This is a repeat of one of my more popular poems, replayed here with a hope of getting a new audience, who might have missed it!   Youth is so wasted on the ones who carry it as a burden. The changes which wreck havoc to the body and heart are later looked back at as the sweetest damnation possible, irreplaceable but never ever lived through fully.   We all know and understand the alchemy of a moment richly lived, but still let it  pass us by ruthlessly, unthinkingly. Why do we consider time as a rich man’s wealth, when it can’t be hoarded or spent endlessly? In its strange and beautiful equalities, we realise it is the only thing bequeathed equitably to all.   But we are fooled by time’s serene passage, lulled to forget its irrevocability. And in that lassitude we end with half-lives. In our puzzling pursuit of things which finally matter little - lucre instead of light, breath in lieu of breathlessness - we take away the most precious gift we could give ourselves.   And when we realize our folly, often it is with nothing left in our banks - not health, not inclination, not circumstances - and what is lost is a glow, and the possibility of finding light - and being it.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of the summers of our lives  - A Summery Love Story (in the middle of winter)  Indian Summers Call Me By Your Name Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected] Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - The Positive Way Of Hope Piano Solo by MusicLFiles Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/7522-the-positive-way-of-hope-piano-solo License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

I am so engrossed in the theatrics of my mind that I often forgot that there is a world outside which has been gifted to me to revel in, to find pleasure and meaning in. Getting too intertwined in myself is often the bane of my existence, as I lose purpose in my desperation to resolve the quotidian quibble or the boredom riddle.    Time and again, seeing myself immerse in the labyrinthine issues of daily grind, whilst failing to notice that life is desperately trying to grab my attention, is to also lose a potential way to unravel the knots of my very being.   The times serenity descends on me as I see the water boil for my morning tea, or I stand at the window and watch a flawless sunset find its night, or listen to the cadence of a loved one's voice as they talk of normal things or when the doorbell rings and my heart leaps as I know who it is. Suddenly, priorities get sorted out, issues get resolved.    Later, much later, do I realize that the true path to the universe inside me comes through the vagaries outside, as I cut though the noise, and find that the world is much more then a mere domicile for me for my desires and ambitions, and offers a journey of senses and fulfilments.   Everything I could ever want is merely a question of merging what's outside to what is inside.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on mornings and cities  -  Calcutta - A Lover's Epitaph Recalibrating Dawns Musings As I Step Into The Morning (Leaving a Lover Sleeping) Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - A Bright Star in the Sky by Musiclfiles Mystic Mediation by Frank Schroeter  

As we age, we hark back to the ordinary. After we've seen it all, our sense of wonder might  not have dimmed, but it does become selective. And we know that though there is no end to discoveries, we find even a still moment is rich in repast.   And without wallowing in nostalgia, we remember simpler times. And we remember the glow of presence. No details are required, because the feeling remains. And we realize in all the iterations of love, the one which abides is of letting the ordinary surround us.   And we start the transition from being a participant to becoming an engender, from walking into sunlight to being the sunlight And we ease into the slow gold of easy conversation, the easygoing minute. Home is an excitement and an evening out is a cafe which allows leisurely lingering.   And in that transition, we embrace the beauty of boredom. Of recognizing that life's bounty is often nothing but the steady elongation of the pause between the storms we invariably step into every morning.    If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on life and times -  I Have Been Thinking of Life Again Bella's Meadow Life For Rent Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Follow That Dream by Luca Fraula

I write so much on so many things. Relationships is a recurrent topic, as I traverse myriad emotions. Because of them my heart and my mind are my poetry labs, and I'm never bereft of things to write about. And I'm amazed at the discoveries. Day in day out I find new ways in which I can hurt - and get hurt. There are old fault lines which never get repaired, and fresh wounds which find their way into scars.   Its facetious to say this is the cost of being in love, the price one pays to be vulnerable and open to both bliss and hurt.   Because much more than being, love is a realisation.   Because beyond its craggy transversion, it's a discovery of all the good residing in us, things we didn't know about ourselves, the essential purity which actually defines us. Beyond the drudgery, jaggedness,and angularity - which often becomes our character's annotation - lies the still clear water of shadows and sunlight, the beauty of which even we don't realize until the clear sight of love discovers it.   Because at the bottom of it, love is action. It is giving beyond our urgencies, our insipidity, our masquerade : love is the only emotion allowed entry into our fears, our secrets, our failures, the essence of us.   The dawning of this, with the advent of love, is to find the treasure each one of us really is. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on loss and desolation  -  Grief Strikes Where Loves Struck First Letting Go (because I'm alive) The Things We Become When We Leave Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Positano by Otis Galloway

What is the ethical and practical length we would go to save a relationship or a situation or ourselves? Is our segue into safety always self-protection and a rapid walk through a portal of lies? Or do we girdle up, step up, chin up - and say the truth (and nothing but the truth), consequences be damned.   Or do we tell ourselves - let's be practical. Let every situation determine our choice of what we say. We become chameleons of ethics, as it were. Maybe a person can't handle a particular truth and things would become bad (if not worse than bad). Or maybe you will finally tell the truth - but by and by.   But there is also the question of the little lies, the white ones, the ones which slip into togetherness like a whisper in the softness of a mutual feeling. The ones which seem harmless - but which, when they start getting recognised, chip away soundlessly at the very foundation of what the relation stands for.   But then there is also the nature of the congenital liar, as also the one for whom self-preservation - name, blame, fame - is primary. Where stories become second nature, and lies are a permanent armour. This then is not second nature - it is nature. But most problematic, if not tragic, is when we don't want to lie, but decide to. Where the only immutable thing we've ever known is the conscience. But we still decide to lie, against the very fibre of our being. The very act then puts us into the dungeons of despair, when we know we've broken the first rule of relationships - trust. And even more than that, we've fallen in our eyes. A self-reductionist act, a diminishing, a shrinking.   There's a world of guilt one transverses into. A lifelong affliction. An unfolding of the soul, as we look at ourselves with both disdain and despair, the questioning never ceasing, the wheel of cause-&-effect stopping at the choice, a self-damnation.   A lie is then not a compromise, but a self-condemnation, a hanging without death.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on lies and truths  -  Your Body is a Truth Adventures in Two Worlds The Truth of Lies Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Crescendo by Alexander Nakarada

George Meyer, a co-writer on The Simpsons, referred to marriage as “a stagnant cauldron of fermented resentments, scared and judgmental conformity, exaggerated concern for the children . . . and the secret dredging-up of erotic images from past lovers in a desperate and heartbreaking attempt to make spousal sex even possible.”   There's bitterness and cynicism there. That's a relationship at its very nadir, where there seems to be little hope for redemption. But, of course, that's not how things always work. Most relationships work in the twilight zone. Part incandescent, part dark. Not so much hate or love, as simmer and freeze. And as is true with most extremities, there's a sense of humanity lost, of balance skewed, confronting more of what's lost then loss itself. But we are humans: the more we hurt someone, the more we require healing; when falling out is often synonymous with falling down; and more we push people away, more we need them beside us.   The tragedy of people who injure others is not that they use their ability to draw blood, it is how much they would like to be the one who would rather bleed. Their natural disdain is for themselves - their lowest opinion is reserved for their own weaknesses. They are fragile waiting to be broken, to be destroyed, to find meaning in their extinction and maybe their exhumation.   Those who create tragedy are themselves tragediennes.   So much of the grace of good gurus is nothing but to teach not to judge and merely embrace what seems to be imploding in front of one's eyes.   Souls are redeemed by the mere act of acknowledgement. The words "I understand" have saved innumerable lives.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the desolation in relationships -  Of Love (& other bouts of sadness) Miles Apart Finding Ways to Survive (Each Other) Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Rising Sun by Sascha Ende

