Travel to Engage!

I love the way travel gathers you inexorably into the moment. All the prepping draws you into the present moment before you - determining dates, means, itineraries, packing, winding up loose ends, paying bills, stocking the home for those left behind. I invariably blitz my closets - a potential consolation to the family should I not return (equally it could be for fear of having them experience wave after wave of horror or exasperation as they go through all my stuff to dispose of it!).

Travel relieves you of the illusion of the permanence of your 'life'. You step out of your routine and imagined indispensability and lo and behold! Things don't fall apart! Groceries are bought. Your family still eats. Maybe they too feel liberated!

I absolutely love travelling, especially on my own  (an infrequent if not rare event). More than the release from Domestos and other commitments, its the sudden anonymity I feel graced with that sends my endorphins soaring. Having left everything in as best a shape as I can, and delegated all my responsibilities to others and ultimately placed it all in God's hands, I feel free and baggage-less. It helps to travel light, it has to be said. I have made it a rule not to take any luggage which I cannot carry easily myself. Impose as little as possible. No one knows me, no one has expectations of me. All I have to make my way through the world is a ticket and my conduct.

All the journeys we take are allegories of the greater journey we take through existence. Its so delicious to experience these compressed arcs of time, for each trip mirrors birth, life and death. The start, duration and end of any journey is full of significance and meaning, made all the more real by the absence of routine dulling our sensory perceptions. In fact, senses are sharpened as our lives hang in the balance: will we make it or not? There is always that possibility and it is felt all the more keenly in an airborne or water borne vessel.

Unlike many who grumble about airports, hotels and flights, I actually relish them. Most of them: I confess to excluding Dubai from this list for reasons obvious to those who have had to run the gauntlet of the giant hellish cigar it has become. And the labyrinthine Heathrow. It may be that being in a plane or in an airport simply presages the delights of the journey that lie further ahead. It may be the cloak of invisibility it drapes over you as you become a mere number. Or it may be the impermanence of your experience of all these elements of movement.The process of travel divests you of the accoutrements of bourgeois urban life. However you weigh it, you feel stripped and weightless, free to just be. 

There's another more practical aspect of travel, which is growing from the knowledge it brings. In Muslim civilization it was common for Muslims to embark on a rihla or journey, for the sake of acquiring knowledge, imparting it, and altogether as another form of worship, for Allah exhorts us to travel in His lands to seek His bounty and to witness the ends of other civilizations. In the early centuries of Islam it was common for scholars to travel to the major cities of Islam (Kufa, Damascus, Baghdad, Madinah) to gain the direct transmission of ahadith, or sayings of the Prophet (S). It is not widely know that women also participated in this endeavour, usually accompanied by a father or brother. Women not only taught other women but also other men. By some calculations almost a quarter of these accounts were gathered by women. Gradually, however, as the egalitarian spirit of Islam was strangled by cultural practises of existing civilizations and the transforming social landscape, the participation of women in this process started to fade so that by the 16th century women's names had disappeared from the biographical volumes of transmitters of hadith.

But I digress - happily so.

Any journey sets off a cascade of travels and arrivals, journeys within journeys. Time telescopes. The fields of time and space are warped to expand and with that the sense of self is altered, refreshed, revived. You can even redefine yourself. And even as the destination beckons, the present moment is all. Awareness of where you are in relation to your environment moves to hyper drive. Senses are on warp speed alert. You feel alive! You have responded to the Picardian* command: 'Engage!'

*Jean Luc Picard, Captain of USS Enterprise. Star Trek: New Generation.

 

Mother's Day Menu & Poetry

Mother's Day. Ha! Every day is 'mother's day', every day is father's day, every day is child's day, every day is everyone's day! What stuff and nonsense!

But...

I'd ignore it all if I hadn't already committed to hosting a mother's day tea. Lined up in the kitchen are ingredients ready for me to transform into chickpea salad, guava fruit salad, hunter beef sandwiches, and pineapple upside down cake. The menu will further include pani-puri puffs and dehi baray. 

Late in life I've come to appreciate these commercialized excuses for for boosting consumerism as opportunities to affirm certain useful and universal values. In a world which has mostly demeaned the importance of mothering, why not stop and take a moment to celebrate motherhood? Its the ultimate arena of transformation. Constant presence, unconditional love, profound mirroring, perpetual challenge and sheer joyous slog!

My daughter gave me permission to share this poem I wrote for her. Its a cheat's way to blog. So sue me. Chickpeas call! 

Metamorphosis

A poem for Sofia on her 16^th birthday

My child, my salty lass

My soft-focus pearl

My pomegranate ruby

My oceanic emerald

Who would have imagined

this stained-glass butterfly

you are becoming

slowly unfolding from pupa-gestation

limbs and wings painstaking

in the drying and setting

delicately stretching

tentatively testing

air, fragrance, temperature

fluttering

but not yet

flying

Not true all that -

There’s a tigress in there somewhere

ready to roam the jungle sleekly

and snarl and sink jaw

and have fill of a kill

to sate the inner animal

And that’s not true either -

for there’s  a coltish foal

snorting and stamping stilettos

ready to whip-snap muscles

to sprint and stride

pass the finish line

and shine

And that’s not true either -

for what’s that I see?

