JANUARY BOOK REVIEW IN FEBRUARY

‘A nightingale sang in Berkeley Squaaaare!' I've been burbling this song all day long, and I have no idea why... suddenly the line bursts off my tongue and into the vulnerable ears of whichever family member is around or on the phone... my grandmother used to sing with a tremulous treble she assigned to the throat operation which cured her of nodules. The operation destroyed the strength of her singing voice, she said, but I liked her trills and quivers. I like appropriating that quiver; it makes me feel very 1950s...

It is Mum's birthday today. Yesterday, I prepared the traditional Parsi celebratory dessert of rava, sweetened semolina and milk with rosewater and pistachios... I made some fresh milk bread to go with hot morning chai, and late this evening I cooked some figgy chicken with mashed potatoes and sugar snap peas (Dad loves the comfort of mashed potatoes) and on we shall go into the snowy depths of February. Meanwhile, I thought I'd share some of my readings from last month.

The Body Knows The Score by Bessel Van der Kolk has become one of those therapeutic classics along with Gabor Maté’s When The Body Says No. I found it a compelling read for the most part except where certain therapies were only available under almost laboratory type conditions. The last quarter of the book was therefore interrupted by my next reads, but Van der Kolk is so compassionate, I would absolutely recommend the book to anyone who has suffered trauma in any form.

Azadi by Arundhati Roy is a a very slim volume of essays, including ‘The Pandemic is a Portal’, the brilliant piece Roy wrote upon India being shut down with a four hour grace period. Can you call that grace? No, indeed. And while you’re reading Roy, take a look at Zadie Smith’s Intimations, another beautiful slim volume of essays - both writers are masters of their craft. 

Whenever I can’t put a book down, I am always amazed and gratified that my eyes can withstand the brief marathon. It is always a testament to the author - I felt this way about Deborah Levy‘s The Cost of Living, which is the second memoir in her living autobiography series. The memoir is a response to Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, and is full of poetic energy, and the feminism of starting over after the failure of a long marriage.

Nikesh Shukla’s Brown Baby was also a memoir I did not want to put down. Writing against the grain of despair in Britain's divisive society, which regularly displays its prejudice, Shukla answers complex questions asked by his young daughters. Innocent enough questions, difficult to answer with ease and hope and the promise of joy. And yet, Shukla finds the vein to draw that hope from.

And lastly, my beloved Eva Ibbotson’s A Company of Swans and A Countess Below Stairs, rounded off my first month for the pandemic new year, with humour and a little dance in my step. 

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?

THE ART OF ASKING (Book Review)

I have just returned from a week in the Algarve, Portugal - I am slightly woozy with exhaustion and the particular effects of intense sun on a lupus body. I feel parched and floaty at the same time; also satisfied and enriched with love and learning. It was a family holiday. Our first grown-up sibling holiday, with four children. It was hectic. And as with all the best holidays, I had a book to retire with, to curl inside, every night.

The Art of Asking is relevant to all of us, artists and non-artists (if any of us are non-artists, which I suspect we aren't - everyone makes art and beauty somehow, in some way) because we are all afraid of rejection, of being turned down, or most poignantly, because we simply don't know or can't imagine what we can ask for. We want, but we don't know how to ask for it, whom to ask, where to look for help. In my life, dependent as I am on so many people for love and support, worrying about how I will finance myself in some future universe where I am alone and hoping The Books will manifest themselves, I am learning to ask. To be unafraid. To Take The Donuts. Palmer tells us of the recent literary anecdote that has 'rocked' the lovers of Henry David Thoreau - the magic of Walden has been dimmed for some because of the discovery that Thoreau was not quite as alone and self-sufficient as his book implies. On Sundays, his mother and sister brought him a  basket of freshly baked goods, including doughnuts. He took the donuts (American word, American spelling).

Take the Donuts, Palmer pleads with her readers. Take the help. Ask for the help. And then watch the dots connect themselves in your life. Watch the net of loyalty, trust, compassion, understanding, love, tighten. We need each other. Especially when we think we don't. Especially when we are writers, and the expectation of our imaginary audience is that The Book will simply write itself while we are on an island, locked away in a shed or disconnected from the pulse of human chaos. Artists need help: food, shelter, money, hugs, perspective, inspiration, friends. Asking for help is part of the art. Offering the help is part of the art. One cannot exist without the other.

I love this book, but if it's not your thing, here is the book condensed into a thirteen minute TED talk that rightfully went viral...

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Amanda Palmer: The art of asking

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SHAISTA'S BOOKS

This year begins the sixth year of my blog Lupus in Flight. Six years! I have never been so conscious of time's passing and her markings as I have this year. It feels a little breathless all of a sudden. It feels as though everything has already happened. Everything that truly matters is already in place. I was a curly haired child with goober glasses only yesterday. Tomorrow my nieces will turn thirteen, my cousins will celebrate their silver and gold anniversaries, my school friends and I will look into each other's eyes and shake our seventy year old heads in wonder. How? When? we will say...