Relationships are such journeys! Once you get into one, one prepares for the long haul. Railroad crashes, car rides, boring flights. The odd distraction, the unwilling participation, and the rare view of the Kanchenjunga through impenetrable clouds. One wishes for transcendence and encounters reality checks.   In our closest relationships we discover our worst selves.   But then a few things start to change. A few things seem to find their niche with a satisfying click. You start seeing things together and find consonance in your reactions. Slivers of light seem to come out of the brokenness.   Our sharp edges transcend to become rough surfaces. And we start to redefine the definition of 'smooth': the chiding, the irritations, the battles, all become quiddities -  to be paid attention to, but not with emotional equity. And suddenly the uncertain universe starts taking the shape of two.   Habits behove relationships.   Habits knit into relationships.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which reminisce on the passage of love  -  I Can Sense Her Loneliness What is Loss, She Asked Me Grief Strikes Where Love Struck First Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Satisfaction by Sascha Ende  

So much of our lives is a choice between the hard rock and a soft landing. Time and again we struggle, forgetting this is one life, and just a few million breaths. Beyond that, it's retribution.   Endings are rarely spectacular. Because, we are all slaves to our insecurities, our fears holding us tightly. And it is in very rare occasions of singular clarity and fearless realisations that we let ourselves go.   We blindly let the universe take us into places we would never dream of. And we find our nightmares to be illusions. And the coyotes we get to run with are the only honest beasts we know, who will hunt with us, and will find their one peaceful corner when the time comes, just as they leave us to ours.   Our lives are richer for the wildness we keep seeking outside - and inside.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the mysteries of life  -  Bella's Meadow A Meaning Without Questions Life For Rent Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Andromeda by Sascha Ende

I'd written this poem years back. I can't even remember the context or the time. But it brings an overwhelming feeling of loneliness, of evanescence - of people and loves who move on, always too soon it seems.   Parting seems like demise, and its irrevocable passage doesn't make it any easier. Bitter lovers have often talked of such periods as those of wasted opportunity, as if anything which doesn't have a classic consequence or a desired denouement is a phase in futility. The fallacy of endings being more important than the rush of the journey. But those who know about transience, who know that life is only a zen exercise, an observance of moments, know how life is both accumulation and movement, of experiencing and moving on.   All my poet friends keep telling me "Don't wallow in nostalgia! It is treacly. Too much sentimentality is dangerous to health." Maybe. What I do love doing is to think back and smile. Of having reconciled with what travels, what hurts, what sustains, what follows, what stays. And of looking back at it all, as the hurt and gain of irrevocable passage.   f you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on departures  -  Letting Go (because I am alive) Favourite People (who we love and leave) Departures Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Golden Journey Under The Sky of Autumn by Musiclfiles

Ara (who goes by the name 'petrichara' on Instagram) writes "someone who allows you to rest is the relationship dynamic of all time".   And I think - it's not only people but places too.   Places we're familiar with, places which allow us to ease into ourselves. Like a home. Where we know everything, where everyone knows us, and all we have to be is what we are in our own skin.   And often when we move in our home with awareness, we find the new in the old, messages we hadn't got earlier, congruities we hadn't encountered before. We know our home's oddities to be our own, we find its nooks suffused with hidden histories, and it is our witness and sanctuary. A home is a friend, silently seeing us unwind or unravel with equal sang-froidness.   Familiar people, familiar places are a boon to our hearts, solace to our souls, as we step into the unfamiliarities of an unforgiving world. We start our days, unaware what it would bring, our guards up, a thin tensile strain keeping our spine straight. Are we funny, are we competent, have we met the world on its terms without losing ourselves, have we stamped it with our individualities? The modern-day stress we keep hearing about is merely a result of these unmeasurable presences of a normal day.   When we step into our homes, leaving our shoes and artifices behind, it's the medicine, the panacea, the equaliser, which brings us back to our sanities.   We would be deranged without our homes.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the healing and beauty of homes  -  Her Breasts as Shelter A Home as an Open Dream Changing Your Address (on marrying and moving homes) Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - True summer love by Musiclfiles Tranquil Fields Peaceful by Alexander Nakarada

The relentless agency of living, its insistencies to persist - until it no longer could - its proclivity for drama, its calmness to tired souls:   that's one way to see life, when you are about to give up on things, when there seems to be no redemption to distress, when life seems to be an unending travail - something which doesn't give up even when you are ready to.   And you search for a reason to carry on. Viktor Frankl said "Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'."  But, alas, you simply can't find a reason - and you can't let go. So you strain to come out every morning. And you see that the ones who are always present are - the sun, the morning, the birds. They find joy without anticipation. They find a sense of being in the very act of repetition. Without expectation, without thinking of the past or future, just letting the nature of what is uncontrollable to do what it does best, and going along with the repetition and the ride.   And you step back, and look at this with a new eye. Not as a wound which doesn't heal, not as pain which keeps nagging incessantly. You start to look at it as benediction, a faith that things will unravel the way they have to, that agony is not preordained reality - rather, to be in the incident of life is to be in the full glow of its grace.   And everything changes.   You look at life with new eyes. Not as anticipation or affliction, not as scar or suture, not as the space between sighs and celebration, but as presence, as stillness, as sanity. The time to create, and find the beyond. Because that is where we always find ourselves.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of healing tired souls  -  What is Loss, she asked me Loneliness (oh these rains) Ruins Have Permanent Flames Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Rising Sun by Sascha Ende https://filmmusic.io/en/song/86-rising-sun

How much we are afraid to say what often simply needs to be said. It's an unavoidable fact - the conversations we avoid are the conversations we require the most.   Often we are afraid to face the black-&-white of the spoken truth, often we fear the unpredictability of confrontations.  Maybe, in the past, we've had to face the consequences of a scathing talk, and have now sworn to avoid anything which has the potential to break or hurt, welt or injure.   But subtly, irrevocably, what lies unspoken also changes us as persons, as it does our relationships.   On the surface, a calm descends. The need to avoid conflict overwhelms the need for stark truths. And the elephant sits fat and solid in the room, munching away time, growing fat on what's unspoken.   And by including avoidance in the definition of love, we chip away at truths. We become politer but less honest, we want to confront monsters by pretending they don't exist. In the song of life, we try hard to avoid the discordant note, and thus lose the soul required to give love not only its longevity but its singular breath.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on loneliness  -  Old Poems for Old Lovers The Art of the Lonely Good Deed Loneliness (oh these rains) Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Loneliness by Sayan Mukherjee

What is important to us? This question needs to be asked every morning, because weeks, which have been days, soon become years, and when we look back, we find that things have changed and people have drifted.   It's not that we lose ourselves in the trivial. It's how we let things subtract our lives rather than add to it. And we regret the time where we let go of opportunities to be with people who mean everything to us, or do things which we feared at that time and now regret not doing.   Time and again we are told to live in the moment, to embrace the passage of time, to know that living in the moment is the only way to find meaning. Time and again we regret not embracing it, and to let go of the opportunity which life gives us. Akin to this are the small stones of resentment which grow inside us, sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly, for people we care for, which become boulders stopping us from reaching out. When we look back we can see the reasons of withdrawal were so slight that in the schemata of lives, sorrows and admonitions, they really counted for nothing. But then we would have wasted time, we would have wasted years. We would have lost out on someone holding our hands in grief. We would have lost out in hearing voices with laughter in them speaking to us. We would have lost out in seeing familiar faces in front of us, growing more loved by the minute, because we love their mind and their heart and what they stand for and what they mean to us. More than anything else, it is people we should always reach out to and be close to and pick up the phone and talk to, because our true meaning comes from only two things: the things which we do, the people we reach out to. Our lives are always lesser when not filled with who or what we love. And in turn we are lesser as people. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of friendship  -  Memory Keeper Compatriots of Trust Aaschi Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Spring fervour full version by Musiclfiles Mystical autumn by Musiclfiles

