A BUTTERFLY IN BALI

BAS
We make an accidental stop
to taste coffee expelled
by the Luwak monkey
'Most Expensive In The World':
a tray of coffees and teas to tempt
the palate and the wallet;

But here, at this height,
we feel wealthy enough,
and soon heady drunk enough
on Arabica and Robusta,
for anything.

TEGALALANG
My heart gives out
on the way down to the paddy fields
and I return.

Dragonflies like birds
circle the rice
and visit me
in my bamboo cave;
What can be heard
but not seen -
the song of mosquitoes
enjoying me.

THE PLACE WHERE THE LOTUS LEAVES FALL

We take a different route 

you and I

when we pass through archways

or slip inside doorways

but we always meet

on the other side.

My sister-in-law asked me, oh so casually, if I wanted to join her in a family reunion in Bali. I booked that ticket so fast I can't decide if she was impressed or in shock since I normally live my life at the pace of a snail :) These excerpts are from my Bali journal, but the last image is of a butterfly I met in Kuala Lumpur. 

ICARUS

Pieter Brueghel, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, 1560s

About suffering they were never wrong, 
The old Masters: how well they understood 
Its human position: how it takes place 
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along... 

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away 
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may 
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, 
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone 
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green 
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen 
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, 
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. 

- W. H. Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts 

Twice, in one week, I have come across this poem by Auden. First, it was quoted in the book I am reading - The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe, and then today, in an interview with the newly appointed Poet Laureate of the United States, Natasha Trethewey. The poem, she says, helped illuminate her own reality of enduring the grief of her mother's death (shot by her stepfather); an invisible grief, because 'The world was going on about its way while I was over there, this tiny individual suffering what seemed to me a huge loss, what was to me a huge loss. That poem showed me that I wasn't alone in feeling that way'.

For twelve years before starting my blog, I lived an invisible life with lupus. Intense suffering on the wards took place unbeknownst to anyone other than the family stalwarts. So I understand the ploughman's inability to see the 'boy falling out of the sky'. But I understand Icarus too. Last year I was determined would be the year I published my poetry. This year I make no promises. I long to touch the sun but some protective instinct keeps warning me about the fall. Published writers sometimes speak nostalgically about the days when they were anonymous mice, writing for a faceless imaginary reader. The perks of being a wallflower. I may have been a mouse for long enough, but I do love being able to write without pressure or commitment. It is quite delicious.

As are these days unwinding in Singapore and Malaysia with my beautiful sisters. (Of course, being with the brothers is not bad, either :))

Cheong Soo Pieng, Bridging Worlds Exhibition, 1981

PAPER MOON POME FOR NEW YEAR'S DAY

Paper Moon, Paper Moon,
Wishes made of these:

'I will see you in the trees,' he croons,
'And in every breeze.

I will see you when the lotus blooms 
And even at her death -

For you will never die,' he says,
'As long as I have breath.'

With two brothers close in age married and settled into the rhythm of loving and being loved, it is inevitable that I get asked about my 'status'. For example, at the hairdressers yesterday, very succinctly: 'Single? Married? Single-ah? Ah, single.' I suppose I ought to be flattered that people think there is some possibility that I may be dusted off the shelf someday.
While the moon gets to work on possibilities, I listen to the koyal crooning afternoon love songs, and measure the full weight of my contented heart...

Dad has found ways to connect with his grandson involving food, high fives and a shared fascination with the white stick, while I have found ways to touch starfish and place my hand fearlessly in an alligator's mouth...

I enjoy the wonder of spending time with women I love... the pomes and poems of my life...

So the Paper Moon can search for me. Or not. Either way, it is a Happy New Year's Day for me :) And I wish the same for you.

NIRBHAYA, THE FEARLESS ONE

I am not here today
for I was never born
and I can never die

I am not here today
in this ordinary form

I am particle
and consciousness
in someone else's sky -

I am wings
I am flight
and this body
will surely die.

 © Shaista Tayabali, Singapore, 2012.

My dearest younger sister,
You travelled from Delhi to arrive here in Singapore. I was at Mount Elizabeth Hospital myself, a few days ago, filled with my usual combination of terror at the state of my scarred eyes and the immense joy of being loved. They say you 'passed away peacefully' this morning. Who chose those words, I wonder? I know so little about you. Only three things. You were a physiotherapist, you loved movies and you had a good friend who tried to protect you. Not knowing your name, we have named you Nirbhaya, the Fearless One.
Did you know that when she was 18, Frida Kahlo had an accident on a bus? An iron rod entered her left hip and exited between her legs. In later life, her gangrenous feet were amputated. But someone was carrying powdered gold on that bus and the glitter speckled her body, turning dark into light. She spent the rest of her life in excoriating pain, but through her art, purified that pain. There was no one to blame. It was an accident.
You drew out poison on a bus thirteen days ago. It was no accident. Was it the medical teams who battled to keep you here until today? I would not choose for you to stay. Not with that particular poison in your veins. Growing up in India, most of us experience some measure of that poison. I am no exception. It informs the way we move, the choices we make, for the rest of our lives. We become tortoises with lionhearts, instead of lions. We become elephants who never forget. We never forget.

