Those Who Look, Find

I see a goddess in the silver anklet,
I hear music.

Impatiens psittacina, Parrot Flower,
discovered in the Shaw State of Burma, 1889

I saw a man in the rocks,

you laughed!

But you saw lovers kissing,
I only saw the moon.

And you, crying, waiting

for a sign you find,

when you break the rind
of an egg.

Parrot flowers,
and eggs yolked in two,
Keep searching.

The answer is kind,
those who look, find.


- Shaista, 2011

Telephone Meditation

I am awaiting The Call from the Consultant again... it is 1:57pm, the call was due at 1:30pm. Not that I expected it at the correct minute, but you know how you have to be ready anyway? Like an athlete at the starting point, knees bent, ears cocked, heart racing with unnatural levels of adrenaline.

1:58pm... breathing in, breathing out... am knitting two blue stripes into a hat for my nephew, also awaiting the get-set-ready signal to jump out of his heavily pregnant momma... my fingertips are frozen, and I am wearing fingerless gloves as I type...

3:14pm... am writing a potted history about my life, pets, hobbies and favourite telly shows for the radio chat room... (small whoop of joy)..

Venerable monk Thich Nhat Hanh teaches this mindfulness practise for the telephone...
When you hear the telephone ringing you can consider it to be the sound of the mindfulness bell. Every time you hear the telephone ringing you stay exactly where you are. You breathe in and breathe out and enjoy your breathing. Listen, listen - this wonderful sound brings you back to your true home. Then when you hear the second ring you stand up and you go to the telephone, with dignity! That means in the style of walking meditation. You know that you can afford to do that, because if the other person has something really important to tell you, she will not hang up before the third ring. That is what we call telephone meditation. We use the sound as the bell of mindfulness.

6:37pm... I waited three rings. And it was a good conversation. My consultant said she had spent several hours going over my old records, and realised herself just how beneficial this treatment would be for me. She even asked me to participate in reviewing a grant application she has been working on.
Success! High five!

7:30pm... I went to see 'Fiddler on the Roof' performed by the local youth centre drama group.

L'chaim!! To Life!

photo by Traczewska, from Trek Earth

Not expecting, just hoping

A girl

wants to share

her beauty

if she can

but shyly,

trustfully,

and with

the right man.

- Shaista, 2011

Happy Valentine's Day my beloved readers!
And for all my sisters around the globe, from Congo to Kigali and Brooklyn to Bangladesh, may this little poem-prayer find you in a pocket of peace.

Maze by James Jean

Surprised by Joy

"Wie viel ist aufzuleiden!"

- Rilke

In Cairo, Joseph Farquharson

It is howling with wind outside. The bare branches are orchestrating an original work, no doubt in communion with the trees of Cairo, on the Day of Departure. Hosni Mubarak does not seem to hear the orchestrated sounds of revolution, but the wind's force grows stronger regardless. Angelina's flight back to Malaysia has been cancelled 'due to the aircraft being required to perform humanitarian evacuation flights from Cairo'. The wind howls on.

A few weeks ago my brother returned home after visiting a friend, with a book for me. The cover shows a brightly coloured bird sitting on a barbed wire fence, in a concentration camp. The book is Victor E Frankl's 'Man's Search For Meaning', and although I have read and studied Holocaust literature, my instant reaction to it was not dissimilar to a horse, unexpectedly approached. In other words, a high level of anxiety. My mind has been a fragile thing these long weeks of waiting for the consultant to respond to my emails, my basic request for her to view me as more than a case on her desk. She has agreed that I should have the treatment I requested, but on her terms, with twice as many months in between each dose, and at half the usual dose. I am a cost she is cutting. We meet again on the telephone on the 18th of February, when things will be 'reviewed' again.

Pawel Sawicki, photograph, flickr

I determinedly dived into Frankl, because I love my brother, and because I would always rather be brave than cowardly. 50 pages into it, I started to seriously consider the possiblility that I was on the brink of a mental breakdown. For five long minutes I entertained this reality. Then I re-opened the book, and read on. And on page 52, the words 'Et lux in tenebris lucet' - and the light shineth in the darkness. The guards are insulting Frankl as he attempts to dig a trench in the bitter cold of dawn; he is silently conversing with his wife, trying to reason himself out of suffering, when he suddenly has the strong feeling that she is present, she is there... 'Then, at that very moment a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on the heap of soil which I had just dug up from the ditch, and looked steadily at me'.