It's been a tumultuous few days. According to WHO, one person is murdered every 60 seconds in this world. One person commits suicide about every 40 seconds.  One person dies in armed conflict every 100 seconds. And busy with our quotidian struggles, we let the numbers swirl around our consciousness before slipping away. Until one day, our blasé conscience finds something which goes beyond even our overburdened shock meter. And in strange infinitesimal ways, our world shifts. Something inside us breaks - and something else breaks open. The overwhelming feeling that a public tragedy is a personal visitation, beyond a dining table conversation, starts to haunt us. The tragedy becomes our own. We want to go beyond the pale of our usual cynicism - "what will change? what can change?" - and want to demand change. Of course, the patient procrastination of officialdom, the slow overtures of bureaucracy, the survival instincts of political whataboutery kicks in - as do attempts to wear us down. And we understand the strategies, we know how we will grow angrier and progressively frustrated - and our lives will begin to call, our duties will come to the fore. Our livelihoods will begin to be at stake - and we do give up. But we don't give in. For we know the long game too. Along the years we have also learnt the power of giving the long rope. We know that beyond the immediate sufferance, there are a few knockout blows which we hide beneath our sleeves. The streets, the polls, protests, poems, a non-cooperation movement, emptying halls where they speak, refusing their doles, walking out in the middle of speeches, a continual call to conscience. Beyond the pale of greed and corruption, which we all see and bear on a daily basis, we unite ourselves from cynicism, of not giving up because struggles often take years, maybe generations. We ensure that the blow is significant, and political parties, for years to come, will remember that those who bring them to power can never ever be taken for granted. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of what politics does to all of us  -  Politics on the Dining Table Mr Hoskote, have you visited Kashmir recently? No Revolution is Complete Without a Ruined Soul Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Refugees by Sascha Ende https://filmmusic.io/en/song/539-refugees  

Who are we if not slaves to our addictions? In the annals of definitions, we are often what we are at our worst. Which is the world's way of prioritising simply - and slotting conveniently. But much worse than our ruthless judgement is what we do with our own judgements about ourselves.   Within the tumult of being a sex addict or an alcoholic or being bulimic, there are those despairing battles where we fight our worst indulgences, and heartbreakingly, lose, and lose again, till we stop even putting up a fight.   And to live in the shadow of this continuous defeat is to realize how much of a lie we live in, and how everything dwarfs, even in our mind and soul, in front of this assault of unrelenting indulgence.   And after a while there's no place to hide - from the world or ourselves.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on sex as life  -  Her Breasts as Shelter Such are Such Days (or the days I make love to her) Finding Souls Between Their Legs Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Sleepers by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/3232-sleepers License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Our feelings are a yo-yo. Forever seeking more, something different, something ultra energising. As if different is better. We are not able to figure out the difference between excess and endurance. Everything around us moves so rapidly - technology, circumstances, opinions - that even relationships fall victim to the syncopated rhythm of indulgence & desertion. And in this cornucopia of life, we lose sight of what is actually enduring, what is flippant, what we need to hold onto, what we need to release.   We indulge in a hurry, and regret at leisure. And in the hullabaloo of choices do not even realize what we've lost. Till, someone recognizes our gold, and realises the unmindful flippancy of our directions - and refuses to let us take them.   And in the blessings inherent in our lives, the accumulation of the good we've done in this world, we are able to embrace what finally endures. Our life is changed, we go past the nightmare of options, and find both the compass and the perch, the arc and the direction, the zen of the passing and the depth of what endures.   We are then blessed, because we have been found.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems full of nostalgia for love  -  Living Tragedy Forward Of Love (& other bouts of sadness) Favourite People (who we love and leave) Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - The Children Of MH17 by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/268-the-children-of-mh17 License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Loss is embedded into our lives. Its advent has both unpredictability and inevitability written into it. It never comes as a stranger - but never ceases to break us. As humans, we are too embroiled in the now, too sure that the inertia of happiness will never cease its trajectory, to even mentally (leave aside emotionally) prepare for it.   The definition of loss, for each one of us, lies in whether what we lose is in our care, is our concern. Whether it lights us up. In concrete (often amorphous) ways, whether it gives meaning to the breath we take. Every which way, loss has a wake of tragedy. It could be a pinprick in the routine or a chasm in our soul. However robust our defence systems, however practical our relationship with reality, loss which means something to us, leaves us desolate.   It's this fear which leaves us unprepared.   Conversations on death - the ultimate loss - are avoided, because we think it's bad omen. There's no one to blame - we are humans, we have our quiddities, weaknesses, blind spots.   But the loss which leaves as deep a cut is when someone we love decides to move on. The sadness fractures us because the occurrence is not inevitable, and is often unexpected.   To lose someone who brings gold to our lives, and amber to our hearts, is to lose treasure.   We are then no longer the lees of loss, but its extension.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on loss and desolation  -  Grief Strikes Where Loves Struck First Letting Go (because I'm alive) The Things We Become When We Leave Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Blockbuster Atmosphere 9 (Sadness) by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/304-blockbuster-atmosphere-9-sadness License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

There’s nothing like tragedy to make us feel dreadfully alone. The particularities of what afflicts us is so personal that very few can find ways to hold us together as we fall apart. We seek the shoulder of those whose contours and smells are familiar and make our desolation feel less lonely. But often their presence is merely a body to hold onto, even as we tear up inside.   So, paradoxically, if there’s anything which exacerbates the implosion, it is the non-presence of the one we expect to be beside us as we disintegrate. Because what could be more devastating than not having a loved one, whose mere presence lights us up, to be not there to hold us up. One can travel across the globe in multiple hours, there’s no office, no binding, no power - except probably deep illness - which could or should hold a loved one back.   And in that absence lies the deepest cut. Because human beings are tactile, and sorrow requires presence. And hurt CAN build upon tragedy.   We shrink inside when love gives intimations of deserting us, particularly when it still hasn’t deserted our hearts. However much we find ourselves self sufficient and centered, we are special when people find us so - we are the validations we receive, we are the unexpected call, we are the sidelong glance, we are the deer caught in someone’s glance, we are the unplanned trip, we are the early-morning love-making.   Our life is often full because of the smallest gifts. When we are denied those, our lives shrink into decimal places. And our tragedy multiplies.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of lovers who move on  -  Of Love (& other bouts of sadness) I Will Leave The Last Line for You To Fill Favourite People (We Love & Leave) Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - A Sad Toy Story by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/563-a-sad-toy-story License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license  

Bella's Meadow* * inspired by Rumi’s Field by Bella Mahaya Carter. A little help from Leon.   We have all been asked one question from time immemorial - “What do you want to become when you grow up?” Or the more sophisticated variant - “What do you want from life?”   When I think back, I’m bemused with the varying answers, I would have given as I grew, and do give now. When I was a child, it was to be a railway engine driver. Then it became a desire to be a writer.  Later as life's reality checks started sinking in, I just wanted to make tons of money. The subtleties of life started showing their face. And I realized all I wanted was happiness, which turned to fulfilment.   And today all I want is to be present in the moment   As the most important things in our lives keep shifting, this subtle transition is one of the benedictions of aging, mirroring, as it were, what is important to me at that phase of my life.   But this last wish, this desire of presence, of being true to the moment, will now stay with me. Because this one moment is all we really have, to create a lifetime of riches. Of making a difference to myself or my world.   Because allied to presence is the biting realisation that we cannot forever be carriers of regrets or recriminations. In a world choc-o-bloc with choices, why in the name of heaven, should we choose to carry stones in our hearts? Amnesia to things which bite the heart late in the night is possibly the most powerful path to serenity. And a good night’s sleep.   The world opens up its riches to those who see it with clear eyes.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of the generosity of time -  Things We Gather In The Drift We Will Find Our Certainties Letting Go (because I'm alive) Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Lonesome by Sascha Ende

