Uncut Poetry

Living in a World Deficient in Hugs

There was an incredible experiment done years back where children were put into two batches - one where they were out in the care of nurses who cuddled and hugged and caressed them regularly. And in the other batch none of the nurses cuddled the infants. They were efficient but cold, caretakers not care givers. And they tracked the children as they grew. The results were startling to say the least - the former children grew up to be be emotionally stable and balanced kids, and the other batch had children who didn’t fit, and often turned out to be disruptive and rowdy.
 
The truth of the experiment has not diminished, and it’s truth has been revealed time and again to not be restricted to infants only. If nothing else, it’s importance has increased manifold in today’s manic world, where nobody has time for anybody. And in our rush for deadlines and accomplishments, we forget that our souls require nourishment which is often found in such humdrum things as companionship and embrace, attention and listening. Small physicalities like a hug, a caress, a kiss, often do more to well-being than any medicine can.
 
Seers of all ages have mulled over questions of life and purpose, and time and again have come to the conclusion that all that we achieve is often of no meaning if our lives is bereft of human connection. Because rewards lose their glamour, we as people lie diminished, if we are not able to externalize the ecstasy inside us. Just as grief lies reduced when spoken about, joy multiples on sharing.
 
And in that small homily lies the kernel of the final fulfilment a person can seek - or get.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the power of touch:
Gather Me
This: One Grace
She Held His Hand As He Drifted
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
Following is the music used in this episode -
 
Music: Liberty Quest by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/293-liberty-questLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 
Music: The Way To Kataka by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/11-the-way-to-katakaLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 

Damaged Bulbs in a Parlour

Finally life is only about choices. The quality of our life depends on it. And that applies first to what our reactions are, and then to what our actions are. Because much of what we do is in anticipation of or in response to what we think people will think. The subset to this is the overriding power of our ego - what it makes us feel, what it makes us look like in this world. The need to feel acknowledged, the distress when we are not.
 
The tragedy inherent in the situation is that we live an inauthentic life, lit for someone else’s gratification, engendered for someone who actually couldn’t care.
 
And slowly we sink in a morass where we lose sight of what we truly are. We start believing our own lies. In fact our lies become our crutches to walk through the world  - shiny and empty, praised outwardly but scorned on the sidelines, touchy to feedback, inured to truth.
 
The tragedy of what it entails is that we seek low lights to surround us,  so our dim brightness shines like a floodlight, and we consider ourselves as resplendent.
 
And we live in this well of penumbra, thinking we’ve conquered the world. Celebrating life, singularly unaware that we are dancing on a cemetery of our own dreams.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on choices and how we make them:
I Will Leave The Last Line For You to Fill
Aaschi - a promise
If I Commit Suicide
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
Following is the music used in this episode -\
 
Music: Abschied (Romeos Erbe) by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/3148-abschied-romeos-erbeLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 
Music: BRIO 1 by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/232-brio-1Licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

A Cynical Old Man Acknowledges His Birthday Very Grudgingly

I try hard not to be cynical. But I think that’s my terrible gift to myself. Life had a hand to play (of course!), bringing me people and platitudes in equal measure, to leave me nicely acidic for a lifetime. Not that I don’t fight against my worst instincts, read tomes to learn how to return to a crystal-clear state of trust and welcome, a kind of knowing innocence, measured but complete in itself. But it’s easier said than done. As the entirety of my being screams “Alert!” whenever I see a good deed being done. ‘What’s in it for him?’ is the instinctive response. It’s almost as if I’m done with believing there is anything which is simply selfless, guileless, truly giving.
 
And then I stop myself and think - how can I be chained to a thinking where nothing is lost and nothing is gained, but oh I pay such a cost! Go to hell with Sophocles who said “Trust dies but mistrust blossoms “.  I want, again and again, to be the fool who gets fooled daily, hurt hourly, and the injured soul who has to be picked up drunk from the narrow alley every night. But be the one who doesn’t lose hope in humanity even as friends lie, colleagues use, relatives conspire and outsiders ingratiate.
 
