HANSEL ON A LEAD

My uncle with Hansel

Couldn't find a picture with Hansel at their feet, but he was there!

Papa, 

everyone you love will be there.

I tell you this, not because I want

to comfort you, but because I know

it is true. I felt them;

they were waiting, excitedly, 

embodying patience

and the immediacy of joy. 

I am theirs as much as I am yours - 

and surely, because you have lived 

twice as long as I, 

the abundance of those awaiting you 

will far exceed mine. 

Papa,

everyone who loves you will be there.

You don’t believe me?

Ok, let’s try it this way - remember

when Hansel sat between you and Ma

on your wedding day? 

A dog is a blessing, a dog can be a guide

even in the afterlife.

Imagine, then, Hansel awaiting you

at the gates. Imagine Nina Simone

singing I wish I knew how it would

feel to be free - to you, Pops,

except she would stop halfway through,

because you wouldn't have to imagine it

any more.

Shaista, 2025

My grandmother holding Dad's face - she adored and respected him.

Lovebugs

My mother is always beautiful - and most radiant on this day of all days

..

Shaista, 2025

It's Open Link night over at DVerse, and sometimes a prompt is necessary for a tired poet... it seems all I can manage to be jogged into doing a thing, and even then, just about. The prompt was on abundance - meaning food - but love is an abundance of food, of sorts. I wrote this poem for Dad during a poetry workshop knowing he'd been feeling a bit low that day, knowing I would see him immediately afterwards and I could tell him to try not to hate the thought of leaving, of saying goodbye, because everyone who loves him will welcome him to the other side. But of course, that's not fully true is it? Because the ones who are on this side love him even more fiercely than anyone anywhere in any dimension. Most especially the radiant wife he managed to snag for himself a few glorious decades ago. They made beautiful memories on that day, which have lasted a lifetime. It's a tricky business, this loving and being loved... He's ok, for now. It's his mind that makes it a dance with the devil. Long hours in the particular darkness only the blind inhabit. His greatest desperation is finding the next audiobook - any good recommendations to keep his mind occupied?! An abundance of audiobooks - stories galore - that would be the dream abundance for Dad...

THE BEND IN THE ROAD

We thought it would come quietly,
the final bend in the road;
we shored ourselves up, with
pots of tea, evening crackers
and Sunday nights in Downton Abbey.

Seventy-four years ago,
you walked down the aisle with me;
a pair of jaundiced eyes wouldn't keep
you from marrying me.

Sometimes the morning light
catches the emerald in my ring;
my fingers catch the chords of notes
you liked to hear me play.

Here we are, you and I,
a litte stuck today -
I, tucked up in our bed,
and you, in your room,
many miles away.

But the lamp is on,
and when tomorrow comes,
beside you, I will stay.

I wrote this poem last year for my beloved Mary on John's 95th birthday. These are wrenching times for Mary, because she is separated from John, who is too ill to live at home anymore. Five days after their wedding John left to be with the RAF, but then he came back, and then the children came, and then, and then... life... all of life. And then one day Mary met my father, who was a medical student of John's at Addenbrooke's, the same hospital I now haunt. And then years later she met my mother. More years passed. And then my brothers and I. I was fifteen and my life has been the richer, the more beautiful, the truer for her friendship. Lucky, lucky me. 

linked to dverse poets open night...

FAITH (the other side of the coin)

Renoir

If I were to marry
it would surely
be springtime in England;

The birds would sing sweetly
all morning and
                     evening
The sun would shine brightly
                  but ever so gently;

My feet would step lightly
on a carpet of daisies...

White as the blossom
pure as the dove,
My heart full and golden
with love.

- Shaista Tayabali, 2013

Young Woman Picking The Fruit Of Knowledge, 1892, Mary Cassatt (for magpie tales)

SEPTEMBER WEDDINGS

As for man, his days are like grass;

he flourishes like a flower of the field;

for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,

and its place knows it no more.

- Psalms 104.3

This weekend there were four weddings I was invited to. FOUR! What is it about the second week of September? As it turns out, everything! The most beautiful, balmy weather... all sunshine and summer. But you know how it is with weddings - numbers! And a guest like myself is hopeless. I never know how I'll be nearer the date, so I am always amazed and flattered to be invited, and then horribly woebegone because I cannot RSVP with any confidence. In Grenobles, Letchworth, Cornwall and Manchester, confetti has been flung and vows exchanged. In Cambridge, a little tired from hospital shenanigans, I received a card from Teresa, a Twitter friend, which made me laugh and the words inside energised me so much, that instead of bemoaning my fate, I decided to have a Day Out.

Chocolate ice-cream in my paw, I trotted along, avoiding the patter of the punt sales, stopping to listen to Besame Mucho crooned by a busker, taking in the glorious sights of The Search for Immortality: Tomb Treasures of Han China at the Fitz (the jade! the dancing clay figurines! the wickedly nifty museum guards who watched me like a hawk so I couldn't take a single sneaky picture!) and then, would you believe, I saw a newly married couple! You do have to peer through the gates of Peterhouse, and down to the archway, but still! A sighting!

Buoyed up, I spent the loveliest time in Little St Mary's Church (my father's favourite church) and the chapel at Pembroke. 

Psalm 104 was open at St Mary's and Mum read a passage aloud while the sun poured through the stained glass... 

and really, it felt as though I was at each September wedding, at the important part, the vow to remember that although we commit to love each other truly, this day too, like all others, shall pass like the wind over grass, and so we must treasure each other until the wind knows us no more.