We are terrible at recognising symbols. That’s why much of popular art believes in high jinx, and the subtler softer art of hidden stories and allegories find their home in empty art galleries.   For me, one of the greatest joys of living in a world full of wonders is to find symbols and messages - where probably there are none. But stop me!   It all started in my childhood, when I and my mum lazed in our garden, each chewing a strand of sweet summer grass, watching clouds, discerning shapes out of them and she saying “The next cloud will be what you will be when you grow up” and laugh uncontrollably when it turned out to be the shape of rotund elephant. And now everything sets me up.   From a random political poster saying “Savdhan” as I step to start a day; to the way my skin crawls when I enter a home I don’t like; from the uncharacteristically generous splash of jam on my morning toast put by my wife; to the way flowers fall on me at the exact moment I pass a tree. If I’m crossing a road and a dark cloud passes the sun my instincts go alive, if I step out and a child coos at me I start looking forward to a lovely beatific day. I have never tracked the efficacy or the evolving truth of the messages, because for me it is enough that they are there.   More than their truth it’s their presence which thrills me. It’s like the universe is having a secret conversation with me. As if it is being both naughty and generous - sharing secrets and giving messages  - be aware, beware, be alive.   In the same vein, the body of a loved one is chocobloc with messages. The arc of an eyebrow, the way a hand is withdrawn, the seconds in which a hug is broken. The way her thighs touch yours when you sit in a crowded hall, the way she smiles in an elongated silence, the way music wafts out of a filigreed window as you walk to a lover’s house, the way she lets her breast caress your chest in the gentlest way as she kisses you on your cheek.   Beyond practicalities, our entire body is a gorgeous possibility of messaging. The subtle art of Vipassanna - which I so prefer to the secret-mantra artifice of TM or the forced kindness of Metta Meditation - asks us to explore our body for messages, to observe and move on. For in that observance, lies the recognition that it is important to know, but equally vital is the immediate passage away from this realisation.   I see the morning sun filter through the leaves, and there’s a delicate dance happening on the walking path. A snail waits for me, probably to let me lift it to the garden on the upper ground. It’s actually lifting me up.   It’s gonna be a good day.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the mysteries of the body  -  Punctuation for Lovers Such are Such Days (or the days I make love to her) Finding Souls Between Their Legs Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - The Way To Kataka by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/11-the-way-to-kataka License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license   Sunset at Glengorm by Kevin Macleod  

One thing which I celebrate with a fullness of heart, is the normalcy of a strong relationship, which allows for consent, dissent, conversation, dissatisfaction, honesty, fun. The pleasure of knowing one can be one’s own imperfect self, and still make a relationship stronger for it.   Life, as it were, throws enough seductions to test us to our weaknesses - of faith, of belief, of purpose (and I’m not even getting started on religion and politics!) - not to further have the ones who love us the most to sit in judgement on our munificence or transgressions.   And this is, of course, easier said than done. Because much before we demand non-judgement, we have to ensure we give it. I for one am very quick in ‘disliking-rejecting’, ‘liking-embracing’. It is my own private fiefdom of choice and I carry my opinion fiercely inside me, until I deem fit to change it.   And progressively as I age, I show my true feelings more transparently than before. I have fewer friends as a consequence, but the ones I have, are the rocks and rock stars of my life. Because we know this of each other - we are both more because of our quiddities and irritations. And we enjoy the frayed package of what we bring to each other.   Life is complicated enough not to allow love to be nitpicking.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on leaving a lover  -  Letting Go ( because I'm alive) The Things We Become When We Leave I Will Leave The Last Line for You to Fill Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -   Your name by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/13-your-name License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license   Sunset Fields by Alexander Nakarada

Time and again I have wanted to die. Oh there were reasons enough. A bruising fight at home, an extreme embarrassment outside, an absolute absence of intimacy when I was bereft of everything I cared for.   Of course there was an absolute lack of balance, a misreading of circumstances, an extreme reaction. But far more critical was what the universe laid out for me in those times.   I found an iridescent evening full of orange and purple thrown my way. When I stepped out into a budding dawn after a sleepless night, the trees bent down to caress me, the snails stopped their steady progress in the walking path to wave at me with their tiny antlers. I met a stranger who paid for my change in a coffee shop. Poori kainaat. The whole universe was conspiring to tell me - abide, hold on, you are not alone. And I was glad that I noticed.   Time and again, I wake up to the blessings of a world which never stops giving. Of course, it’s always there for the seeing. It’s we who ignore the signs and the colours and the aromas of a world which is crying out loud to be experienced. It’s we, who internalize our senses such that we are awake to our minutest emotional tremor but miss out the broad strokes visible everywhere.   But much more than that, the message to us continuously is that meaning is not a derivative or an equation. It is a presence, to be embraced, without suspecting payback or a happenstance seeking a price. Once we realise this, the entire grace of the world is out for the taking.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on why life is so beautiful  -  I Like The Ordinary Life The Grace That We Give This: One Grace Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Artemis by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6934-artemis License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

"He made love to me, smooth as a colon, and when he went down on me my body waved like a tilde."   Secrecy is an aphrodisiac. As powerful as pursuit, it is often mistaken for ardour. It is by and of itself an indulgence. Its translation into a stronger emotion, into love, is a different genre of effort. Chekhov once memorably said “There’s a proper order for a woman to become a man’s friend. First she’s an acquaintance, then she’s a lover, and finally she becomes a good friend.”   Love then is a long distance run, and friendship a journey of a lifetime.   Far beyond the satisfaction of an ego to ‘get’ someone, is recognition and acceptance. Of giving the time to know someone so thoroughly that the things we fall in love with mesh seamlessly with what we don’t. Irritations become quirks become things we adore. Time spent together is finding meaning in life. And hiatuses are then filled with remembrance which then act as bridges. Till the next time.   My best friends never complain about not being in touch. If they do, they are still lovers and have not transcended to friendship, which in the holy trinity of relationships, is the highest form of coexistence. (☺️)   As I walk through the hundreds of relationships I have formed - online, physical, tangential, official, family - I have continually learnt how it is often our closest relations who suck the marrow out of the marginal happiness we exist within. And sometimes it is mere strangers who elevate us with their attention or life stories. I survive by being in a zen state. As a Buddhist sutra succinctly advises - “Sab anitya hai”. Everything passes.   Indeed.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of how lovers tie themselves into knots  -  Lovers as Witnesses Coming to Your Side of the Bed Tracing Shadows on Your Back Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - True Summer Love by Musiclfiles Contemplative Cinematic Trailer by Musiclfiles

This is a repeat of one of my more popular poems, republished with a hope of getting a new audience, who might have missed it.    "There's always a road waiting for one of the lovers to depart."   The saga of love is a play of light and shadow. There is incident, coincidence, an assemblage of adrenalin, a bellowing of blood, a singling out of songs, a resurgence of senses. Love arranges it's own arrivals, often as a storm, frequently as a story, most often as winter sun. It rearranges parts of our life, it splinters our days in ways that distance hurts -  the desire to be, see, touch, smell, immerse, borders on desperation.   For deep inside, every lover knows that embedded in the ecstasy of a love story is it's extinction. Sometimes as slow burn, sometimes as a turn on the road, generally as gentle drift, often as an exercise of getting lost.   And then the helplessness ensues. Compasses point towards the setting sun, the flowers coalesce into routine, the days stop beckoning, sunrises only show autumns. But it is as if it's preordained - just as love is as much a part of life as breathing, separation is it's conjoined twin.   Why does love wither? Where does it go when it's gone? Are there secret burial grounds for love, epitaph-less, unmarked? Is there a floating cemetery of feelings in heaven for lost love - a consideration for the hurt, commiseration for the haunted, a soul for the homeless?   Because the inevitability of drift is in love's DNA,  it's loss is in its definition, it's celebration is forever aforetime. But we accept its inevitable tragedy, because our life is governed by its presence, and gets its mojo from its promise.   The journey, in life, or love, then, is everything.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of poignant separations -  Heartbreak Lovers of Broken Mountains Fallen Flowers Find other magical things, like a lovely free chapbook of poems, and other resources here.   Uncut Poetry has started a new Podcast called Red River Sessions (on Spotify, iTunes, Pocket Casts, etc), where we will talk to published poets, about their poetry, their craft and what haunts them. It is brought to you by Red River, which is the premier independent publisher of poetry books, and Uncut Poetry.    I am Sunil Bhandari.   I am a poet based out of India. My book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. My second book is 'Of Journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost'. Both are available on Amazon. Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Reaching The Sky  [Long Version] by Alexander Nakarada Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/6222-reaching-the-sky--long-version License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license    

