The meaning of the word Ekphrastic, is ‘a vivid description of a work of Art’. I cannot possibly write a poem about this topic. Many of my readers have asked me about the painting of the Tiger that I have in my home. while I am not exactly describing the art, I want to describe the reason and the procurement of this piece of art. My apologies to Leah for not sticking with the prompt.

Perhaps I should prose the prompt and write /describe the painting that I had posted a couple of days back.

My father’s uncle was Abdul Azeez. He was a gifted artist. When my own grandfather died in the early part of the century, my father and grandmother were cared by her brothers. They were well off, but the brothers thought that they should be there for their sister and help her in any way they could. This uncle, Azeez was a commissioned artist for the Maharajah of Mysore. He would paint jungle life and the Court of the Maharajah with such detail and perfection that there were rooms in the palace that were named for him.

I have been through those palaces in Mysore--- Lalitha Palace and Jagannath Palace. I have seen the “Azeez Rooms”, where his paintings covered the entire room. The Maharajah would take the uncle with him whenever he went hunting with the visiting British dignitaries. So you can see how the love of hunting came into my father’s life.

The painting of the tiger, was a favorite of my father. When his uncle died in Kabul, all his personal work was taken over by his son, my father’s cousin. By that time father was already well established in the circle of scholars. So, when he became the dean of the university he asked his cousin Azeez II, to join him, which he did.  And he more or less lived with us. He was also an artist, and I have many of his paintings here with me also. He had a huge trunk in which he had kept his paintings. I remember the day when this particular painting of the Tiger was returned to him from the National Museum of India in the mid-fifties.  It was a great day of celebration. Father and his cousin had given up hope of ever getting it back.  ‘Uncle’ kept this painting in the trunk amidst many folds of tissue paper. He would always talk about the way his father had painted it from memory.

There was another painting. It was a watercolor painting of white tailed deer. I loved that painting so much. Every time I went to his house, I would ask him to show that particular painting. Unfortunately, the painting was not finished. Before he could finish it, he (my father’s uncle, Azeez senior) migrated to Kabul.

In 1983, after I had come to this town, I heard that my ‘uncle’ Azeez junior was sick and was hard up for money etc. So every month I would send him some money, which helped him get medicines and fruits etc. One day, I was in my office at the hospital and a large parcel was delivered to me. I didn’t know what it was, but it had come from India. My own parents were gone, and my siblings didn’t send things around to me much. I opened the parcel and gasped at these two paintings. One was The Tiger crouching, and the other was the painting of the deer standing, its senses alert, as if it could hear the sound of the brush against the paper. There was a letter along with the paintings, in which my uncle, Azeez junior, had thanked me for the financial help, and asked that I take these paintings as a gift from him.

Now you know the rest of the story.

April 9th NPM.

 Being a sandwich kid was not easy. Nothing came easy. There were times when I was ridiculed because of my height. Indian girls were not very tall and here I was growing up like a freak, tall and extremely thin. I became painfully shy. Siblings and mother would always criticize my looks, telling me how I was so different in looks, meaning of course that I was ugly, and while my sisters would get married into good homes, I would probably spend my life as a spinster! And this continued until I went into medical school.

For the first time people started complimenting me about my height, and my looks. And gradually the inferiority complex that I had for almost two decades, started to wash off. I told myself that I could do whatever I wanted, and be good at it. The quote that kept hovering in the periphery of my mind was “True magnanimity consists not in ever falling, but getting up every time you fall!”

Beautiful calm childhood,
turbulent teenage years
words that clawed into soul,
searing and tearing it into shame;
my heart, wanting love, loving each
and every one, got shunned
at every corner;

My spirit refused to cower,
I persevered, held my head high and ignored
the anger and the attitude and the grief;
Away from home, I was recognized by different people
with different colors, and different languages.
I learned to stand up, laugh, love, and showed
respect, to all who had hurt, and who
pretended to forget they had hurt me.

The best thing I did, was to leave home--
I helped myself--
I didn’t want to just exist--
I showed my world,
that I could live and laugh and love!

ZSA_MD April 9th. 2016

NPM April 8th.

When I was growing up in the Deccan Plateau of South India, I thought that I would stay little the whole time. Growing up, getting married was never a thought. My brothers and I played in the courtyards of that huge place where mother had grown up. In one of the courtyards, there was a huge tree. My brother would climb it and shake the branches; all of us, including the house staff, would spread sheets on the ground so the berries, called “beyr” would drop down and be collected, and distributed to the entire neighbourhood.

I loved eating them.

Then we moved away further south where father became the dean of a university. Several years later, I went back to my maternal home, and--- here is what I have extracted from the poem that I had written.

The Courtyard

I played in my courtyard with a huge tree in the center,
all our games we fashioned around that tree. I knew
that the tree would stay the same for the rest of its life
and mine.

I stand under that same tree now, and wonder why the
courtyard had shrunk, and why the tree
had become so much taller!

 (extracted from the poem The Courtyard, from my book Stray Thoughts/Winged Words.)

ZSA_MD April 8^th 2016.

Ode to Something Unexpected

Slender and lithe body
movements in cadence
keeping rhythm to personal
music in her brain;
nicknamed gazelle, dancing
with eyes closed---
tight muscles, graceful walk
for years and decades;
and suddenly, she saw,
she found,
She screamed---
Cellulite!!

 ZSA_MD Aprill 7^th 2016.

