Snow Perfect Day

Three days to Christmas. Snow white everywhere. And new flakes beginning to fall as I write. The tree is bedecked. The airports harrassed. My mother is shlepping through the village delivering pressies and cards, in her Eskimo gear. Dad is visiting with his brother. Mine is fast asleep with the flu... after months of travelling around Asia, it's a shock to return to a winter wonderland. Pretty only goes so far. Then, it's just plain cold! So happy to have him home. Hot cold hot cold hot... that's Rizwan with flu. That's me too, without the flu. I was supposed to go in for my second round of treatment, but some mix-up at the hospital means I am now in limbo, not knowing... waiting for the consultant's call, if she calls at all... My soul is in flight, with the peace and blessing of home and hearth and my Big Brother's return, but my body is torn, struggling, trying to decide if earth is worth the fight.

Yesterday was the promised land

where the body found strength

and the soul danced

There was peace for a moment

quiet at the breakfast table.

Then the sun bathed itself  in twilight.

The colours changed

and with the moon the battle resumed.

I am unarmed

as I await my orders,

while another day of stolen magic

lies winking in the promise

of tomorrow.

SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY

I sleep with tablets. They surround me. I try to minimise their lurking presence (lupus makes one a master of disguises). I use colourful scarves, drapes, jewel bright cushions, Neruda, Chanel, the latest Hello! or Elle. Thầy, Sai and Dalai, the lamas illuminate my walls. Friends tell me my room exudes peace.
Tablets, you see, don't speak. They lurk.

On this day, in 1848, at the age of 30, ill health was to take Emily Brontë. Having caught a cold during the funeral of her brother, she died two months later, having refused "no poisoning doctor" near her. My father being a doctor and all, I could never consider any doctor to be 'poisonous'.... but I have had to learn to become robust enough to cross swords (terribly politely, of course) with a long line of medics. The latest subject: sleeping tablets.

Now, I understand, I truly do, the RED ALERT FLAG that the words 'sleeping tablets' arouses in the average being. Successive flashcard: ADDICTION. But according to this medic, the worst of all, are little old ladies (his words) who, mid induced-sleep, go for a jolly little wander, and slip and fall and break. "I know it hasn't happened to you," (he paused, I nearly smiled), "not yet." Not Yet?!!! I've never asked him for a sleeping tablet before. I ground my teeth. I wasn't there to beg. "Sleep deprivation," he sweetly informed me, "is not a disease."
"And you, I suppose," my smile even sweeter, "pass into oblivion the moment your head touches your pillow?" He bowed in acquiescence. "It's about choice, a lifestyle change," he waved grandly.

I am an individual, I remind him. Not a statistic. Nor a morally reprehensible citizen. I was never asked to sign a consent form when the first barrage of drugs were pumped into my body. The steroids that nearly destroyed my sight were described as 'life-saving'. The immuno suppressant that caused needless, endless bleeding, was called 'a magic bullet'.
I stand my ground, and face the doctor down. "We could argue till the cows come home!" he attempts, jovially. But a few blusters later, he pronounced me, "Fascinating!" twice, hastily wrote me a prescription, and sent me packing with the fervent prayer, "We need to find a cure for you soon!" 

Back to the needles on the ward tomorrow for more mabtherapy. And a few good nights' SLEEEEEP!!!!

And who knows, when I wake.... what magic will await? Sometimes a girl just needs to sleep. It worked for Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, don't you think? At least, in the Disney version. Grimm's fairy tales may have brushed closer to the truth. 

Willow Song

Photographs by Kate Spence Bridges

Above the setting sun

the clouds are suffused with gold

and the willow tree, hangs delicately

tinged with blushes of bold.

Far beyond, in wintry fields

gnarled limbs curl suspiciously,

like human shoulders shrugging off

the suspended burden of eternity.

There is no eternity, here
in nature's glorious reign

the yellow moon, paper thin, winking

bids farewell to the sun as it wanes.

But the lover smiles at nature's ways

true love understands eternity,

with tears of crystal truth so pure

and a heart of changing constancy.

participating in Moondustwriter Thursday, inspired by the music of composer George Winston and the photography of Kate Spence Bridges' winter in Scotland

from Sunia to Miral

क्या हो रहा है? क्या हो रहा है?

दिल में चोट? पेट में दर्द?

Her name is Sunia. I don't know this yet. We haven't spoken yet, so she does not realise I can understand her words. I let her Hindi-Urdu wash over me in cool streams of green.

"What is happening? Does your heart hurt? Your stomach?"

क्या हो रहा है? मुझे कह दो? क्या सोच रहे हो?

"What are you thinking? Will you tell me?" 