When someone we love dies, everything changes. The normalcies of routine possibly give an outward sense of balance, but the turmoil inside resembles wreckage. We sink, wish to remain sunk, everything around us seems trivial - almost as if we can see through the artifice of the world, unable to tell everyone how they were missing out on the most important things in life, as they fought over the the insignificant, the trivial. And as is our wont as good people - we remember the good and the rest is subsumed in a closed vault inside our soul.   And I wonder - what is ever normal?   And I wonder about this connect of love, the dependence, the care, the thought, the absolute faith.   Are we emotional limpets to love? Do we grow stunted in love? Is care just an euphemism for dependence? Is the gift of attention a form of smothering? Is what we call love just an emotional crutch?   When someone we love passes on, we can see our worlds contract, we see ourselves stand diminished, and we can suddenly see with incredible clarity how much we are an accumulation of all that we’ve now lost. In a strange way, we know we’ve become representatives of who and what’s lost, the protector of the flame.   And then we realize how love is always a completion. We come as sketches and it’s who we love who fill us with the colours which make our lives iridescent, and us a 3D rendition of life itself.   We are lucky if our beings have overflowed with a loved one's presence, cantankerous and problematic as they might have been, because deep inside every such relationship is the kernel of care, the warmth of which fills our life - it burns when it breathes, it glows like a flame when it’s gone.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of passing on  -  What Do I Leave Behind? The Final Goodbye (or why lovers decide to die together) An Epitaph Made of Light & Air Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - The Long Travel to Terra Two by Kalak

A lot of what we are, the comfort of living, the beauty of how we view the world, is when we know we are cared for, and the ones closest to us are people we have implicit faith in.   To know that love is a thought away, that nothing will take away the presence of the person we care for  the most, is to know that the primary foundations on which our esteem, worth and respect lie on, is immutable and unmoving. And in a broad sense, it gives us permission to fly - or not - with the full knowledge that we will be saved and savoured irrespective of whether we succeed or we don’t.   Faith is potent force. Its presence, though amorphous, is what really makes life’s meaning tangible, as our relationships get cast in something which is akin to a permanent state of being. We are better because we know we are not alone. However much the physical distance from the ones we love.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on distances between lovers -  In the Drift We Will Find Our Certainties Lost Atlas of Belonging These Darned Long Distance Relationships Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Summer Morning (full version) by Musiclfiles  

So much of our life is a reaction. As if it is determined by someone else’s priorities and emotions and needs, and we become byproducts of their ambitions and needs.   It could be anybody - a father for whom we become the fulfillment of failed dreams, a lover whose hauntings of failed relationships find shelter in our quiet nooks, a brother who leans on us when he needs validation or unquestioning support. The list goes on.   And we act as obedient support systems - loyal, available, eager to help. Even when we know we are asking for trouble, even when we know it is not in our best interest, even when we know life has something else in store for us.   But we still become someone else’s agenda.   And we suffer for it. Because we get sucked into universes we did not want to be part of, but of which we become reluctant denizens. And our lives change.   And instead of making our own lives, with our own mistakes and compulsions and realisations and hurts and sinews and wounds, we become carriers of other people’s needs, bridges to other needs, derivatives of others dreams.   Till we build the courage to look inside ourselves and force ourselves to learn to say - no, no longer, no more.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of the strange dilemmas of life -  Adventures in Two Worlds Things We Gather I Like The Ordinary Life Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Sleepers by Sascha Ende Strange New Worlds by Sascha Ende

We are often given chances in life to go beyond ourselves. These could be random happenstances, things which only we notice, and which we may choose to ignore - or not.    If we pay attention and choose to clutch at those moments and do something tiny, unwittingly we invite, if not the appreciation at least a nod, from the universe. Maybe nothing changes, maybe nobody notices, but here’s the thing - we change, in tiny degrees but enough to shift something inside us.   The quietness in this is important, the element of shy boldness is a prerequisite, the lack of noise is a given. We should do, we should move on.   So, what does this unheralded, unspoken of, often unnoticed, act do to us?   I think, apart from the loud gifts of DNA bestowed onto us, we are also a growth of things we do, an amalgam of all the traces left behind in us of the deeds we do stolidly or impulsively.  But something shifts inside us. Something tell us - we are better for it. To be a good human being does not need headlines or acknowledgment, as it is sufficient in itself. And this goodness radiates out, and people who know nothing of it, also wonder and gravitate towards this basic element which shines through. Because this is a secret which nobody can see but everyone can sense. And makes people dip into their better selves.   The fire grows, as it were, with just a sense of the flame. And the world is a better place for it.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on good deeds which fall on us like soft rain -  A Legacy of Kindness Maybe, a Little Kindness Why We Should be Happy with Berry Jam on Table Edges Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Artemis by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6934-artemis License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license & String Impromptu Number 1 by Kevin Macleod

There is nothing worse than politics dividing family.   I have seen people develop distaste for their dearest and closest because of being on opposite sides of the political divide.   Something which is (mere) belief, takes on an expanded definition to include a commentary on character, and acts as an unsubstantiated and unsavoury revelation. And with astonishment we exclaim “What! You support —-?” As if it was the ultimate excretion and misdemeanour.   In the city I stay in, everybody is a political guru. Some emotionally, and some after study and observation. And it often becomes a battle of belief vs intellect. And conversations and emotions go haywire. And become deeply divisive.   And being a highly political nation, where as a people we consume (and practice) politics with gusto, finding someone close being not even close to our political beliefs is dismaying - and often unacceptable. How, then, can a conversation not be a battle? How can we not conclude that the other is at best insensitive or at worst a cretin (kreet n)? The hypocrisies are inherent in the premise. All dining table discussion on politics are nothing more than air. We criticise with the depth of our beings, lean left whilst having expensive wine, talk of one god whilst deeply suspicious of another’s religion. How much do our politics - and religion - diminish us, how it makes our worst define us, how much something which is nothing more than a reaction to headlines makes us be judgemental of the ones closest to us.   In a life which is so short, and so completely beautiful, we deliberately lean into what we think defines us, when at best it is an amorphous state - changing as we understand more, read more, feel more, see more.We bring tragedy merely  because we give importance to the transient.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of how politics adn religion determine our lives -  In Search of a God Mr Hoskote, have you visited Kashmir recently? The Tragedy of the Other Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Liberty Quest by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/293-liberty-quest License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license   Heavens Gate by Frank Schroeter

We live multiple lives. Each one of us have variations, but everyday our paths fork out. And we move from the secure to the stormy; from standing naked to being armoured; from garnering the blessings of the universe to ploughing through the detritus of the denizery.   Often we are able to navigate this transition in the simplest way possible - we remain the same in every world, raw and uncluttered, ready to take the blows for being us. But more often then not, we tweak our selves to the scenarios in front and archetypes expected, to fit in, to flit through, without too much damage to the world or ourselves.   But it’s not always easy, definitely not for the sensitive soul, which wants to remain true and get by peacefully. And I say to such people - go gently, be true. For there is a reward at the end of every struggle to fit in or not - to be recognised for being authentic. And the universe invariably converges its rewards towards such people, albeit slowly, dreadfully so.   I learned to stay in two worlds as two people for a long time. And it was extremely strenuous apart from being incontrovertibly inauthentic. Until I could no longer be what I was not. I have no memory of the inflection point, the moment when something inside me said “I will implode.” But I dropped pretences. And I lost friends. And I got peace.   I seeked lesser commitments, I could speak my mind with ease, I could say no with complete peace of mind, and I walked guiltless.   The drainpipe of my worlds became a bridge, and both my worlds converged into one.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the struggles we face in our daily lifes -  I Like The Ordinary Life What Stretches in Front The Passing of Autumn Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Misty lights by Rafael Krux Melodic Interlude Two by Alexander Nakarada