Day 6 of NPM Scavenger hunt.

My father was an avid hunter. He roamed the jungles of Mysore in South India with his uncles and cousins, in search of tigers and cheetahs. Preparations would be carried on for weeks before the actual date of departure. The servants who would accompany them would go into the jungles ahead, and look for any fresh evidence of the big cats. Fresh poop, was the best indicator that the predators were not too far away.

A make shift hideout would be constructed in the dense jungle; they called it the ‘Machaan’. It was like a large wooden box which could hold two people with ease. Small square windows, large enough to get the gun through, and these windows enabled them to look out. Early in the night the servants would drag a goat or a sheep to a tree not too far from the machaan.

I would hear these stories and shiver. Sacrificing a goat and then killing a majestic animal while it was eating its prey, was something I couldn’t stomach.

I continue to be surprised to this day that my father indulged in that sport. He was such a mild mannered and gentle person, full of compassion. One of his uncles was a gifted artist. On one such trips, that uncle got the picture of the tiger crouching in the grass. He saved it in his mind, came home and painted it. That was 1916. The painting was a masterpiece and hung in the National Museum in Delhi on a loan. Today it is with me.

The eyes of this painted tiger looked straight at you, regardless of where you stood in the room.

This poem, A Tiger, is offered to the readers as the prompt for the National Poetry Month.

Footsteps on the surface of the heart, feeling the
head, and the mouth open wide, while his fur in
all glory stretched across the middle of the drawing room.

Touch me touch me not, bare teeth exposed like the fangs of
a reptile, refuse to accept, the game for selfish gratification.
The sacrificial bleating silenced in the glass eyes
mock the human hunger! They scream---

“tyger tyger, burning bright
in the forests of the night
what immortal hand or eye
could frame thy fearful symmetry”  ( William Blake)

ZSA_MD April 6^th 2016.

I have been tired of the winter months for almost fifty years. I cringe at the thought of wearing heavy coats and thermal underclothes. When I first came to this part of the world, I was ecstatic that I would see snow, which I had never seen in my life before, and was so happy that I would wear a nice heavy coat and boots and gloves to keep the cold away.

Two days!

Two long days later, I was ready for my tropics and the weather from my land. How could humans live in such conditions? How to make winter go away. I knew within one year that I had no more power over it than a monkey swimming across the English Channel. (Please no body tell me that it has been done!)

How do I get rid of the blues of winter?  

Last year I took off to central Florida and escaped the winter. I listened to the ocean waves all day long and all night long. Walked on the beach every single day. That was heaven indeed.

How To--- NPM #5.

How to get rid of this feeling of tiredness, brought on by
the onslaught of winter? Everyone around me consider me to be
a torture, ‘coz I complain all the time.

Just look at this landscape. How do I make things green again?
Nothing grows here. I lack clarity. My words, all knotted up
remind me of the gnarled and naked branches on the black trees.

How to cure bad weather? Wish you were here. The trees
and grass would look greener. I am beginning to have bad habits,
complaining and whining. How to get rid of these bad habits?

Send me back to you! Away from winter!

ZSA_MD

My grandson Davis is excellent in Math. He is not satisfied by being in the Talented and Gifted program where everything is so much more advanced than the regular classes.

He wants more.

I picked him up from school this afternoon, and asked him how his day was. He said it was good. Give it a number on a scale of 1 to 10, I said. Hmm, a 9, he replied. Why, I asked.

I just don’t like that we are constantly working on tests and making sure we are doing them right. We are not learning. I want to learn more and more and more.

He thinks all this advanced math, is too easy for him. He says he is bored. This constant running towards higher goals, may be well and good, but I wonder how far he can go in this pursuit of wanting to excel.

Small strokes of a painter’s brush mixing simple colors at first, finally complete a masterpiece. Should I tell him that? Will he have patience to hear me? Or will he continue to run instead of walking?

ZSA_MD NPM April 4^th 2016.

Unsettled weather, versus unstable weather
is there a difference? All I wanted from that
revered book was sunshine to plant the Cannas
and get the bulbs in, so the Gladiolus would
bloom by July.

Last autumn the book warned about severe winter,
and we hunkered down. But the fur on the squirrels
didn’t get thicker, and my mind said, “Look
at nature first.” The squirrels stayed trim without
a thick coat, and their tails were not all fluffy; hell!
my winter was balmy and more than bearable!

So much for reading The Almanac!

 ZSA_MD  April 3^rd NPM.

When a Muslim cleanses his body before
the obligatory prayers five times a day, he prays
as he washes his face, and rinses his mouth
and cleans his nose
asking that he be cleansed, so he can smell
the scent of his spirit.

I would just say, “My Lord, please wash my sins.
My hands have washed this part and that part,
but these hands do not know how to wash my spirit.
I can wash the skin of my arms and face,
but YOU, my Lord,

You alone can wash me and detox me..

April 2- 2016.

My words, like little seeds grow into stories
and poems. I wonder where, with one seed
can I find a garden of roses or with one seed
a whole forest!

Simple clouds like dark seeds in the sky
bring gusts of wind, and my words fearful
and challenged, get absorbed in the ground
along with the rain!

My words no longer have the form I imagined
everything has evaporated
like essence of oud* in the courtyards
of a faraway home!

ZSA April 1^st 2016.  * Oud is frankincense with a most pleasing fragrance.

Some daffodils in the yard.