My body hurts today. I stop, breathe, look deeply for the site of hurt, but I can't quite separate it. Hurt is always difficult to isolate. Remember the scene in Amélie when the little boy's marbles, hard won in the playground, burst out of the pockets of his uniform and to his horror, roll away? Never to be gathered. The best moment of his life becomes the worst, the unforgettable tragedy. That's how it feels, sometimes. All my precious marbles are in place, tucked safely into pockets of my soul, but my body's cells and organs are threatening to tear the seams, spill everything out. I rely on you to remind me we are all connected by the red thread and nothing that once was found can be lost.

So it is with my books. The last time I read a book all the way through in a few sittings was in 2012, at the start of my Masters. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, in case you were wondering. Since then, another glaucoma operation has put paid to my ability to read with any comfort at all. I can still read but I find myself picking at the tops of books, first chapters, beginnings... And then hurriedly gathering another to me. I have read so much and want to re-read so many, but there is always more and more to read. Social media is battering away at my eyes with its continuous streams of articles. All so interesting, so much entirely unnecessary. I must choose between this and that, but which to choose? Either I disengage or try to keep up.

Stop the clock for a moment and celebrate what you have read, Shaista, is what I tell myself. So a week ago I started a new blog - a library is what it intends to be. A reference of books I am reading, have read, crave. The title is simple - Shaista's Books - no Latin words here. Just a Persian one. I have already written four posts so will you stop by and take a look? The posts will be linked to the top right hand corner of this blog so you can always access the other blog. I am often asked what I'm reading or if I have books to recommend; the new blog is the beginning of my answer. At any rate, it's an experiment, just as this blog once was!

ONE MORNING LIKE A BIRD

Isn't that a great title? I can't claim it - it is the title of a novel by Andrew Miller. I discovered the book in my brother's library, alongside Hilary Mantel, Haruki Murakami and Ann Patchett. My brother has eclectic taste; literary and popular fiction in equal measure. I try to work my way through his library when I am in Singapore, but I find my ability to concentrate on any kind of fiction narrows and disappears in the heat and nowness of that alternate universe.
There is always time for Frida, though (not part of my brother's library!)...

I manage to catch a few hours here and there, reading, writing, in cafes around the city. I have discovered, to my horror, that I am an exceptionally slow writer. I seem to build so little progress that I question my existence, my raison d'être, every day. My MA results thrum around the corner. And when I know, then?

I promised I would report on the leopard suit: it was worse than I predicted. Rafa tore into a river of tears. Suddenly he had no hands. He had paws. He had fur in his mouth. And it was no fun at all. He wanted to be a polar bear. I discovered that the paws could be unclasped and his hands freed but by then it was too late. The leopard suit was not for wearing in Singapore heat. Once he was out of it though, he was fine… and the leopard became a game again. Very Calvin and Hobbes.

Today I am on English shores and in my wrist, a cannula. A venflon. A blue butterfly needle. I was in hospital for 12 hours and since I have another infusion tomorrow, the nurse suggested I leave the needle in. There are daffodils springing everywhere and the cherry in our garden has bloomed into puff pastry softness, but I am too tired to do more than nod at them. One morning, like a bird, I flew away from the sun and landing, forgot I had wings. But then I closed my eyes and felt them, folded, beside me.

Tempus Fugit... when you're On the Radio!

So.... I was just...you know... On The Radio today :) I know I should have said something, but I was worried I might do something embarrassing like an Oscar or Grammy shout-out... "I just wanna thank God, and my Mom, and Everybody! I wanna thank Evverrryyyboddyy - y'all know who you are!"... but fortunately I didn't.

I arrived at the same time as my co-st... wait, can I say co-star? Or is that a bit diva-ish for radio? My co-radio-show-person was Inbali Iserles, the author of The Tygrine Cat. She is a Proper Published Person who is on a promotional whirlwind at the moment, as opposed to yours truly. I have to thank Jane Wilson-Howarth for suggesting me to the producer (there's my shout-out!). The subject was World Books Day, and the importance of reading, and the process of writing; but I also talked about Lupus, and the support I have received through this blog (and that's my second shout-out). Liz Rhodes, the presenter of the Chat Room said I was a natural for a first timer and would I please come back? Why not, says I. I'll come back :)


photo of self with Riz, by Angel C. Edward

I wave goodbye as time flies past me. I am the train station of sisters, bidding farewell to the rapidly departing figure of a brother. Rizwan left for Cape Town, South Africa, yesterday. Onwards, to the next challenges, surprises and deepening of the learning curve. Meanwhile, I am putting together my personal statement to the Patient Care Trust, to support the consultant's application for Rituximab. So I bow gratefully to this day of smiling and enjoying a moment to remember.