BIRTHDAY TREATS AND RUINS

It's not like when you're 4 and you know exactly what you want your birthday cake to look like, or when you're 9 and you organise a fancy dress party with your cousin because you have a dress that makes your handcrafted wand look perfect, and she has the perfect magician's top hat… it's different now. But still, it's your birthday, so you try to find some magic.

Just around the corner from me, in Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire…

At the entrance, some advice from George Bernard Shaw on birthdays… I'm afraid I disagree with you here, dear GB…

but ah! your writing shed…

Built around a central steep-pole frame, so Shaw could follow the arc of the sun's rays, it was dubbed 'London' by its bearded owner - unwanted visitors were kept away by being told he was 'visiting the capital'… we were therefore surprised to find a telephone above the typewriter, but suspected that was in lieu of a dinner gong - his wife, Charlotte, needing some way of calling her husband in from the land of words. In keeping with the irony of Shaw's instructions to a birthday girl, his house, a paean to Edwardian Arts-and-Crafts days, was closed for modern 'electricals', but the gardens were open and my friends had brought a picnic…

Across from Shaw, the Church of St Lawrence, somewhat newly ruined, and then twist through three kissing gates, take a selfie with sheep, and you arrive at the Apollonian influenced Greek revival church, built at the request of Sir Lionel Lyde, who decreed that 'what the church united in life, it should keep separate in death'. Interesting marriages, the Lydes and the Shaws!

The weather held, the sheep did not leap over the fence to knock the offending selfie-taker, my friends sang 'happy birthday' in church - where it sounded hallowed and melodious - and I even discovered a plaque commemorating a Lieut. Colonel Monier Williams, of the Honourable East India Company's Service, who was Surveyor General of Bombay; also of his son Alfred, ensign in the Grenadier Regiment Bombay Infantry, who fell, at 19, gallantly leading the Storm of The Pass of Nufoosk - a piece of Indian/British history I had never heard of. So I suppose you don't need to be 4 or 9 to enjoy your birthday - you just need the right friends.

IM/POSSIBLE CHANGE: A TEDx TALK BY RIZWAN TAYABALI

Many months ago, while in India, my brother Rizwan agreed to do a TEDx talk organised in Vellore. He had been asked thrice before during his working travels in countries like Laos and Malaysia, but on this occasion he was physically present long enough to put together a brief presentation.

Rizwan is currently the CEO of Make A Difference, which mobilises young leaders to ensure equitable  outcomes for children living in shelter homes. As of today, Make A Difference works with 5000 children living in 83 shelter homes in 23 cities across India. MAD's highly efficient delivery model annually mobilises 400 Fellows and 3500 volunteers to deliver a range of interventions aimed at helping children overcome their challenges despite the circumstances they face. I've met some of these volunteers and Fellows - they have energy, intelligence, humour and compassion in spades.

I have already watched this talk several times and find new inspiration and wisdom - Rizwan speaks not only of social change, but also of the patience required to develop insight and true understanding of any problem at hand. There is compassion here too, which we all need for ourselves and others in our pursuit of making the seemingly impossible possible. Watch.



If you wish to know a little about my brother's work, he can be googled and 'found', but here is a brief summary: he has over 16 years of social and commercial experience ranging from strategy and design, to delivery and implementation of programmes and change, has worked with and advised more than 150 social purpose organisations across the UK, South America, South East Asia and Africa, and developed the first dedicated framework for scaling social impact (which can also be found online/ youtube).

THREE POEMS IN THE STYLE OF EMILY DICKINSON

My tacky heart
Beats too fast -
A Plaything
For my rib cage -

I could give it
To You, if You asked
But You
Never do -

***

Love refuses me Nothing.
Every nook
And cranny Fulfilled;

Love refuses me Nothing -
I have only to ask,
And it is Your Will -

That I Be Satisfied.

***

What more can I ask, Beloved?
What more can I say?
For You have heard
every Word -

and shown me
every Way -

© Shaista Tayabali, 2015

The poets over at dverse suggested we write in the style of Emily Dickinson for today's poetry prompt. So I have… but I also feel the need to post a real Emily D poem, one of my favourites -

You cannot put a Fire out -
A Thing that can ignite
Can go, itself, without a Fan -
upon the slowest Night -

You cannot fold a Flood -
And put it in a Drawer -
Because the Winds would find it out -
And tell your Cedar Floor -

(poem 530, c. 1862)

OLIVER SACKS: THEATRE OF THE MIND

(for Colin Morton)

For months, a post titled Theatre of the Mind: My Oliver Sacks Quandary, has lain in my drafts folder. Today as I come to finally writing about Sacks, I can't remotely recall what my Oliver Sacks quandary was. Note to Self: Make Better Notes to Self.

A few days ago, Oliver Sacks, British neurologist and best-selling author of such books as The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings (which was turned into a film with Robin Williams and Robert de Niro) wrote a beautiful article braiding together birthdays and the periodic table. At the start of this year, Sacks was diagnosed with metastatic cancer and now, having just celebrated his 82nd birthday in style (following the advice of W. H. Auden who insisted one should always celebrate one's birthday, no matter how one felt), he writes of the delightful science in sharing our birthday number with a chemical from the periodic table. I studied chemistry myself at A-Level, and the romance of sharing my birthday with a natural element - dangerous or otherwise - appeals very much to me!