It’s better to die innocent with one’s heart full of the sky then bitterly, much before the universe closes in.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the travails of growing old:
Memory Keeper
Ruins Have Permanent Flames
The Ageing of Love
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
Following is the music used in this episode -
Music: Melodic Interlude Two by Alexander NakaradaFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6394-melodic-interlude-twoLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Minor Earth Major Sky

This is a thought which has haunted me time and again. I have done, thought, engendered, perpetrated things which I know are not me, at least what I’ve thought of as the actual me, the essence of me. Things have happened unthinkingly, impulsively, reflexively, without the intervention of what I call my better senses.
 
Then I reason -  all my instinctive reactions and actions have come out of me hence they are as much me as the better ones. If my better senses have a home inside me then so do the worst of my instincts - and what’s the use of denying the fact. And I lie bemused and ashamed.
 
I console myself - overall I’m not a bad person.
 
So here’s what I do. Even inside the furtiveness  of my secrets I try to seek a balance. Kindness over revelation, pause before thought, acceptance over recrimination. And I realise the impossibility of changing things which don’t wish to be changed. And I slowly accept that reality. And in that acceptance is the seed of peace.
 
We only have ourselves to understand and change. And because of that the universe will come and show us another path, if there is something inside us which wants it. There is then no need to change anything else.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on introspecting on life and times:
The Grace That We Give
Compatriots of Trust
If I Commit Suicide
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
Following is the music used in this episode -
Music: AnotherDramaticScene by Lilo SoundFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6137-anotherdramaticsceneLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

I WIll Leave The Last Line For You To Fill

One of the tragedies of growing older is how we see more and more people pass on, even as we wait for our own mortality to kick in. Surviving loved ones is not a blessing, as we find lesser number of breaths intertwined with ours, and our hours spent in longer days.
 
There are several people I remember with great tenderness. Along the years the particularities have started to fade. The slant of a smile, the squelching of eyes, the way some words got spoken, the firmness of a hand on a shoulder, the moments a hug lasted. Lines of a face start fading, we forget when we last laughed, what we last said - what we regretfully didn’t. The only thing which remains with clarity is the glow their memory evokes, the smile which comes when I think of them, and the lump which forms in my throat, when tears start to flow unabashedly.
 
As the years add up, and death seems more a reality than a concept, I hope even if my life doesn’t engender any remembrance, at least, to whoever who thinks of me, they find themselves filled with a glow, even if it is as small as a flame.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the grief and tribulation of passing on -
She Held His Hand As He Drifted
When Breath Becomes Air
What Do I Leave Behind
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
Following is the music used in this episode -
 
Music: Flying Penguins by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6-flying-penguinsLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 
Music: Games Of Octopi by Tim KuligFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9831-games-of-octopiLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

The Grace That We Give

Karma is destiny’s calling. The smiles and bruises we give, troop back to us in (as the famous Gladiator once said) this birth or the next. (Likely to be this, as I’ve seen God getting to be progressively more impatient). The things we twist, the generosities we quietly lay out like sunlight, the hypocrisies we ooze in our sanctimonious smiles - we might not get our just desserts in this birth but we are definitely found out and scorned for what we really are.
 
The belief has, I must confess, given me satisfaction whenever I have encountered the worst of humanity and not been able to do much about it. But much more than the illusory future retribution, I have seen life come by with its lessons and lesions in ways too subtle, too meaningful to brush away.
 
A rampaging mean lying boss who gets a son who steadily gets to become the same. The deep conjugal misery of an acquaintance who only has a warped opinion of everyone. A serial adulterer who has health problems galore. I see cause and effect everywhere. Friends say I’m giving logic the widest  canvas possible, and life anyway has these instances of good fortune/bad fortune, heartache and woe in the normal course of life. Of course it does. But grant me my satisfaction.
 