They say, in actuality, there are only two kinds of people in the world - fighters and survivors. I have often thought about this grim prognosis of life, and without attributing anything dire to it, I really think it is close to truth.   In seeking acceptances, we often have to struggle with the true us and the version the world wants to see. Because we are first a subset of a larger expectation before we start to even begin to be our own person.   The corollary to this is often the complete abdication of lives. Most often to parents, soon enough to partners - husbands, lovers. We are first loved for what we are, and then are given a larger acceptance only if we confirm to their idea of us. If we waver from there, try to become something which is truly us, if we protest, we have to face consequences. It could start from emotional appeal, transcend to consequences, end in incarcerations of all kinds.   We often seek refuge, escapes; clutch at straws, good hearts; and find ourselves giving into patterns. One prison for another, as it were. Unconsciously we build shackles inside of us. Without realising we have become our own prisoners. Which becomes difficult to break out of.   There IS redemption. Alas, it comes with a high price - shame, isolation, death. Often even unconditional love is not enough, as it it riddled with complex past archetypes, windmills of the confounded mind, as it were. We are finally of ourselves, suicidally jettisoning this one wondrous life.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems talking about our relationship with parents -  My Mother is Full of Water and Ready for Sonography Mother's Rambling Lessons on Life Imparted in Morning Walks in my Childhood Tea-a-Tete with Mum & Dad Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Yesteryears (DECISION) by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/244-yesteryears-decision License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

I went to Varanasi a few weeks back, and spent time wandering the lanes, in temples, on the ghats, sitting beside the river.   I was a non-sequitur: a non-believer in a holy city, amidst people who had the name of god continuously on their lips. And I saw holiness and ordinariness mesh in seamless ways. Almost like a message that a spiritual search did not entail you to be anything other than what you are - messy, complex, confused. Because that is where every journey begins.   Varanasi is special because unlike other holy cities - Vrindavan, Assisi, Ujjain, Vatican - it is not a mere destination - it is the beginning of a journey. That’s why it’s co-existence as a city of chaos and one of silences, gives it a sense of transcendence.   Because that is what, if you really think about it, true religion is all about. It starts with belief, not cynicism; it has intimations of doubt, bouts of questions, dollops of scientific inquiries. And the only reason a person persists is because she knows there are too many questions which the normal human experience cannot answer. And in the space of the unexplainable, we find what seems like the miraculous. We can accept it as grace, and move in our lives with a sense of utmost gratefulness. Or we can give it a name. God. The Unexplained. Mystery. Maybe - mother.   In whatever way we find the Unknown, Varanasi is an immersion. With or without the holy dip.  It will never leave you unaffected, unmoved or unscathed. Varanasi will hurt you - even as it holds you, heals you, makes you its own.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of the holy -  Windblown Om Capturing the Feeling When the Goddesses Depart Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Lockdown by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/7658-lockdown License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license   Strange New Worlds by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10369-strange-new-worlds License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Whenever I see couples getting hitched, I say a silent prayer of thankfulness.   Because every day the couple has a ringside view of each other, of things which they say and do. They crack a small joke, they fulfil small wishes, they stop someone from stumbling, they secretly make someone’s favourite dish,they listen with their bodies, they stand beside the window and see the morning sun drop on the floor.   We all need someone in our lives who can see us for what we are, way beyond what the world sees us, as someone made of greatness and grime, someone who is beautiful and ugly at the same time. Someone who sees us as selfish and doesn’t turn away, someone who recognises the smallest gesture as generosity and embraces us for that.   To be ready to be a couple is to be with each other, through the massive and the minute, to know we can be huge in tumult and small in celebration, and still not turn away, because we have promised to take each other as we are. To know that we have the capability to accept  way beyond what we can dream of.   Because we are privileged to be the witnesses of the lives our lovers lead.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of love as a thing to be witnessed -  Coming to Your Side of the Bed Letting Go (because I'm alive) The Things We Become When We Leave Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Sensitive Cinematic Romantic by Musiclfiles

We are such carriers of burdens. We have nothing to lose, but we carry the weight of such unnecessities. In the end, irrespective of what the Pharaohs believed, we have to leave everything behind. Which then probably is the only time we truly travel light.   But here we are - seducing, desiring, acquiring - and if not for things, we are busy burdening ourselves with myriad feelings, emotions which we should have experienced and moved on from, felt and unfelt, tasted, remembered and then forgotten.   But such is our blind-sightedness for immortality, our instinct to persevere and our desire of acquiescence, that we give the halo of permanence to the things which are most ephemeral. And therein lies the deepest cut. Because much more dangerous than the quicksand of useless acquisitions is the accumulation of feelings. And how little do we know how to handle those.   It is never our passage through emotions that is deleterious, it is our staying in those emotions which creates havoc. Because that’s when we ponder and speculate and conjure - and invariably think of the worst.  Much more than the action which precipitates our feelings, it is our continual analysis which brings about fractures in relationships.   We have to learn to live through passing storms of ties, be swirled, tossed around, battered, but then to survive and move back into the warmth of our mutual sanctuaries.   If we realise that it is in the nature of things that they don’t last, we would be less hard on ourselves or others.    If we stop being conscious of the world and learn to revel in the quixotic quirkiness of our beings, and learn to laugh at and laugh about it, we would have found the core of life’s mysteries. Laugh and move on.   There would be no need to go to another realm to find ourselves.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on things we gather and those that we leave -  Balancing Beginnings Yearning (and other things we carry in the journey) Gather Me Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Liberty Quest by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/293-liberty-quest License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

So much of the good we have, things we are proud of, our looks, our most innate traits, are in truth merely gifts. They are an inheritance in our blood, nature’s largesse for us to build on.   But what we become is a factor of what we do with what we are given.   We can hold these gifts as talisman, to seek the good beyond them, to figure out our dharma, the very core of why we are in this world. Or we can just let them define us in shallow ways, as we work behind the facade, building our dynasty of desire.   I am just glad to be part of a family which is both my biggest cheerleader and the sternest rapper of knuckles possible.   Our strictest teachers are the ones who love us the most. The ones who hammer into us where we’ve gone astray are the ones who cry and pray for us in the silence of the night.   I am blessed to be born to the parents I have. Not that he has much choice, but I hope my son looks back to me some day and feels the same thing.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how kindness changes lives -  Maybe, a little kindness What I Miss is the Tender Moment The Grace That We Give Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Francescas Story by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/2981-francescas-story License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

So much of what we are is because of abandonment. Often as reality, often as feeling. We talk but we don’t get through. Our silences are many, none find a resolution. Our words come out with warm intent, but when conjoined sound harsh. We love to death the very person we find the most fault with.   But in this morass of disintegrating hope, we are firm on continuums. We are not ready to give up. Because we know things change, people change. And no season is permanent.   And such do relationships survive.   And often, very often, they find their equilibrium. Not so much as a reconciliation, which is often there, but as an understanding. Beyond the spontaneity of an outburst, or the harshness of a habitual word, one recognises the heart, well hidden though it might be. And then everything is forgiven.   But there are times when such understandings do not emerge. And that’s when two good people are found to be excavating the worst of themselves: in relationships people discover the depths of depravity or dismay or disillusionment that they can reach.   Alas, that is what then defines us as people - everything else is forgotten.   Even if we move to the other side of the bed, we find it empty.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of the complex rhythms of relationships -  Tracing Shadows on Your Back Letting Go (because I'm alive) Of love (& other bouts of sadness) Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Good men do bad things by Phat Sounds Shadows of Autumn full version by Musiclfiles

This is a repeat of one of my more popular poems, replayed with the hope of getting a new audience, who might have missed it.   "We walk under boughs heavy with fragrance, petals touching our cheeks with infinitesimal tenderness, and think back to how meaningless was what we’d said.   In a universe of a million possibilities, we could be a certainty, but we suffered our uncertain inequities.    We should have found tenderness like kittens venturing into the world - with fright and wonder and the ability to believe. Alas, we stopped at our conceptions of each other."   They say “The only real battle in life is between hanging on and letting go.” In that one coruscating truth lies the crux of relationships. The question then is not of doubts or misgivings or dwindling love, but it is - have you given yourselves enough time? In that one question lies an irrevocable truth - things take no time to unravel but take time to settle.   You have to keep examining, you have to keep asking. Why don't you care? Why did you hurt me? Why did this happen? Why do you believe this about me?   Why did you do this?   The answers would be unsatisfactory, they will be evasive, but though they might not bring clarity to you, they will make the other think. And they will understand why you hurt, where you hurt. The shrapnel will be blunted.   At the same time, you are embracing your own strengths, the preciousness that you bring, the value of what you are, and it nullifies when others attempt to make you think less of yourself .   You will not like everything, but you will understand a few things. You will be able to cut through the fluff of your own misconceptions, and theirs, to understand the truth of what makes relationships work.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on complexities of relationships  - Why Don't You Make Love to Me Anymore? That Gorgeous Evening When You Left He Made Lasagna Before He Left Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected] Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Heart Love by MusicLFiles Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/9259-heart-love License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Asperger by Sascha Ende® Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/9264-asperger License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license  