And now, at this juncture, when death is no longer an abstract concept, but a presence — an all-too-close, not-to-be-denied presence — I am again surrounding myself, as I did when I was a boy, with metals and minerals, little emblems of eternity. At one end of my writing table, I have element 81 in a charming box, sent to me by element-friends in England: It says, “Happy Thallium Birthday,”a souvenir of my 81st birthday last July; then, a realm devoted to lead, element 82, for my just celebrated 82nd birthday earlier this month. Here, too, is a little lead casket, containing element 90, thorium, crystalline thorium, as beautiful as diamonds, and, of course, radioactive — hence the lead casket.

I have a brain scan booked for next week, which I managed to wiggle out of once because the radiographer had never heard of the plastic shunt device used in my latest Baerveldt operation - he wanted some time to read up about it and decide if the MRI was a safe idea. Apparently he has done his reading because I have just received my new appointment. I had a funny turn the last time I had a brain scan, which I wrote about in a blog post called Firework in my Eyes. So I'm not wildly keen on another. However, knowing how theatrical and brilliantly inventive the brain is even on an ordinary day, I shall try to channel Sacks and observe, come what may. There are some authors whose entire book catalogue would be worth reading and Sacks is one of them - however, a shorter introduction to him is possible through this TED talk he gave. He really has lived a good and useful life; to quote his New Yorker article: 'Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.'



Link to Oliver Sacks' New Yorker article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/opinion/my-periodic-table.html

WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE? MISS WINEHOUSE?

Sometimes I am compelled to watch a movie. I will make a concerted effort to trek to the arts picture house, buy a ticket and immerse. Last week, I witnessed Amy - a documentary by Asif Kapadia on the singer Amy Winehouse, whose music ought to have made her an enduring legend, but whose descent into drugs and alcohol annihilated body and soul. After an hour and a half, I wondered when the movie would end. When the credits rolled, I realised I hadn't once been moved. I walked out of the theatre and into crowds, into shops. Twice I was asked about my day and I shared my thoughts on the film. I think Amy would have hated the film. She would be humiliated by this remembrance of the very worst of her laid bare for our delectation. It was ghostly voyeurism. 

Later that night, still unable to shake the fog of depression, I began another documentary, this time on Netflix, one that has had no fanfare or billboard trumpeting. Amy has been advertised everywhere, has 97% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, will no doubt earn nominations and awards - this quiet little film streaming only on Netflix was about a gifted black woman. Nina Simone. Critical and public interest in the story of a black woman vs the story of a white woman in the music industry, then and now, is virtually unchanged. Evidence: the recent Taylor Swift/ Nicki Minaj twitter debacle.

Within the first five minutes of Liz Garbus' What Happened, Miss Simone I was in tears. Nina responds to the question: 'What is free to you?' 'What does freedom mean to me? I'll tell you what freedom is to me. No fear. If I could have that for half of my life. I mean, really. No fear. Like a new way of seeing.' When I was in N2 all those many months of 2009, imprisoned in my hospital cell on feeding tubes, cannulas in my jugular, I came across this quote and wrote about it on my blog. Nina's music and lyrics have formed a constant thread in my life from the first year of this disease taking hold of me, because Nina writes about freedom.

She wasn't free. She was young, gifted and black during the most violent times. She wrote about the horror of the bombing of four black children in a church in Birmingham, Alabama in Mississippi Goddam, the lynchings of black men in Strange Fruit, and had a mental breakdown eventually because how could she dissociate from feeling anger for her people, and yet making the kind of music white people would buy? Nobody loves an angry black woman even if her anger is poetic justice. Everybody loves a damaged white woman: Marilyn Monroe, Vivian Leigh, Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse. Simone was damaged too, of course. A manic depressive with a violence in her that was ultimately contained by a prescription drug that slurred her speech and chemically altered her personality. The price of fame for a dream that wasn't hers. Her dream? To be a classical pianist. First black female classical pianist. 

Meanwhile the chemo dripped into me yesterday. In the last hour, a woman on my right had a fit of bone bruising coughing. I hadn't heard anything like it in a while. So of course I turned to her. The cause of her severe lung destroying bronchial trouble? The same drug sliding into my veins. Be careful, she warned me. Stay vigilant. Pass me some of that No Fear, Nina. I need it, as I've always done. 

CAMBRIDGE OPEN STUDIOS EXHIBITION

Continuing with my thread of artistry taking all forms, Wimbledon included, July is the month during which Cambridge artists exhibit their work - usually in their own homes and studios but occasionally in venues that act as surprising galleries. Like the Old Fire Engine in Ely where an artist called Michael Edwards is exhibiting his work. As the daughter of artists, I suppose buying the art of other artists is slightly suspect - but I like the idea of building up an eclectic art collection. One day, one day.

Mum has been using my portrait as her calling card this year. Which means all around the city, I am casually draped on kitchen tables and peeking out from bowls cluttered with car keys and spare buttons. Come visit if you're in the neighbourhood. Only one weekend more before the Open Studios comes to an end for another year. Portraits make great surprise gifts - most of Mum's commissions are for such gifts.

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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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!

AUNTY SHAI!

From far away, the call went up. 'To the hill! It's Aunty Shai!' Mind you, I am on the verge of becoming plain Shaista because my niece Eva is getting suspicious that 'Aunty Shai' is not necessarily my grown-up name…. she does not know that I am not necessarily Grown Up.

It's summer. The bees are out. Honeysuckle balms the air. And in Wandlebury, five siblings reunite in dappled English light…

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