Iridescent plumage betraying

the exotic centre of your avian

being  - a bird of paradise

beckoning

Every time I look upon you

I see something new

and rich

kaleidoscopic

To love you to have you to hold you

has been the dream of my mothering eye

I sit beside you in awe

and hold you in my heart

tenderly, foreverly

as I gaze upon the light and joy in your secret

and I know it is for me

to hold aloft that dream in the cave of my heart

until you see by that same light within

and reach out to it tenderly

eagerly

to claim it totally

foreverly

Who knows

how long

that might be

No matter

for I am lost

in the silken folds

of this flowing

and draping

and twisting

seeking, hoping

the duet holds its spell

while the creaturely strength of a hundred

shades of being

generates and reverberates

through every layer

terrestrial and celestial

as you are born into

a true facsimile of

You

Mama

Karachi  9^th November 2010

Glossary:

Pani puri puffs:  tiny fried rounds of flattened discs of dough that puff up into crisp spheres into which one then makes a hole on one side and fills with boiled chickpeas and a variety of watery tamarind based chutneys (sweet or chillified). Essentially a Gujurati snack, these delicate bouchees are fun to eat and moreish.

Dehi baray: fried gram flour dumplings nestled in a delicately seasoned yoghurt sauce, served with tamarind chutney, coriander chutney and optional crunchy toppings.

 

Pull-focus for the Answer

The sugary scent of petunias has given way to the sweet snowfall of neem-tree blossoms and now the chubby jasmine buds are yielding their 'Diorissimo-esque' perfume to the early morning and evening air. As spring has fast-tracked into summer over the last two weeks, my attention has been fully absorbed by the realities and necessities of the D word. Domestos. Not the bleach, but my father's favourite generic term for the Hydra-like looming presence of private family life. Creative juices and editorial peregrinations were diverted to red alert.

My husband Abbas and I  had several pull-focus moments in which everything within the line of vision  recedes except for what was right before us. Our attention was fully zoomed in on the present moment. Each moment leading to another meant we were riding on wave-crests until the sea of Domestos finally calmed down. Doubtless more whirlpools and sinkholes await, but jasminacious scents still infuse each day regardless.

There is probably no quicker way than to come into the present moment than to be yanked into it by emergencies. If the event is met with trust that Allah's mercy prevails in all situations, one is already freed to ride the waves rather than drown by the anchorage of past history and attachment to expectations. The apparent calamity becomes an opportunity, and the opportunity reinforces the trust, and with that comes a lightness in the quality of our beingness. In his teachings Shaykh Fadhlalla regularly expounds on the relationship between needs and means -  'A question or need invites the answer that was already there waiting for the call.' (Aphorism #101, 'Soundwaves')

So I say to myself in the pull-focus moment, 'Hello, hello! What have we here? Which tree do we have to shake in order to find the right fruit?' Hazrat Mariam (Mary, peace be upon her), hungry and hindered by a full belly swollen with her soon to be born son 'Isa (Jesus), was instructed to shake the palm tree at hand to release the life-sustenance she needed [19:22-28]. Action. And yet earlier, her uncle Hazrat Zakariyya (peace be upon him) had observed that fruits would appear by themselves in her humble room while she prayed [3:37]. Inaction. In the former she had to engage with dunya, to trigger off the chain of events to fulfill her need, while in the latter she was disengaged from worldly matters, and what she needed - nay, more than what she needed - manifested. Same person, different circumstances, needs equally fulfilled. Present and alive to the moment and the isharah or guidance.

Hazrat Zakariyya was so inspired by Mariam's tawajjuh or devotional fidelity to her Creator, it amplified his trust in and reliance (tawakkul) on Allah so as to invoke the fulfilment of his need. His famous supplication [3:38-41] to be blessed with a rightly guided heir to carry on his mission, even though his wife was old and barren, is often since invoked by Muslims seeking the seemingly impossible resolution to infertility. But beyond that this story indicates a reality that relates to the dynamic of conscious intention and action, the need for prayer and supplication in order to dislodge the fruit already ripened and waiting to fall.

The pull-focus moment helps to cut out extraneous considerations. Allowing it to act on our consciousness, guidance manifests, even if not the whole prescription. One step leads to another, to resolution, or solutions, or maybe even absolution. Hidden provision emerges. Manifold proofs of the constancy of Divine Presence and mercy tumble forth. Above all it is an unfolding process.

Indeed, the pre-existence of the answer is what begs the question. Knowing this is liberating. Feeling this is exhilarating.

Glossary:
dunya: this world of phenomena
isharah: subtle indication, implicit in signs
tawajjuh: focus and firm orientation towards Allah
tawakkul: trustful reliance on Allah