It’s one of the ironies of life that relationships which have persisted for years, often have hesitation built into their fibre. You know everything of each other, but are still not sure of your place in their lives. The important thing which keeps haunting you is - what do both of you mean to each other.   You say the things which you have been saying for years, she reacts the way she has been reacting for years, and both of you dislike the way you have conducted the conversation. But you have not been able to reconcile with the hurt which you somehow convey in that interaction. You are completely off sync. You feel you are being normal, she feels she is being normal, but you are totally off kilter.   And you’re not able to reconcile what is wrong in the way you are with each other.   I have often wondered how misconceptions persist over the years. It’s not for want of trying. You attempt trying to make each other understand your love languages, and to show where things hurt, and how what’s normal for him is hurt for her, or how a simple word or gesture can be so irritating, devastating or problematic. But what you get in return is another layer of misunderstanding.   You of course love each other. There’s too much you’ve been through - joys, pain, babies, walks, coffee breaks, loved meals, cookouts, relatives you don’t like, friends you love, movies you’ve seen holding hands, music you’ve both loved with tears in your eyes, the dresses you’ve admired each other in, the dusks you’ve spent doing nothing but holding each other. All the little things which have made you persist. But even then the questions persist.   And such do simple lives find their own ways to fragile devastation.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the simple complexities of love - Letting Go (because I am alive) Of Love (& other bouts of sadness) What I Miss is the Tender Moment Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected] Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Natural Paradise by Musiclfiles

As I gear up for the Ed Sheeran show, I’ve been trying to fathom the excitement in me! I’ve seen some terrific shows - Kylie Minogue, Kate Perry, Michael Jackson (omg - goosebumps!), Norah Jones, Michael Learns to Rock, and the innumerable gigs of favourite Indian singers and jazz bands - and somehow when I see tour rosters of my favourite artistes, I keep wondering if i can match my travelling plans to catch them perform.   And there are so many. The ones I would love to catch - Billie Elish, Sia, Mansa Jimmy, Elisapie, Hania Rani, Birdy, Jon Batiste, Ali Sethi - just to name a few! And the ones I will regrettably never be able to hear - Leonard Cohen, The Doors, Ghulam Ali, The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkle. Somehow when I draw a circle, to denote the completeness of my life, these invariably feature as a factor.   It’s easy to say that we are merely listeners, as we sit in a hall, a stadium, under darkened ceilings or lie flat with starlight above. But when a listener gets drenched in the music she loves, there is both a transcendence and an immersion, which is as much a part of music being for the listener’s soul, as it is the musician’s  in creating sublimity.   I have stood with 50000 fans and sang along songs which each one of us knew by heart, and felt transported. Felt communion, felt lifted, knew the meaning of soaring.    Apart from the concerts, with their presence of community and crowd, for me music is an intimate accompaniment to life rhythms. I have music playing almost through my waking hours. Soft, often indescribable, often random. But for me, it is a way to be more productive, to bold-italic-underline the moment. It makes life more important, richer. Whilst it is often considered mere distraction, it never is. It is forever giving. It enriches, even as it is played in the background.   I have often puzzled how the most puerile of lyrics (“love, love me do, I love you too” - for Christ’s sake!) become ear-worm and stay with us throughout our lives. Such is the power of music notes, the words and their inimitable interlinking. But in that remembrance they often transport us to some place of essential innocence, a place of swaying trees, a breezy arbour of sundrops and shade.   If music is first sound, then our first intimation of love - our Mum’s gentle cooing - has to be the first music note which gives us the confidence to believe the rest of the world. And possibly therein lies the kernel of music’s mysterious warmth and comfort, the reason why we often forget the notes but remember the feeling.   We are home with the music we love.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the advent of esctasy - Flutter Gather Me Ceremony of Longing Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected] Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Die Unendliche Geschichte by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/512-die-unendliche-geschichte License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Ranjit Hoskote, the famous art critic,  poet ,writer wrote an amazing piece on Gaza and the humanitarian tragedy unfolding there. It was a piece which broke my heart, truly, as it brought out in sharp relief the incredible carnage taking place with impunity and for days on end.   But then he interlinked Gaza with Kashmir.   And that was something which he did casually, as if he was duty-bound to do so, as a fact.  And I was grieved that someone so sensitive and aware, could also be so frivolous, so tone-deaf. And suddenly I realised how much his words were artifice, played to a gallery, which would anyway cheer him along.   It disturbs me that poets, writers, thinkers find it expedient to bring in Kashmir in all narratives of torture, pain, without delving deeper into the principal issues, without historical perspective, without even trying to find what the present reality is, the truth of the ongoing narrative. This casual interlinking, using Kashmir as common coinage is something which truly disturbs me. Hence this poem.   Read the incredibly sensitive essay here -  https://scroll.in/article/1063846/ranjit-hoskote-in-our-interconnected-world-gaza-is-everywhere   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the meaning and price of freedom - For Anyone Who Bleeds Blood & Light in the War Zone Crimson Flowers in Jallianwala Bagh Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected] Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Medieval Love by Frank Schroeter

I have often been cruel. Knowingly, unconsciously. With people closest to me, and invariably  because I take them for granted. So it is a mini tragedy, when I sit down and have a conversation - and I’m short, I’m angry, I’m sarcastic.   Take my mum - she is frail now, though her voice still has passion, but is veering towards gentle tones now. And I can ‘win’ any battle by the sheer dint of volume. Pyrrhic victory, if there ever was one, as she goes silent, and I keep reading the newspaper as if nothing has happened.   We are both in a space of a confined relationship, whose contours could never be changed. I would be her son forever - and we were tied to each other inextricably, as fact, as benediction or affliction. Our relationship is one of perfect imperfection. We come with legacy in our blood and history in our senses, as we fill each other’s space on a daily - often hourly - basis. And within that proximity lies the very seed of slowly getting blinded to the good we do to each other. We start taking each other for granted.   And I mull on Oscar Wilde’s symbolical lines - “Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard…” The realisation is a sickening thud. Because to hurt a loved one is to do the irreconcilable. Circumstances might determine a future of forced togetherness , but the heart remembers what it remembers.   And scars take longer than forgiveness to lose their mark.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the preciousness of gentleness and kindness - An Epitaph MAde of Light & Air How To Hold Love as it Breaks Kintsugi Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected] Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Motivational Soft Piano Meets Cello by Horst Hoffman

This is a repeat of one of my more popular poems, replayed with the hope of getting a new audience, who might have missed it.   "We would talk of the day to make the outside world our own, and lay joint claim to our individual memories."   A home is of so many definitions. The place we grow in, the place we get our first intimations of the living world, the place we are desperate to get to at the end of a day - but also the place we are desperate to leave as we grow.   Often a shelter, often a prison, often just a roof, often the very symbol of unquestioning acceptance. We learn the meaning of bruises from those in the next room,  and the ill-imitable depth of love from those further down the hall. We learn there is often no difference between the command of an elder and the confines of an ego. We learn of chains of command and of the subtle exertion of real power.   We learn how some of the hardest decisions come from the softest heart, and male prerogative is often just a cover for cluelessness. We leave home for pilgrimages, when actually we are in search of a home.    Home is deep nights and late escapes. Home is often of going away without looking back. And to die in peace often only means to have  found that address which we can finally call home - and to have that address find us.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which take you back home (and its strange dynamics!) -  It Takes a Long Time to Arrive From Not Very Far Away Extraordinary Life A Morning Ramble on How Love is Rediscovered at the Bottom of Rubble Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Romantic Piano  by Rafael Krux Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/5471-romantic-piano- License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

