I have so often sat down to write poetry, and all that I actually wanted to do was to sit quietly and do nothing. Sipping tea, getting into my routine, crossing a street, looking out of a window, untangling a small problem, pointing out something beautiful to a loved one.....as I sat on the edge of an evening, and watched a bird delirious in its abandonment and random flight, I knew -  even an unwritten moment could be a poem. And our life is full of poetry, if only we open ourselves to it.   This is Uncut Poetry's 50th episode.   I've been with you every week with a new poem. And it's been a journey of discovery as much for me as it has been, I hope, for you.   Thank you for trusting me, and returning to Uncut Poetry, week after week.....   I want to give you a gift, absolutely free, a beautifully designed chapbook of some my poetry. Just because you have been with me.   Do go to the link below for this -  https://linktr.ee/UncutPoetry   There's so much still to discover.   I am a poet based in India. My book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. My second book 'Of Journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available as Kindle on Amazon. Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup Get in touch with me on [email protected]

Years go by in relationships, and sometimes we feel that this is the nook where we fit in perfectly, and then suddenly we are left bereft of  an anchor to latch onto or a bank to rest our boat against. Why is there never unalloyed comfort even in a relationship of many years? Maybe that is the way the universe ensures we don't take anything for granted. Maybe that is the way we get to know that love with a little tension attached to it ensures longevity rather than the lugubrious version of love which takes itself for granted, and then finds itself alone.   Lovers, the next episode will be my 50th in Uncut Poetry.    I would like to thank you for being such an integral part of this journey. I am here because you are here. And I want to give a part of my heart as a gift.   Write to me at [email protected]. I have a chap book of poems which I would like to send to you.  For being with me, for being such a valuable part of my journey. Thank you.   I am Sunil Bhandari.   I am a poet based in India. My book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. My second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available as Kindle on Amazon. Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]

"Heaven is above and I know where I am, At the corner of the interstate, I couldn't let you go, I could not let go yet."   I have just collaborated with Alma Roxx in their new single "Interstate (when we were one with the stars)". My poem is embedded into this song.   Alma Roxx is the brainchild of Oregon based producer/songwriter Renny Currin. Often times a genre bending sound, Roxx delivers infectious melodies married with sensitive lyrics. Ryan Minor states in his Bottle Conjuror music blog that Alma Roxx's sound is "as if Simon and Garfunkel, Animal Collective, Beck, Mac Demarco and Stephen Malkmus decided to do a collaboration with Thom Yorke acting as producer and beat maker."   Alma Roxx calls their sound as something which is in the intersection of psychedelic pop and sheer chill. It makes for a compelling listen.    This song - and my poetry in it - deals with death, remembrance, waiting and reconciliations. The lyrics, the music and the poetry seamlessly and tenderly explore loss.    As Gabby (@oddgeezerfineart) says - "this tune will hit you like a sack of bricks, pick you up, dust you off and drive you forward."   Catch the full song at the following links -    https://almaroxx.bandcamp.com/track/interstate-when-we-were-one-with-the-stars-feat-sunil-bhandari   or   https://open.spotify.com/track/3rV5c5hlYBNxNqxcpM4cjv?si=viI8v3h9Qz2Z4aIXF8YK7Q   I am Sunil Bhandari.   I am a poet based in India. My book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. My second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available as Kindle on Amazon. Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]  

People who don't know me are surprised that I don't sleep with a blanket of moonlight and a pillow full of stars. But I have a day-life and it's in an office. And it's a place which has consumed a large part of my life - and, alas, is rarely acknowledged by me in my poetry. Even though it has given me a livelihood and a distinct place in the world. So I decided to make amends.  Today's poem is a love song to my office.   I am Sunil Bhandari. I am a poet based in India. My book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. My second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available in Kindle on Amazon. Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]

One of the abiding tragedies of love is the lack of breathing space between lovers. The freedom they experienced, and which brought them together to begin with, suddenly switches into ownership and expectations which can never ever match with what is ordinarily possible. People, more often than not, don't drift apart, they merely suck the oxygen from around the very person they fell in love with, because she was free.   Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari.  Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available in Kindle on Amazon. Follow Sunil on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]  

"She knows love, / because love was an answer / sheared of every question / unburdened with doubt, / unremarkable as fact."   As we come to the close of an extraordinary year, and wait for its end, we hope there would finally be a pause to the disruption of lives, families, places, things, routines. But when has the drama of life ever ended?   And as someone I love dearly struggles, I turn again and again to poetry. In reading it, in writing it, to seek forbearance, to resolve reasons, to look back with fondness, to look forward for grace.....   Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari.  Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available in Kindle on Amazon. Follow Sunil on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]    

"Once, on Sundays, as I read the papers, I saw a sunbeam make its way to her, and her hair was suddenly aflame like a fuzzy halo, as she lay on the carpet, her face cupped in her palms, lost in the world of wizards - and the sun helplessly putting the spotlight on her, for the universe to gaze at her, and no one else."   In Pema Chadron's  exquisite and heartfull book "When Things Fall Apart" she says - "You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather."   This poem is about how children are natural zen individuals and how the universe recognizes them for what they are.   Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari.  Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available in Kindle on Amazon. Follow Sunil on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.    