Your sister, Shaista.

MERRY CHRISTMAS BELOVEDS!

We arrive to the scent of pine, and forget we are in Singapore. We could be anywhere. Inside, we are home. Our world revolves around a small ball of fire, who this very Christmas has been introduced, by "Shai! Shai! Shai! Shai!" to The Gruffalo... "Oh no! Oh no! It's a Gruffalo!"

Christmas Day has been a crash course in Finding Nemo, Madagascar and Barnyard Animals, a swim, a game of basketball, a visit to the nearby riding stables to neigh with horses and jump in puddles. A Christmas unlike any other...

 and the only way I want to end this year...

BUTTERFLIES

We are aged and ageless
together on the ward
blending blue
against a dull stone sky.

We are a strange alien race
hooked to wires
trailing machines
tangled in each other's space.

We manage doors one handed, we smile,
quirky twists of face;
We play the game,
knowing why.

I long for a bed, a blanket,
a cushion,
heat, sand, beach,
oblivion.

Outside the windows, a playground
I have never seen children in:
a chessboard with giant squares,
and no chessmen.

The light has faded to black now
I turn to the faces within,
to patches of white
and yellow butterflies
tucked securely into skin.

© Shaista Tayabali, 2012  
(I wrote this on the Patient Short Stay Unit Ward. I spend a lot of time on this ward, but no more for this year. I am taking flight! Tell you all about the heat and light when I am on the other side :)) 
Illustration: Heinrich Lefler and Joseph Urban, 1904

FLYING KITES IN GAZA

When kites fly

across blue skies

and border divides,

Gaza and Israel unite.

We make the kites,

We fly the kites, 

over the wells of hate.

Our borders are planks of wood -

We carve the sails,

We choose the colours for the tails

in ribbons of orange and red

and green -

We speak across the steel.

When we fly kites

across blue skies,

Gaza and Israel unite.

© Shaista Tayabali, 2011

I wrote this poem a year and a half ago in response to the Dispatches documentary on the children of Gaza. Thousands of children flew kites over the Gaza strip in July 2011, claiming a new world record for most kites flown simultaneously. A competitive spirit was alive in the children, ready to sharpen their sails against their Israeli kite fighters. The poem feels so naive, so childish, in the face of what appears to be a systematic genocide of the people of a tiny strip of land. But the voice is accurate - the kites were everything that day. Slogans were written on the kites calling on Israel to end the four year blockade, calling for peace. It is painful that children are supposedly always at the heart of ending or restraining a grown-up war. And yet no-one actually listens to children.   

I WISH YOU A LONG LASH...

So in other news... I have been started on some new eyedrops, and their side effect is... waitforit... to make my lashes longer!!

But before you explode with the greenest of envy, allow me to point out that I am being started on something else as well. A few months ago I was given two vaccinations - for pneumonia and meningitis. I responded to neither, which has made the immunologists unhappy. So tomorrow I will be hooked up to another IV drip to receive human immunoglobulins. You know how our pooled taxes are supposed to *benefit* us in times of stress and distress? (This is about as political as I am about to get...) So also, intravenous immunoglobulins contain pooled plasma extracted from thousands of blood donors to rescue immune deficient humans. Like me. Some of you donate blood, so I wanted to say thank you. I am to receive it from now until forever, but since there is a world-wide shortage of IVIg, that may not be very long. While I'm hooked up, I may as well make a start on my latest essay...  I'll be in the right place!

TO RUSSIA WITH LOVE (FROM IRELAND)

They numbered thousands in the streets of Dublin on Saturday, with beautiful signs and candles lit to protest for a change in legislation. In our front window, I lit candles and placed a slice of Irish barmbrack, freshly baked, still hot. The name Savita will not be easily forgotten.
Vivid through the raw emotional landscape is shame, an emotion that vibrates alongside anger. Those fighting for a referendum to repeal Article 40, clause 3, are also embarrassed that their country let them down. I wanted to write something today to balance that shame with pride, focusing on one Irish woman named Debbie Deegan.