The night before Rizwan brought me the book, I had written and published a poem on Rilkean anxiety. On page 86, Frankl quotes Rilke himself, "Wie viel ist aufzuleiden! - How much suffering there is to get through!" It surprised me with joy to see the connection. And I have continued to be surprised by joy. The next day as I was printing out a letter to the consultant, an email arrived in my inbox from the editor-in-chief of a medical journal asking me to write a few articles on lupus for an issue of IGI global. And last night Dr Jane Wilson wrote to ask, would I like to be on the radio? Would I like her to speak to the producer of the show about me? Er... yes!! Hey, I think I'm going to be on the radio!! And today, flight cancelled, means an extra day with Angel!

Surprised by joy - impatient as the Wind

I turned to share the transport - Oh! with whom

But Thee...

Love, faithful Love

- Wordsworth

Angel

I felt an angel

tread gently on my heart,

And perceiving numerous ripples

withdraw her tender touch.

I heard an angel

whisper gently in my ear,

And beholding disbelief

feed silence to my fear.

The angel saw me cry

and smiled despite my grief,

For the angel saw diamonds

falling from my cheeks.

An old poem for a new time, for all of you, who make me happy.
And for the angel living in our house right now, teaching me guitar chords, the beginner's guide to salsa, the meaning of Malay songs about stars, watching movies from the dark (Black Swan) to the light (Walt Disney's Tangled)... and most importantly, making my brother happy.
Happy birthday Angelina! May a thousand million lanterns float towards you...
and a birthday promise to you all... if the old dreams die, I'll light new ones, for that way lies the art of happiness.

Eva Ibbotson

It may surprise you to learn that my favourite author (in the whole wide world) is Eva Ibbotson.
Is, I say, even though, on October 20, 2010, she died.

The thing is, it came as a complete shock to me to read the word Obituary alongside her name, because she wasn't supposed to die. Ever. Or at least not yet. Thirteen years I've been dredging up the courage to write to her, and failing miserably, because all I wanted to say was "I love you!" "You make me so happy!" And other toe-curling embarrassments.

And then a few days ago, I did what I've been doing for years - I 'searched' for her, online. And... I know. It's not about me. She was a wife, a mother, a grandmother. But I loved her all the same. She always wrote happy endings for her children's books, inspite of, or maybe because of her own childhood landscape of Hitler, and leaving Vienna, her parents' divorce and living with elderly (moustachioed) aunts; her adult romances are the essence of poetry, but practical, in the way only women can be. And when I was 18, and lupus had just confined me to bed, my father scoured the Little Shelford library, and the book he discovered and carefully brought home to me, was A Company of Swans by Eva Ibbotson.

She had lupus too, you know. Only she was 80 when it struck. And it made her snarky in interviews. (My love for her only deepened at this point, as you can imagine.)

So why, oh why, didn't I write to her?

I think... I didn't write... just in case... she didn't write back.

And I realise I have tried to be amusing, because she always was, because this is not an obituary. But I am only pretending. The truth is, I am grieving, for someone who was never really mine. But her words are with me, which is all that matters. Right? At least, that is what I shall tell myself, for the rest of my life. Is there anyone you wish you could have written to? Is there anyone you did write to? And, if so, was it a good idea?

"You read what you've written, and you realise that something is still there. Because, you know, you see yourself tottering around, dropping china, having to go to bed at eight, but somehow something of your self remains, and you have written it." - Eva Ibbotson



I love you Maria Charlotte Michelle Wiesner, otherwise known as Eva Ibbotson! You make me sooooo happy!!!

Interviews with The Independent, July 2004

and The Guardian, 25 August 2004

from The Horned Book, For Eva

The Find

Things fall apart
at the slightest touch
New words cannot be found
only the old, looping
round and around.

Insanity can be found
here,
and here.

Pain, of course,
everywhere.

Reading Rilke,
I try to breathe
but am drowned
in his sea of beauty.

His sea, mind,
not mine,
And for the first time
I find myself
bitter.


- Shaista Tayabali, 2011

Horrible, horrible word, bitter. Poor Rilke. Poor me! But there it is.
The sculpture is Eve, by Auguste Rodin, 1881. You know how deeply and tempestuously Rilke and Rodin were entwined. It says of this piece ...'Resigned, sorrowful and tentative, Eve contains her emotion. She embodies a pessimistic view of human fate.' I am not pessimistic, just in pain.
The model for Eve left abruptly, so Rodin finished a second Eve. It is more refined. Too shiny and perfectly polished for me, though. I like the rough-hewn version.

