…

Didn't the year only just begin? Was I really in India only a couple of months ago? I feel as though I am lagging behind my own world, and that I shall catch up with myself at some later date, later year.

My mother is painting the bannister and the doors with fresh coats of white paint. Yesterday I walked with my father at an impressive clip, his long strides eating up the overgrown grass of our garden, my feet scuttling to keep time with his. Nothing on the cherry tree, I pronounced. And today, suddenly, he informs me it is in bloom. Snowdrops and daffodils are enjoying their brief coincidental meetings in clusters around the path that leads from my little den to theirs.

For four months I have had a strange occurrence with new eyedrops dilating my pupils. I have mini cataracts in both my eyes too. Cataracts! Sometimes I don't know whose body this is that I am inhabiting. Sometimes I wonder what other shapes my life could have taken had I not destined myself for the writing life. Would I feel less distraught every time my eyes stumbled? How unimaginative I am that I cannot be anything but this addicted wordsmith for life.

But that's just this life. Next life, I shall return as Keeper of Hedgehogs or An Ambassador for Pandas. A Pambassador.

A GAME OF PATIENCE (IN MEMORIAM)

The great vast network connects

and divides us - time stretches us thin;

we give years to the knowing,

the unravelling of others -

in the end, when change comes,

we know nothing.

We learned nothing yesterday

that we remember today

but for the sense of

once upon a time, when we began.

© Shaista Tayabali, 2014 

Image: A Game of Patience, 1937, Meredith Frampton via Magpie Tales 

An Elegy to Peter Lapsley, a Stranger, and Chaitan Maniar, a Friend

For years I had been wanting to write an article for the Patient Journey section of the BMJ - the British Medical Journal. Finally, I wrote to the editor, a Peter Lapsley, and explained my desire to create awareness about a condition that still befuddles doctors and patients alike. Peter was lovely in his email and promised he would consider my piece even though a long list of articles were waiting to be published. Only one other patient had written a lupus journey, so I started to write mine.

Then I began my MA and the article slipped out of my mind.

A few weeks ago I recalled it. MA done, I remembered Peter and although I was deathly embarrassed about the time that had passed, I crossed my fingers and sent the article to him.

No reply.

And then, finally, a rather chilly one line message from anonymous, saying Peter had died last year and could I contact the current editor of the BMJ instead.

Dead. Just like that. Time passes. And you miss a person's life altogether.

So I googled Peter, just to see. Just to say hello to his ghostly internet spirit. And here he is. Doesn't he look nice?

And I discover two things: the first is that he was a literary giant in the field of fly fishing. And second, Peter had lupus. Peter died because of leukaemia but having lupus would have made him more fragile.

And I find myself wishing he had told me. It would have made me send my article pronto. It would have given me that special fellow feeling we lonely lupus patients need. But of course, he was a professional medical editor. Did he want to, though? Was he tempted?

Isn't it funny how we know death is ever present, can claim us at any time, and still we don't act. We truly live, believing life is endless, forever, a patient river we can swim in at our discretion. Are we the most arrogant of species, or simply the most hopeful?

Death claimed my father's oldest and best schoolfriend a few days ago. A prominent lawyer in Bombay, Chaitan Maniar was something of a Shakespearean hero. Noble in the true sense of the word. He was a literary giant too, in a nonchalant way - a man who could quote poetry and philosophy and the law as easily as he breathed and walked. I am trying not to grieve for him, because I was his friend too, and true friends leave nothing undone. This picture is from the last time he visited, two months ago, kissed by evening light, with his best friend's son and granddaughter…

FATHER, ON YOUR BIRTHDAY...

who would have thought you would be a grandfather twice over? That your glorious, mischievous son would be a father twice over? I feel sure Rafael knows how lucky he is to have baby Isabella or Sissybella as he likes to call her... someone to play with and tease and employ in mild acts of destruction, someone to point the finger at knowing she will never hold a grudge, no matter what.

And who would have thought you would have the other beloved son, the First Born as you like to call him, waiting to add to your cricket team?

Once, it was just the five of us, with no plans other than to enjoy each other, invent new games, and look forward to sharing hours of reading in silence... Once, we even fit in the same cot, all three of us...

Darling Popsy, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways... Infinity to infinity, and all the days beyond... here's to the ever unfolding of the beautiful family you keep helping to create and recreate...

HOME AGAIN, TO THE SUN!