Her husband says not a word. And I know she does not really require a response. I know she is really saying, "Beloved. My beloved. I am here."

Her name is Sunia. It means 'one who listens'. She is beautiful. She is younger than me and anxiety has erased her smile. She leaves for a while. Her husband gets on with his chemo. She returns, with two little boys. I smile at her. She relaxes, walks over, and I give every ounce of my joy and spirit and Addenbrooke's knowledge until she looks young again. I tell her I know her doctor. I trust him. I know a cure for anti-sickness. A home remedy that makes her laugh. I know too, that her husband is brave, for saying nothing, only turning a little green and a little yellow now and again.

When I am in hospital, I don't watch the other patients. I talk to them, but I watch the relatives. The Sunias. The listeners. Even when the patients say nothing, the listeners are listening; for the slightest hitch, to the breath beyond words, to the heart of the one who is suffering.

दिल में दुख है? Is there pain in your heart?

Beloved, I am here.

Sunia is Pakistani. She looks like Freida Pinto, the Indian actress from Slumdog Millionaire, who plays Miral in a film about Palestine, chosen because she looks like Rula Jebreal, the Palestinian author of the novel and screenplay. The director of the film is Jewish-American Julian Schnabel, who, listening to Rula's story, fell in love with her. Everyday we see faces that remind us of others, of the interconnections, of politics and pain. And then we have a conversation. And the complexities fall away. For a while, only a single language exists. The language of the heart.

Advice: Poem for a Ninja

Never ask why.

Never give up.

Never stop.

Smiling laughing pleasing teasing.

Never cry.

Listen to the birds

and the wind.

Light candles

to bring truth in.

Never win.

Read nothing

from silence.

Imagine no one

from darkness.

Never spin tales.

Never weave dreams.

Still you must hope.

Always believe.

Try everything.

Now forget

and start again.

~ Shaista, 2010

December 5 is Day of the Ninja, apparently. This picture of me on the PSSU Ward, D5, Chair 9, is the very first and only picture in existence of me in hospital. I am not sure why I asked the nurse to take it. I was my warrior poet self. I was thinking of you all as I smiled. Thinking of you, thanking you, for two years of strength, encouragement, advice, friendship, poetry, travel photographs, compliments and prayers. The picture is a little fuzzy, a little out of focus, and the nurse, Annamma, apologised for that. But I like it fuzzy, unfocussed, surreal. Ninja, or shinobi, means to steal away, and thus, by extension, to forbear. Look for me in that chair. I am not there :)

The Visitor

This being human is a guest house. 

Every morning a new arrival...

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

~ Rumi

Winter is upon us, snow upon the doorsteps. The lantern light near the willow tree welcomes so many visitors to our home. Friends of old who bring India anew, and friends from next door who discuss their allotments, and friends of my brothers from Japan and Singapore, and now, my very first blogger, that mysterious apparition of faraway words transformed into a person. And suddenly from Las Vegas, Nevada, Terresa Hall Wellborn of The Chocolate Chip Waffle fame, manifested here, on the cobbled streets of St Edwards' Passage, in the Haunted Bookstore where we discussed poetry, in Auntie's Tea Shop, where Terresa ate a Full English Breakfast for lunch, into the gloaming of the high vaulted chapel at Kings, and then in mindful silence at Kettle's Yard, where shafts of sunlight touch Brancusi and Gaudier-Brzeska resting, at peace, at home.

My life, this year, seems to have been a thoroughfare of meetings, arrivals and departures. Sometimes I feel a nomad in my own life. A couch surfer, surfing in my own home. Hello goodbye hello goodbye. And in between, Addenbrookes' Hospital: the other root, the other home. I write this on the eve of my own little departure from the lantern light and the willow tree, to the needles and the pulsing infusion that is keeping the Wolf at bay.

first image from Magpie Tales

Vera - a Tempest

It is nearly two am. Another night of a churning mind. Did you know the secret rule to solving insomnia is 'not minding'? Not minding not sleeping, not minding not sleeping... then suddenly, you fall asleep. Tonight, Deepak Chopra, that is not working.
Tonight's is a weighty concern. I am thinking about hair. Women's hair.
And why we care, so very much, about hair. Men care too. More deeply than they reveal. We women, we reveal.

When I tell my father I am off for a haircut, he wishes me happy tears. "Women go to the hairdresser," he theorises, "in order to get depressed." Not true! And yet, and yet. There is something deeply unempowering about having another woman (or man) cut your hair. They take your hair in their hands and with scissors and razors and a vision entirely their own, take away what belongs to you, and you give it, and you pay for your fallen locks, and you walk away. A lesser, smaller self. Until you grow it back - your hair, your self, your smile.
Perhaps other women experience this differently. Perhaps other women walk out of hairdressers bouncing along pavements, freer, sassier, colour coded to match that moment of nowness. That woman has never been me.