In the summer of 1996, a group of tiny, undernourished children arrived in Dublin, and were housed by openhearted Irish families. Falling in love with 'their' orphan, little Zina, led Debbie on a journey to Hortolova orphanage, eight hours' drive from Moscow, and thence to a life's work of nurturing 200 Russian orphans. There are many moving excerpts in Debbie's book, 'To Russia With Love'.

Thanks to Debbie and an incredibly stalwart team of Irish volunteers, Hortolova has become a centre of excellence, a showcase of good practise, but the heartbeat of the story lies in passages like this...

There were always five or six carers living in the orphanage at any one time and all day long all they heard at the door was 'knock, knock, knock'. It's still like that. We have around 200 children and they will always find a reason to knock for the Irish. You might be having a quick tea break and the next thing, 'knock knock'... They'd make something up - 'I need a pencil, a plaster', anything at all. Or they'd forget what they wanted as the door opened, overwhelmed simply by the need for company. For eighteen hours a day, it never ceases.

At the end of the book is a short essay written by Zina herself, the Deegan's now formally adopted Russian daughter...

I had no English, Mick and Debbie had a few words of bad Russian. They tried their best, I'll give them that! The first few days in their house, I was very uncertain of myself. I didn't know what to do. In the orphanage, it's like the army. There's a time for everything, so when I came to this house and they weren't telling me exactly what to do, when to eat, when to play, when to sleep, I felt very lost. Debbie always said to me, 'My house is your house', and I would say, 'No, my house is completely different.' It was only when she got to know the orphanage that she really realised that... to this very day I find it very hard to make choices, because I didn't get that training as a child... I still always ask advice from everybody else and I don't listen to my own heart. 

Zina's account, and the chapter on the 2004 Beslan massacre, are the most poignant chapters in the book. I think about Amal, the little girl I dedicated a poem to, in Gaza, amid the rubble, and know there are orphanages everywhere, overflowing with children beset by head lice and broken hearts. 'Bright flowers in a burnt-out land' Marian Keyes calls them... and then I think of a woman like Debbie Deegan, who with clear sighted focus, is rescuing one child at a time, fighting for each of them, equally, with tigerish energy. It gives me hope. This morning when I woke, two packages from Ireland were awaiting me. One was full of tea lights, hot chocolate and a scarf to keep me warm. The other also contained chocolate (my friends know me well) and a box of Irish tea! Barry's tea, slightly battered, full of good cheer... the most refreshing cup of tea - I have never smiled so much while drinking a cuppa tay :)

You can buy Debbie's book at her website To Russia With Love... Ah, go on! :)

HEARTBEAT

Just at this moment, people are gathering in different places to mark the heartbreak of the passing of Savita Halappanavar. For Diwali, the festival of lights, Savita had choreographed her annual dance for the festivities in Galway. Being seventeen weeks pregnant, she had not intended to dance herself, but she would have worn a sari, lined her eyes in kohl and tapped a foot energetically to the beat. I am not attending a vigil or a protest, but I went for a walk today, writing a letter to Savita as I walked.

Dear Savita,
There are no divas lit in the village where I live. Diwali is not openly celebrated here. I remember making the clay pots when I was a child, decorating each one uniquely, and then, once lit, being lost in the glow. I walk past the river and the birds croon mournfully; I take care with each step because the golden leaves are heavy with wet. They are taupe and ochre, muted, when I return home. I stand looking down over the bridge, making the most of my eyes, even in the half light. I listen to the music of the troubled river and remember my Indian classical dance teacher calling me "Cutlet!" It was her nickname for her favourite student, and also the one who needed her sympathy the most - the worst dancer. You never quite knew which you were. It was in the tone. It's funny... the things we remember from our first lives, our first homes.

A few days ago, November 10 was declared Global Day of Action for our younger sister Malala and the 32 million girls who are denied education. Some are hoping Malala will be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Every day of my life, I give thanks for the determination of my grandfathers and great-grandfather, who fought for the women in my family to be educated. I am proud of this inheritance, but I never take it for granted. This freedom to write, to think, to express myself, is a gift. I am fiercely grateful to be an educated, literate, free thinking woman. I imagine you must have felt this way too?
Two months ago, a consortium of Irish doctors declared abortion medically unnecessary: "We confirm that the prohibition of abortion does not affect, in any way, the availability of optimal care to pregnant women." You pointed out you were neither Irish nor Catholic and yet the law allowed a dying heartbeat to take precedence over your own. I cannot bear to think of your last days. Know only that many hearts are beating for you tonight, and listening for the song of your life.

From one of your many new friends, Shaista.

Images: from adelewalker.blogspot.co.uk
Pencil Jammers artist Bharatanatyam