Yesterday I scoffed chocolate cake and watched the sun play in the fields beyond the hospital grounds. I nosily asked questions of a young woman just starting out on the same treatment... her heart was beating at 120, her bp was dropping, hot flushing - I couldn't help myself - I marched over, trailing my infusion, and said, "Don't let them increase the rate!" "But I feel so guilty," said she, "it'll take ages at a slow rate!" "Hmmf," said I. "So what? I am always the last in here, because I insist they go slow." I looked beadily at her husband. "Does she need to rush back?" "No, no, no!" he cried, hastily, warned by the martial gleam in my eyes. "She can take as long as she likes!" "So," says I. "All settled then." When the nurse bustled over to change the rate again ("Shall we increase to 400?"), my new friend said, "I'd like you to leave the rate at 300, please."
I gave her a thumbs up and shimmied back to my chair. Who knew I could be so bossy??

Home again, mes amies, to the bright, hot, divinity of a summer's day. The morning after my first infusion is always perfect. I dragged my yoga mat out into the garden and did a single Surya Namaskar - any more and I might have found myself back on the wards, but a single salutation to the sun was my gratitude.

Later on today, when my lymph nodes gnarl and gnaw, when the fevers start and my heart kicks up an unruly beat, I shall remember the deliciousness of a single moment. I don't mind the pattern of sun and shade. I hold them both in the palm of my hand.

Father, who is baking his tootsies in the sun, has just bellowed for a coke float (vanilla ice-cream scoops in a glass of coke - it's an Indian thing)...

Ah... we sure know how to live it up, here in the Shires...

p.s. have just received comments on the coke float not being an Indian thing - a universal thing, in fact. I stand, happily, corrected. 

Happy Birthday Dr T!

Last year, on my father's birthday I wrote a post called The Cloths of Heaven. It began, 'On his birthday, my Father says his wishes have come true...', but knowing that he had always wanted five children, I wrote, 'one more marriage should do the trick'; never imagining that a year later, with one more marriage around the corner, my father is about to have his dream five children. (Dear Husband-to-be, you don't quite seem to be included in this accounting. Sorry about that.)

One son and future daughter, just walking the cheetahs, in Africa, you know how that goes...

One son and daughter, just, oh you know, hanging loose with your grandson...

And me, freshly B cell depleted from hospital, tag still on wrist, returned home to find my mother had (clearly) missed me so much she started a new portrait... it's very faint still, only two days old... but maybe now Dad, if you could just add the sixth child to your wishings and hopings, I might snag him with this work-in-progress! Although why do I have the sneaky suspicion that your birthday wish will involve a second grandchild instead?!!

Ah well. Happy Birthday Dr T! A happy birthday indeed.

Cheers!

Edward Bear

Church bells and birdsong

fill the air

I am slicing mangoes,

waiting for someone

I am waiting for words

to come;

I am waiting for sadness

to fall away

like red rose petals

in the hot bright sun.

I am feeding the birds

So more will come.

Something is moving

in the high birch tree

Where light and shadow meet

Someone is speaking to me.

I listen, carefully –

“I am always here,”

says that voice to me.

And to the quiet place

where the silence will be,

“Good night, good night,

As sweet repose and rest,

Come to thy heart,

As that within my breast.”

It was Dr Dawn Owen's funeral today, and I recited this poem, and gave a little speech to the gathering about how much Dad used to tease her. Sometimes, while reading an article from the newspaper, she would stop, look up over her spectacles and suddenly say, "This chap is twittering on. Shall I continue, or move on?"

"Ride on!" father would say, or more succinctly, "Next!"

She was his reader for five years. He misses her. "The newspapers are piling up!" he warned, as she lay in hospital. "Bully," she responded.

Her brother James gave the most gloriously moving rendition of Chopin's Raindrop, Prelude 15. And then later, in the Church hall, several of her illustrations and books on parasitology were displayed. Most significant among them, was a paper she delivered titled 'Some observations on the disease of Brunus edwardii (species nova)': a serious paper delivered at a conference discussing the traumatic physical and emotional conditions suffered by the species Brunus edwardii, otherwise known as Edward Bear (more commonly known as teddy bear). Here is a sample:

Case 3: A 10 year old bear, which had been owned successively by three siblings. The normal yellow coat colour had changed to a dirty grey, there was extensive alopecia which had progressed to "threadbearness" over the ears, nose and limb extremities... Old age and persistent handling with transport by one limb were the main reasons for the chronic debility, for which there is no satisfactory treatment.

The parasitologists and zoologists present at the conference listened intently, nodding cleverly, until the bright shiny pebble dropped. They'd been had! 