This awareness, this stopping to see something insignificant, the overwhelming desire not to look at my mobile for long moments - I sometimes think it’s aging which is doing this to me. The fact that I have seen a bit of life, of tragedy and joy, of the big events of life and some, and no longer wish for the large and the loud.   Now what stops me are things which seem to happen in passing. A snatch of music, the stitching of a happy conversation, a stray comment followed with a comfortable silence, the sound of laughter drifting out from a street-level window. Suddenly these seem important. Often, when my dad and I stand in his room’s verandah, and watch a decaying sunset, the rays reflecting in the three lakes in front of us, his arm around my shoulder, my chest swells such that it seems it will burst open.    I just know these are the things I will think of on my deathbed, and these are the things which will help me drift away serenely. So I am going about collecting these moments hungrily, as if there is no tomorrow.   Somewhere in our desire to see life only as movement from one high to another or as a remembrance only of the photographable, we lose sight of the infinitesimal, the mote in the sun-ray, the buzz of a wasp going busily about its business.   I’m just glad I’ve fallen in love with my common uninteresting unadventurous life.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the preciousness of the passing moment - Mornings (as entry points to life) Letting Go (A Childhood Song) Tenderness in the Pause Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected] Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Nothing but memories by Reegsb

I doubt if there’s anybody who tends to words with such infinite tenderness. For her, they are rounded pebbles on a seashore, sea waves washing over naked feet, the gentle curve of the sea at the horizon.   She holds words the way I hold her.   But strangely when I think of her, it is always with a silent smile, like a truth which leaves us speechless, the way the sun slips out as a guest does when tired of a party.   I sometimes feel there’s too little of her in this world, someone who feels the world as a good place and sees it with forgiveness. I ask her what her greatest fear is and she says “Losing you.” I tease her and ask “Not losing yourself?” She looks at me and says “You’re there to find me. That’s why I can’t lose you.”   Then she adds “But I know something. In this life of unfinished hope, I also wish us dirt, passion, devotion. I want to burrow so deep into the entrails of life that I almost drown in its depths - and just because it can’t stand me anymore it spits me right out.”   I listen to her silently. And know the reason I love her is because she helps me see the wonder in everything which I fear. And in her boldness and her gentle desire lie her insistences. As if Hania Rani had given breath to her song ‘Esja’, and her notes wanted to break out and dance on the thinnest ice possible or at a precipice which could crumble and break.   And as we sit in the winter sun, our fingers intertwined, I realise how much she wanted to dance, with her words, with her life, with her being, with me. If life could be a music track, she would start with a hymn, let rap take over and then go out in a blaze of the most improvised jazz adventure possible!   And as I hold onto to her gentleness, I know her to be steel.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the serenity which comes with love - Why We Should be Happy with Berry Jam of Table Edges Come When The Heat of Noon Has Still Not Dimmed I Fell In Love With You (Again) Beside the Tin of Sardines Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected] Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Traveling OVer The Clouds by Musiclfiles

We as persons are so much of the people who inhabit our lives. Not only by way of how they are connected to us and change the trajectory of our lives, but what they mean to us by way of how our souls evolve. But beyond it all is their influence on our minds and hearts to define to us what we are.   Sometimes we are unsure of our own abilities to achieve, to fulfil, to create. And though we might be brimming  with every talent, we might be an uncertain wreck inside, unable to comprehend the intensity of our own possibilities.   And then someone in our life comes by and refuses to accept our limitations.   They keep seeing beyond, they keep seeking more, they keep insisting that we are much more, that we are needlessly imprisoning ourselves in a low opinion of ourselves, and we can be beyond everything we can comprehend.   I remember a Japanese story where a girl considered plain by the whole world and jeered at whenever she came out of her house, is wooed by the most eligible man in the village, and he proposes with a record number of buffaloes, which nobody in the village could even comprehend. And soon enough the girl grows into becoming the beauty which her beau saw inside her.   Of course the story is allegorical, but it’s truth is not.   We grow into our best selves when someone refuses to believe that we are anything less.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on love & trust - The Importance of Faith in Love I Can Be Your Poem Her Grace without Notice Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected] Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Crescendiocity by Alexander Nakarada

We are never as strong as we feel we are. What’s ostensible, what’s shown, matters little. As we walk, with our eyes wide open, sometimes in wonder, often in fear, we need someone beside us to interpret the world.   A conversation is the blood flow of a love story.   To be generous enough to listen without interpretation, to hear without interruption, is a gift we give our loved ones. Because we already trust them. And everything we share with them is only an expansion of the shared world. There’s nothing good or bad, we are not judges, we are partners, and when we choose to let the other know everything, we let them into the fragility of our beings. There’s first fear, a testing out, as it were, for nobody wants to be broken by unkind hands. Then there’s unabashed laughter. Tears come in the end. Because that’s when dams burst, and you don’t mind, because you know there is someone ready to catch every teardrop, so that the sorrow doesn’t go unacknowledged or wasted.   I think tenderness as a vital ingredient of love is often underestimated.   Knowing how the trajectory of our lives changes due to the entry of some people in our lives, we need a safe zone for our fears and vulnerabilities. Often we find it immediately, often we need to search on, often never.   Much more then the highs and the rush of dopamine which love gives, what finally sustains it is the generosity we accord each other as a place of protection. Where we know we can say anything without being judged, where we can be goofy without a cantankerous response. Or be afforded a strong attempt to understand even on disapproval of what we’ve revealed of ourselves.   Else then love is a snail out in a tentative dawn, which senses danger and withdraws within its shell, and finds it difficult to emerge again.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on poems themselves - The Life & Times of a Song Stopping by a Cafe to Drink a Poem I Don't Think Poetry Will Save Us. But Yet, and Yet.... Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected] Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Music: When Life Is Beautiful by KALAK Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/11355-when-life-is-beautiful Licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license  

Deep inside, we all seek grounding.   In the complex hullabaloo of desires, facades and one-upmanship, within sudden dollops of searing clarity, we search for the timbre of our being and realise the glitzy syncretic synthetic fabric it is made of. And the disquiet emerges.   If the rot in our beings is not all-pervasive, the disquiet is a beginning to our conscience wanting redemption. We want to return to a point where we’d not lost our innocence though the ways of the world might have brought both wisdom and cynicism in its wake.   And this shows up in all our relationships. In the way we confess to love, in the way we make love. There are truths waiting to be revealed, there are truths wanting to be told. At our most elemental state, we seek the danger of vulnerability, to come clean with our soul. We are ready to lose much for a glimpse of that one clouded truth.   As we drift back into the other world of our lives, we then carry the revelation inside. We already know it’s power, we know it’s ability to cleanse, but we also know it’s revelatory power. And we decide, through its possibilities of disruption, to let’s it’s coruscating effulgence to emerge, and in one stroke bring us back to that state where we might stand damaged but we are cleansed. We are one with ourselves.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the loneliness of a craving body - Flutter Of Bodies in Bed & Uncertain Joys An Onanist's Guide to Loneliness Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected] Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -   Music: Romantic Interlude [Full version] by MusicLFiles Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10421-romantic-interlude-full-version Licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license   Music: Time Of Mourning by Frank Schroeter Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9646-time-of-mourning Licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

As 2023 turns its back with a sigh, we walk into a brand new year.   Hope - with all its bewitching deceptions - will make us wish for our best selves, to slough off the undesirable and ugly, and emerge fresh and wet, with unfazed optimism to conquer the world. But soon enough, we will know that, as always, all we need to do is to conquer ourselves.   And I sit down and make a list of what I want to leave behind in the old year and another list of what I want of the new year. And then I realise. - the new year wants nothing of me.   It’s a sobering thought.   And forces me to think of everyone in my life who loves me unquestionably, and expects nothing but an ear to listen as we sip our tea together, and a hand to hold as we go out into the world.   Hence my only wish for myself - and for everyone in this world - is that we honour time and we create space. For we have to both hurry in this life and not forget to savour the moment. Because we need to both honour our ambition and be beside those who need us beside them.   May we all be unafraid to do what we love, and find peace in the torn and tattered bounty of what we are.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the ephemeral nature of time - Letting go (because I am alive) Memory Keeper Falling Into a New Year Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected] Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Music: Moments by Frank Schroeter Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/11940-moments Licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license