35

Strange days these,
that pass like water
beneath bridges.
The leaves that float
gently on its surface
may be swept away
by breezes
but the water flows on forever.

Strange face this,
that confuses the mirror.
Although the being viewed
is only one
the reflection is of two
hearts,
smiling eyes
and mouths.

Happy 35th Wedding Anniversary Perveen and Chotu, dearest of parents!

But when two people are at one in their inmost hearts, they shatter even the strength of iron or of bronze. And when two people understand each other in their inmost hearts, their words are sweet and strong, like the fragrance of orchids.

- I Ching (12 BC)

Of Kings and Swans

There are two blockbuster cinema houses in Cambridge, but only one tiny Picturehouse Arts Theatre, nestled behind a missable doorway, next to a very bolshy pub. It contains the pulse of the best art house movies ever made. I didn't bother to see a trailer of The King's Speech. I knew it would be brilliant. What I didn't expect was to laugh as much as I did! Every performance is refined, nuanced and timed comically to perfection. I wanted to watch it again even as I was falling into the story. I had a killer migraine, and I was hungry (such queues for popcorn and glasses of wine - posh theatre!), but I wanted to be nowhere else. Colin Firth as King George VI, the anguished, unfortunate sufferer of a stammer, and Geoffrey Rush as his invincible, irreverent Australian speech therapist, conduct their relationship so magnificently onscreen, that they must have the most sublime friendship in real life too. Go watch if you can. And you can!

The migraine passed. And the ballet moved in.

Black Swan is a microcosm of New York City; intense, sexy, claustrophobic, unpredictable and at times, extravagantly violent. (I hid my face away several times - pathetic, I know.) It is also beauty personified; the kind that is rooted in the classical sense, of Natalie Portman's exquisite face, her disciplined hauteur, and the rare occasions when she tremulously smiles; but also in the terrible avenging beauty of ambition, of demanding bodily perfection, and its ensuing psychic chaos. There is no simplicity here. And I don't think anyone will associate the ballet with fluffy white tutus anymore. This swan grows black scales!

p.s. Happy 35th anniversary to my beloved parents and Happy Burns night to you all :)

Sufi Princess, Braveheart Spy

She was born in Moscow, in 1914, daughter to the famous Sufi pir, Hazrat Inayat Khan. She was a descendent of Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, and therefore, royalty herself. She died at the age of thirty, at the hands of the Nazis, tortured and shot dead on the floor of Dachau concentration camp.
That part was to be expected.
That she would be instantly forgotten by the British government for services rendered, was not. Her last word was 'Liberté!' before the guards brought her down.

Her name was Noor Inayat Khan. Her gentle features are evident in the image of her playing the harp. She studied at the Sorbonne and published her first book, The Jataka Tales, in 1939. As the long shadow of Hitler gathered a storm of war, Noor could not bear to stand by and watch, helpless. Despite being part of the mystical Sufi tradition, and personally aquainted with Mahatma Gandhi, non-violence was no longer a viable option. In London, Churchill's secret army were recruiting people skilled in languages, and Noor, fluent in French, elegant and sophisticated, underwent the rigorous training of learning to kill with precision and expecting to be killed by betrayal. She was known to the Germans as Nora Baker, her Parisian code name was Madeleine, and until the end, she revealed nothing. Her body bore it all, and her voice held still until that final word escaped her lips. The only word that mattered.

When the statue of Noor Inayat Khan is finally revealed in Gordon's Square, London, 2012, it will be the first statue to honour an Indian woman in Britain - and the first statue of a Muslim. Odette Hallowes and Violette Szabo have had Hollywood revere their lives, blue plaques have been flung up in their honour. Noor, who sacrificed her life for England, has become a footnote in history... because she was a Muslim woman? Or because she intended to return to India after the war to support Indian independence from the British Raj?!

If Noor could wait so long to be recognised, then perhaps my own impatience to be 'recognised' is a little short-sighted. But maybe Noor would prefer her fellow women to be impatient, to act now, to hold true. The consultant wrote me a letter, not exactly apologising for my distress, rather summarising an Action Plan for the future. Since it includes applying for future treatments, albeit at longer intervals, and recognising my need to be involved and included in decisions made regarding my treatment, I feel better. It is a start. A dialogue is always a start.

I think Princess Noor would have approved.