Many thousands of miles away, a woman named Vera, is thinking tempestuous thoughts about her own hair. She has just been diagnosed with high grade follicular lymphoma. She will start an aggressive form of chemotherapy soon. Death be damned, to hell with the needles and bruising... "My hair," she moans. "What will become of my hair?"

Grandmother, for so Vera is to me, was a raging beauty in her day...and although that day may long be past in some dry calendars, Vera is still very much that beauty, that wit, that swift lithe dancer of the waltz. She is the sort of woman who dresses for the day. Not in pearls, but in the simplicity of perfectly 'done' hair. Her age is of little matter. She is health embodied. Well, except for the unaccountably large lymph nodes extensively roosting in her body like fat goose eggs.

And those words... Cancer. Chemo. Cytotoxic. Or as one doctor merrily pointed out, "Well, it's your choice. If you don't take the treatment, you'll be dead in six months. Your choice." (I am breathing out steam as I write).

Is there ever really a choice? The choice is life. Always, life. And a woman's hair, for better or worse, reflects her life. Whether or not it is taken from her by force, she pays for its fall.

Even if it leaves, it will return Vera mama, it did return for me. But I don't think she believes me.

Tongues of the Hidden



  You blow away the hats of worldly status

And shatter the coronets of power with royal ease...

With the eyes of a deer you tame the lion of the sun

And the fold of your brow razes the arc of Jupiter

These are the words of Shams al-Din Muhammad, also known as Hafez of Shiraz, born 1315. But when I read these lines, I think of Kate Middleton preparing to tame the lions of English royalty, with her charm, her ease of gaze and lifted brow. 
Hafez, means one who knows the Qu'ran by heart, but the ghazals of Hafez are no literal interpretation of Islam. In fact, the saying goes, every Persian home has a Qu'ran and a Hafez. Hafez' concern is for the world of beauty and nature, for that which cannot be seen, and thus was he titled lesan al-ghaib, or the tongue of the hidden...

When the wise man views the leaves of the green tree

Each leaf is a sign of God's creation.

Islam is at a deeply painful confluence in our times. Words have become weapons. So it has been a pleasure to return to the poetry of the Shahnameh exhibiting at the Fitzwilliam Museum. The Book of Persian Kings, was written by Ferdowsi in 1010; its epic style and its author are comparable only to Homer in ancient Greece. And from Ferdowsi to Nizami to Hafiz, I found myself meeting Jila Peacock, a half Iranian doctor and artist extraordinaire. She has shaped ten animal poems from the metaphysical poet's work, each using the Nast'aligh script, which can be read both phonetically and iconically. In the world of Islamic Art, calligraphy is the highest form of artistic expression. In a culture where the word is the icon, calligraphy remains the only art to evoke the essential character of the Islamic world in a continuous tradition.

And so, naturally, when I asked Jila Peacock to sign my copy of her book, Ten Poems from Hafez, she wrote my name

Shayesteh (the Iranian phonetic way)
Shaista (the Indian English way)
and in Naskh, (the meaningful way).
She said she thought my name meant Outstanding.

But we know that Shaista means.... Fighting!!!



The Irony of Seeing

I have not been sleeping well lately. Actually, most nights I can't or don't know how to fall asleep at all. Long after dawn breaks, I eventually lose consciousness, but I feel as though I have travelled eons in those first hours. I find it almost impossible to unplug myself from the world of Other People's Stories. There are so many faces in my mind, so many voices, strangers for the most part, but for one essential, often tragic or dramatic moment, imprinted on my soul. Do you feel this way? With news streaming and swirling from around the globe, and networking sites, blogs, books, and articles, opinions have opinions and there is so much to concentrate on all the time. So many to pray for, so many to worry for, so many to be glad for. How does one manage to extricate one's mind from today's visually and verbally intense communication? I cannot retreat to a monastery - I already live in seeming solitude. I cannot bring myself to read less - I already read far less than I ever did. Or at least it seems that way, because then, there were 'only' books. Now... 

And it won't subside. How can it? Why should it? This is global awareness. And it is vital. I have to find a way to stay deeply interconnected, without losing my mind entirely to the sea of human suffering, human thought and voice. 

Perhaps it is winter. Perhaps I have not walked in the garden enough. Perhaps I should follow in father's footsteps, and just walk, walk blindly out into that human sea, knowing the grave responsibilities that surround me, but pretending anyway, that I am free. 

I remember now. Faith.

from Gregory Colbert's Ashes and Snow Project 

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.