"I sit on the edge of the evening, as I allow you to find your way: the sea is low and I want you to know what it is to tread the skies."   Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari.  Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available in Kindle on Amazon.   Sunil is on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.

Summer, of all seasons, is the one which brings us human beings into our most elemental  state - frank, often ugly, always true.   We indulge and never regret; we forgive and we mean it.   We know that what happens to us, is what we do onto others. And in that strange steaming symbiosis lies the powerlessness of our appetites - we are what the air makes us -  not good or bad - just stripped of everything, naked, true -  and for once not ashamed, and for once refusing to be shamed.   Summer is a body's sigh of being, as it realizes how everything is so fleeting.    Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari.  Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available in Kindle on Amazon.   Sunil is on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.

I am amazed how we pass our lives through the magnificence of seasons, and how we change with them, as if they were our partners on a road to nowhere, somewhere.. .   Summer, winter, autumn, all come and go, as witnesses to our peculiarities, our small concerns, our happinesses which seem as tenous as sundrops , as also our sadnesses which seem to fill the universe...   But we just need to be open to their messages, to their careful power and their sensitive tellings - and we will see them as pointers to life, as instructions to find our way, as friends who will not speak but will tell us everything.....   We merely need to be aware, we merely need to be present.   Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari.    Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available in Kindle on Amazon.   Sunil is on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.

Hope  is a strange beast. It is sometimes the only false note in our lives, and paradoxically - or because of that - is also the slender thread which keeps us alive to possibilities of life.   Little things take on meaning - little actions, little thoughts - nothing seems untoward or wasted.   Those who are too hopeful, are called foolish, sometimes foolish  optimists. But when something is a lifeline and gives meaning, how can that be bad.   Being foolish is a choice so many are willing to make simply because it gives an extra color to the dawn, removes the color of pain from an iridescent evening, gives something to look forward to in life when everything is gray and impenetrable and unreachable.   Hope is that dream which one can tangibly feel, like the bird which flies by but drops a broken feather in your hands - the bird might go away, but it does leave behind beauty, and something to hold onto....   Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari.    Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available in Kindle on Amazon.   Sunil is on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.      

There are two facts. One. Life is full of the unexpected. Two. It is long. These two facts are often forgotten when a couple mulls its differences.   One of the abiding tragedies of relationships is when couples don't give each other's differences the space and time they deserve.   But sharp edges find their corners smoothened with time; habits which were irritating become funny in nostalgia; wars become battles become skirmishes become peace summits with resolutions and amity.   Two people brought together, irrespective of whether they knew each other for years or not at all, will always start with finding their personal space being impinged upon time and again. Decisions which were individual now need discussion and mutual consent. The air in the room is shared. And it's not always comfortable.    But one day, years later, on a day of deep depression, you suddenly receive the warmest embrace possible; in a happy moment alone, you find you are missing her. She becomes more than a habit. She becomes a part of your being.    And that and that and that often takes time...    Love then is also patience.    Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari.  Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available in Kindle on Amazon.   Sunil is on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.        

"Why do we cheat? And why do happy people cheat? And when we say "infidelity," what exactly do we mean? Is it a hookup, a love story, paid sex, a chat room, a massage with a happy ending? Why do we think that men cheat out of boredom and fear of intimacy, but women cheat out of loneliness and hunger for intimacy? And is an affair always the end of a relationship?    "But as perpetrators have often said - it isn't always our partner that we are turning away from, but the person that we have ourselves become. And it isn't so much that we're looking for another person, as much as we are looking for another self.    "As Marcel Proust said, it's our imagination that is responsible for love, not the other person."   The healing, the renewal, begins there.   The above commentary is an extract from Esther Perel's stunning TED talk.    Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari.  Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available in Kindle on Amazon.    

Coupledom is a nation by itself, with its own laws, thermodynamics and compulsions of chemistry. At every moment of a couple's existence, the dynamics with each other swing and change - and if each of them are sensitive and aware, they give into the necessity to be the one who leads at one point and be the one who follows in the other. And if one of them knows the address of scars and the other knows how to clear the skies, it's then a couple made in heaven.... Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari.  Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available in Kindle on Amazon.