Which is really what the Dear Parents do... they know how to treasure each other. Tonight they have swanned off to a wedding reception, sari and suit bedecked, while I, Cinders, tug my forelock and sweep and clean and cook... ah! 'tis a weary life I lead... (er... well... or I might just watch the new episode of Downton Abbey snuggled up with a mug of tea!).

If (only a love song)

If I dreamed a dream
and that dream was you
I would pray that I dreamed again.

If I schemed a scheme
of incomparable lies
Would you recognise the truth within them?

If I am the bow
that loosens the arrow
Are you the shield or the cushion?

If I am the sugar
in your cup of tea
Would we need a stirrer to sweeten?

If I write the song
and you play the music
Would the words need to be spoken?

If I was a stream
and you were the sea
Forever I'd flow to you unbroken.

- Shaista

This poem marks my 200th blog post. Everyday, somewhere, marks a day of auspicious happenings. Today, one of my oldest childhood friends is donning her red sari as I write, and with her hennaed hands, she will accept a ring, and with her hennaed feet she will walk seven times around fire, and pray.
May their sentiments be auspicious. May they live a graceful life that is full of mutual love and warmth. May they be able to see for a hundred years, live a healthy life for a hundred years and listen to the music of spring for a hundred years.

Missing the Bouquet, Avoiding the Crush

My glass shall not persuade me I am old,

So long as youth and thou are of one date;

- Sonnet 22, Shakespeare

The first wedding I ever attended was when I was five years old. It was exciting. New dress. I felt important. It was dramatic too - my younger brother, in his excitement, slipped off the sofa he was jumping on, fell against a glass table and cut open the skin near his eye. He was three; he still bears the scar. A memorable first wedding.

I couldn't have known it would be two decades before my next weddings, and then they would come in a rush. Something about that alarming age of thirty. All girlish things at an end and boys no longer the annoying presences in classrooms but worse, future husbands to be obeyed and cherished. I don't know if there is something wrong with me (apart from the hungry Wolf of course) but I don't seem to be able to see him anymore. And when they (the blushing brides) throw the dreaded bouquet over their shoulders, it's all I can do not to run and hide. Maybe I am a coward. But why would anyone want to catch a bride's bouquet? Why??

Husband, if you're out there, you have to find me. And if I am old and grey and full of sleep, it will be entirely your fault.

Meantime, I am enjoying the turbulent freedom of the uncaught bouquets - that deliciously silly teenage phenomenon called Crush. And it's on an actor (eight years younger than me), playing a vampire (eighty years older than me), frozen in time, at the tender age of seventeen... (confused?) and so what if we can never meet? This crush too shall pass, and fast, but not the freedom that goes with it.

And tomorrow, a hen party extravaganza at Chatsworth, where the BBC filmed Pride and Prejudice. You know, the place where Mr Darcy leaps out of his cotton whites and into the (probably freezing) water? Sigh.. literary noblemen, literary vampires, literary perfection... what more does a woman want, thirty years old or not?

Shangri-La

The days pass me by. And I forget to write.

This is the floating world, the Great Artist's Illusion, a dream that is more real to me than the last ten years have been.

I don't pinch myself. I don't need to remind myself to be here, to remember. I am here with every fibre of my being.

I am in the Garden City. My eyes trail bouganvillea, birds of paradise, frangipani everywhere, orange embellishments weaving in between cars, buildings, people.

I am on the sand, in the sea, swimming in the rain.

There were white butterflies at the wedding. There were two yellow butterflies dancing on the angels at the white washed Armenian Church. There are thunderstorms and smiling friendly faces.

As the Singaporeans say.... "Happiness, can? Can! Can can can!!"

My brother had asked me to write something for the wedding, but I found it impossible to do so while in England. An hour before the ceremony though, on the beach, with the sea singing in my ears, I wrote and later recited the following words...

An Island Marriage

We pray for rain sometimes

Sometimes we pray for sun

In between the heavens dance

This game was all for fun

How but in tears and laughter

Can two families become one?

Here by the rocks and butterflies

Here where the palm trees blow

Here our hearts are cradled

by a love that continues to grow

A love lapped by the seas of time

from the Phillipines to Japan

across English borders

towards Indian shores

We gather our prayers together

and send our blessings forwards

to our beautiful married couple

the beloved wedded ones

to my brother and my sister

Maria-Theresa and Irfan.

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.

Where the Frangipani Blows, Only the Cobweb Knows

Feels like rain

hot and cool

swathes of muslin breeze

pour silently

into me

Until thunder comes

and my heart breaks open

great cascades tumble

Out,

where the blue skies

reign

and I am no longer
a prisoner of pain.

19th of May. Ten days since I last wrote. My subscribers and followers are dropping like flies! Should I apologise? I am including a watercolour by my father and an oil on canvas by my mother to make amends. I have been back into hospital for the second round of monoclonals, this time without the supplementary treatment of immunoglobulins. And my body is not happy. I feel frail and fragile and temporary. I am a piece of cheese being grated by a very thorough hand. I am grains of gritty sand.

I am also the sister of a brother about to be wedded. Did I tell you? The wedding that was supposed to happen last year was derailed by my hospital adventures. And now, here it is, almost upon us. Ten days before I leave for a hot hot country. Ten days before I leave these cobwebs behind and find a frangipani me.