She received a standing ovation.

photos: Plant-talk.org,  flickr.com

Lost and Found

For a few years now, my father has been sent voluntary social workers, who kindly lend their time to helping father 'get around'. I remember the first gentleman; he was Buddhist, and spent much time discussing Pema Chodron and mindfulness in between demonstrating the art of filling a cup of tea with boiling water, without burning one's fingers. Difficult art when you can't see. Then there was a lovely lady who had just returned from Bali, on a silent yoga retreat. She discussed yoga nidra, which father is now entirely adept at. But it is Helena, the most recent of helpers, who has really changed the world outside the doorstep from Out There in the Darkness to Adventureland!

So despite it being November and misty and the walk a carpet of sodden leaves, my father has been taking to long, long walks Out There. And returning home, tired and unscathed. Then yesterday... past the first bridge, the round ball on the end of his white cane snagged in one of the hedges, and Dad lost his concentration. Scratching about, examining the sharp exposed point, he was interrupted by a female voice who floated into his space, retrieved the renegade object and fixed it back onto the cane. Et la, on he went. Next, some oddly shaped object in his way; he found he could lift it up, and so he flung it away. Then there were cats eyes and metal posts. (Well, someone sauntered up and told him so. "Sorry mate. Road works here.") And on past the second bridge where my father, unphased, decides to investigate the open gravel courtyard of the Great Shelford church. Something large and metal in his way again. A car? Out of the silent church, but now where? The curb is too wide. Can't be the pavement. A man appears. He directs my father back to the church and disappears. Just at Hope Cottage where the red phone box stands, my father is accosted by two young, well-spoken police officers. "Er... excuse me, but.. er, where exactly do you wish to go?" Father, at his most urbane, simply replies, "Oh I'll be making my way home soon enough." But The Police insist they deposit the wandering soul to his doorstep immediately. "Please, don't trouble yourselves," says Dr Tayabali, polite as ever, a touch amused. Really rather wishing to get back to his walk.
They escorted him home. I wish I'd seen my mother's face when she answered the door! But she recovered very quickly and of course, as is her style, invited the police in for a cup of tea.

Dad reckons he mistook the road for the pavement. The easiest thing in the world to do. They feel the same to one's feet. The road away from and to home is a series of obstacles and requires much concentration. Much like life really. Sometimes it seems easy enough to prepare and equip oneself for the unknown. And sometimes, not.

The Cloths of Heaven

On his birthday my father says
his wishes have come true.

He asked for our happiness, and lo, the cloth was embroidered in just such a way.

He asked that love would come as it had for him, and it did, and his youngest son married with just such a love, and to his beloved three children is added a fourth. (Father always wanted five children... one more marriage should do the trick, but two more would be even better!)

He hoped our paths would weave right and true, that our feet would walk on the carpet of our dreams, and lo, the weave is more magical than he dreamed, and he surfs and rides the wave with us, our inextricable traveller and guide.




This is my favourite portrait of Dad -
done by Mum in a style she reserved just for him.

And the Yeats' poem that inspires it all.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

On the Cusp of Knowing

The whole village knows. Yesterday at our friend Victoria's summer lunch party, the impending wedding of a Tayabali son danced from lip to lip like a happy cabbage butterfly drunk on nectar and petal.

Everyone loves a good holiday chat, and who doesn't love a wedding when it isn't theirs to plan?

I danced around, much like that butterfly, in startling green shoes, green hat and a mega watt smile, chirping and twittering and offering green guacamole on toast.

When I tired, I snuck into the conservatory, and drank sweet tea under a bower of bougainvillea. Green and flowers are my battery chargers and I soon flitted out again.

I am making place cards with dried flowers. I find myself greedily eyeing Other People's flowers and rather avariciously creeping my fingers towards said flowers before my mother smacks my fingers away. I am taking England with me - bluebells and daisies, forget-me-nots, primula, sage and lovage. I wish I could take the wisteria. It has never looked lovelier, bloomier; thick with purple scent, dripping with promise, the wisteria is on the cusp of knowing.

Down by the Vicarage, the wisteria are just as beautiful. It has been the home of my father's dear friend Ralph for many years. It boasts one of the most artistic and carefully tended gardens, and there Ralph decided to end his days. The cancer came fast and hit hard, and my father misses the aimless tuneful whistling that burst out of Ralph every time he left our house. "Goodbye, Cho!" he'd say to my father. "Goodbye kid!" he'd say to my mother.

Weddings and whistlings goodbye. It is ever thus.