Louise Gluck, the 2020 Nobel Prize winner, wrote a poem called 'The Encounter' -   You came to the side of the bed and sat staring at me. Then you kissed me-I felt hot wax on my forehead. I wanted it to leave a mark: that’s how I knew I loved you. Because I wanted to be burned, stamped, to have something in the end...   My poem today follows the end which Louise Gluck talked about.

When we are loved and cared for, we should be ready to fight, being fought for or being fought with.    Often, our definition of what is right and wrong has to be put away, and we have to battle for what's ours and what's right.    And if we are injured, as the one for whom the battle took place, or because we were on the other side, we must then know that some battles which are fought with us are often the ones which would also save us.    Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari.  Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available for Kindle on Amazon.

Happiness is found in extraordinary places. The two who don't seem to ever match with each other, become the matchless couple. And The ones who tick every box, are the ones who find different paths and partners. The alchemy of relationships is only a small-part nature and a large-part mystery. But what is irrefutable to what lasts long - is the trouble each partner takes to figure out what hurts and what brings love.  Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari.  Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available for Kindle on Amazon.

Relationships always have departures. Temporary, permanent, simple, or heart-breaking. Inherent in such partings is the inevitability of our heart's decisions. Sometimes it hurts - but there is a good which lies just beyond the realm of hurt. And in that realm, a person departs, but love doesn't.  The gorgeous music in this episode is by Sayan Mukerji.   Uncut Poetry is brought to you by Sunil Bhandari.  Sunil Bhandari is a poet based out of India. His book of poetry 'Of Love and Other Abandonments' was an Amazon bestseller. His second book 'Of journeys & Other Ways to Get Lost' is just out. Both are available for Kindle on Amazon.

Surrender is a strange word. It first and foremost denotes defeat. But couched in its shame are also intimations of survival, a love of life over demise, of abiding hope. But, ironically, in love, surrender is the first prerequisite - it is love's entry point, the only way to live it's tumult, and survive it's caprice.

The changing dynamic of relationship with our parents, in every age, actually defines who we are, & how we are changing.   Often we get to know them as the ones we cannot take for granted, very late in our lives. We learn that the only constant in the changing seasons of our moods and age, is their forbearance, their non-judgmental acceptance.   When the world outside & inside us is collapsing, they become our final and only refuge.

We have a delightful little conversation with poet Riya Roy. She has just launched a scintillating newsletter "the nook", which is choc-o-bloc with nuggets of wisdom, art, poetry and literary surprises of all kinds. We talk to Riya about her journey - and end with an amazing heartfelt poem by her. "the nook" can be subscribed at "tinyletter.com/thenook".

Khalil Gibran famously said "Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself… You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow…”   So be there in the shadows of the lives of your children, as they find their way. Let them find their own ways to love, and be hurt....as long as they know you are there, a touch away, a call away, a look away. 

So much of what we are, is defined by who we are with. And that truth is germane to what gives us happiness. Society, norms, mores ignore that basic need which makes us complete. They concentrate on gender, forgetting that love neither knows borders nor restricts itself within boundaries. The first liberation, the first freedom starts with that realization, that acceptance.

Relations are discoveries, found after arduous journeys.   Intrinsically, everything about love changes in time - the nature of love, the definition of love, the lovers themselves. Is it for good or bad? That can never be the question. Did you last the upheavals to reach the calm? That is the question. 

"My capricious love of many moons, I wish I could meet you again - there's so much of you I have inside me, but out of so little of you."

Clouds roll into every couple's life. Everything gets hidden - the planets, the shooting stars - nearer home, even fireflies go unseen.   The worst is when love's clear skies get hidden. Love goes blind, it flounders.   The importance is, of course, not in the clouds - because pain will come, scars will happen. The question always is - what overwhelms and what prevails. 

And today, I introduce you to two lovers who finally get to disengage from each other's limbs and  beings, and come out to seek some coffee and fresh air. Their smiles are soft, their skin glows.   And all I can do is to sit on the side, a grizzled veteran of many stories, and watch them with a peculiar sense of knowing and pleasure.....

Paresh Tiwari, Writer & Illustrator and Maestro of Haiku & Haibun, leads us into the minimalist, sparse, meditative and beautiful world of Haiku and Haibun.   Like the deep woods, it is a world full of mystery, seduction and contemplation.   Once there, you will not want to come out....

So much happens in our minds! Often, the adventures in our heads are more exciting than the ones happening in our real lives. But when our imaginings take precedence in our relationships over reality, and we conjure the worst, the die is cast for dire consequences. Love can survive the worst, because intrinsically it is forgiving - but how can it contest the power of imagination? When what you imagine is worse than what happens, isn't the battle already lost? 

Growing up is a time of luxurious waste. And in that indolence often lies the true meaning of living in the moment. It's only in looking back that we realize how precious that time was, & how much of us has been built in the heat & the sweat & the coolness of that time.   We are, in later life, what life gave us in those heady days - when nothing often meant everything.  

So much of me is my parents. My love for poetry is from my mother. My practical life is from my father. And as I have conversations with them, I realize both of them are actually universe's first and the most beautiful poems gifted to me. No wonder, poetry is life.    And today I have two poems, one each for the two who mean the most to me.   

The gorgeous poetry in the song 'Main yeh sochkar' by Kaifi Azmi from the film Haqeeqat, has heartbreak written into its very fibre.   The finality of endings is often unavoidable, often known, but never ever easy.   Love's tenure is a story of irony wrapped in an unhealed scar which neither heals, nor desires healing.   

We are so quick to judge violence as communal, religion as bigoted, and protest as biased.   But do we realize the person we threw our abuses at is also a person who trudges back to a home, tired, bloodied, pilloried.   That this man does believe in the power of a prayer. And when he runs down the street with fire in his hand and screaming God's name, he is merely invoking the name to protect himself from himself.

What is love, or love-making, worth, if it's not mischievous? It's high is a question of physics and biology, but for it to be life sustaining, it requires playfulness, good old conversation, a lot of giving and a lot of taking.   It's one of those strange things where you burn and then come out more alive. 

They say everyone is happy in similar ways, but pain catches everybody differently. Even when it is shared, pain is a burden which has to be borne alone. But pain is also a doorway to compassion, to understanding, to appreciation. And life telescopes through pain, into its most elemental. We are truth, we are awake... even as things fade away. 

So much of our mental space is spent in recrimination of those who deserve nothing less than our deepest gratitude, and for what? Small hurts, a word we didn't like, a gesture which didn't suit us?   But happily, we all have in our lives people who forget quickly and forgive generously. Their grace is what quietly gives our lives its rich textures. Can we be that person?  

Tragedy hits everybody. But it hits some at a livelihood level, others at a heartache level.   We can sneer at rich - but we are in this world with our own destinies. To feel guilty about our luck is to deny the very things which give life its beauty.     But when two worlds meet, grace appears in mysterious ways.   (And welcome Tanuja!)

So much of love is all about being in the moment.   The length, paradoxically, is of little consequence. A lifetime together might have just a few memorable moments, but just a few moments might have a whole lifetime embedded in them.    That's the joy, pain, and gorgeousness of this unhealed scar called love...    

The relationship of a father and daughter is one of the closest bonds, almost akin to  homespun spirituality. For a father, a daughter is someone so valuable, that battles could be fought for her with the whole world.   But like all realizations, children often discover the indispensable nature of their parents just when the universe makes them realize how dispensable each life is.

What is life without risk? What is life's worth if we haven't jumped into the dark not knowing anything more than that there is an invisible grace of something infinite out there which will protect us?  In the brave response to these fears lies the most beautiful offering of life we can ever hope to either give or get....

So much of our life is spent in longing. But, often, we don't even know what we are pining for, there's just that feeling of emptiness, of standing at the edge of something unfulfilled. Is it because we forget sometimes that all the important things are either beside us or inside us? 

Don't we sometimes feel that we can talk with strangers more freely than we can with those closest to us? Is it because there's a strange sense of freedom with a stranger, because we know the person in front of us is not prejudging us.    In those few moments of liberation, when we are free, not being appraised, we soar. We are our best selves. 

Our relationship with the city we have grown up in or know intimately is nothing less than a love affair. It is capable of bringing us ecstasy and disappointments just the way a lover can. Calcutta for me is that loved one.

The tragedy which follows the tragedy of a broken heart is the subsequent denial of love, a rejection. The fear of again getting hurt is so overwhelming that the one who is scorned builds insurmountable walls around one's being. Nothing can get through.   Until something does.  

In these chaotic and uncertain times, there is so much of recalibration which is taking place, even as we grapple with new realities. This incarceration has its terrible downsides,  but for a person who loves to read and write , it's godsend.    But it is not easy to delink an old life so easily. And the daily routine which we abhorred, suddenly looks warm and fuzzy through the lens of nostalgia.

We are living in extraordinary times,  when everything we know as normal is being pulled asunder.    We need to desperately step back and relook at our lives with new eyes. And we have to  discover how much we have lost to come so far.   Is this grim time then the time to rediscover the pleasures of those pristine times?

Cities and love stories are so intimately intertwined that often the city becomes a character in the tale.    With time, memory slips into wistfulness because every place the lovers had spent time in has a story attached to it. A journey through the city becomes a haj of love.     The city becomes a map of unending unrequited love. 

Which love story isn't tumultuous? And if it is a story which spans decades, the years of togetherness have necessarily to also be years of disagreements. But the will to ride over it all, irrespective, is a sign of incredible commitment. When life ebbs, and what remains in the last moments are memories, it's always a 'feeling' which overrides all 'facts'.