But the greater imperative is the multiplier effect of all that we do. The universe we inhabit is far more sensitive and absorbing of what we say and do. We don’t always realise it, but our nature is also prone to go viral - things we say, things we do, and not only when there is extreme good or extreme vileness. And simply by being ourselves, we affect people around us, who in turn touch the senses of those whose lives they touch, and so on and so forth. Without realising things change, because of us.
 
And thus the good we do finds a way back to us. Nothing beautiful we have achieved has ever happened in splendid isolation. We are plugged into the sensory ether of the universe, and there are waves which carry us up - and it’s the infinite grace of our doing which takes us to places which we wouldn’t even conceive of reaching.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the mystery of karma and life:
Tenderness in the Pause
This: One Grace
Aaschi: a promise
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
Following is the music used in this episode -
 
Music: Village Ambiance by Alexander NakaradaFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6586-village-ambianceLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 
Music: Army Of The Dead by Alexander NakaradaFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10276-army-of-the-deadLicensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

On Growing Up (that haze of sunshine & dust)

Growing up, and the art of doing nothing. How I wish I was again sure of the former and a master of the latter. Because I’ve lived years, often without experiencing anything new, and fill my time - and myself - so much that there is no place left to give wings to my choices or desires.
 
I still remember the days when I naturally knew what was important -  reading, and thinking about what I  read; talking, and then letting long silences puncture my words; of waking up, and watching a random tree outside my window sway; of sitting at the dining table, of mum waxing eloquent about a new technique of soil petrification, and dad taking a spoonful and saying “This is good”, and a silence descending, punctured only by the sounds of blissful chewing. The choices were simpler, and unbeknownst to us, we were creating nooks for return, for solace.
 
In our tumbling, involved worlds now, we are heroes of the rote, progenitors of the already parsed, masters of the cliched, slaves to the routine. We don’t change rhythms, we don’t stop on the way to the office, we have an iron grip on whom we meet, we are shy for the new, we are afraid of the unobvious. In the immensity of possibilities, we pick a few strands and tie our world with them - and think it’s gift-wrapped.
 
A friend wrote in, when a poem from 9 years back popped up on her Facebook feed - “I miss those times of poetry, conversations, simplicity.” A flood of pleasure ran through me just thinking of those days. It’s easy to say that we’d moved on (the truth), it’s useless to say “let’s return” because we can’t. Every time is a different time, and we are in many ways different people - what connected us then was that magical alchemy of time which presented us with the plain brass of time which we turned into pure gold. Nothing can bring back that transition - yes, because it was that - as the rabbit hole of life is always destined to take us somewhere else.
 
Nostalgia is a bitch, but it serves a purpose. It reminds us that what is valuable to our memory is because that time was particularly lived in. It brings into our sensibilities the need to immerse ourselves into the ride and stop chasing shadows. To experience the leakages of time as the stream to slip on, to try not to multiply moments into meaning.
 
And minutiae becomes life - to give your sister’s hair time enough to grow, to let things pass such that the first wrinkle does appear on your mother’s face, to let our father’s laughter resound like echo inside us long after it’s last note has drifted, to let flowers float and be grounded.
 
In our realisation of the drift of time, lies the possibility of it becoming permanent parts of our being.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the joy and tribulations of growing up:
Letting Go (a childhood song)
When I Hear The Whistle of a Passing Train
Those Days of a Lost Summer
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
Following is the music used in this episode -
 
Music: Weightless by Frank SchroeterFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9092-weightlessLicense: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Music: Endless Expanses by Frank SchroeterFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9124-endless-expansesLicense: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
 
 

My Mother is Full of Water and Ready for Sonography

Our relationship to our mothers is a supple thing. Day to day, year to year, age to age, it changes. Beyond the evolutionary grounding, beyond the nurturing necessities, we are an amalgam of the obvious and the extraordinary. To be gifted the kind of unprecedented unflinching support we do get from mothers is a benediction of nature. Our steady rejection of it, and her holding tight to the tethers, is the obvious unravelling which this relationship goes through - her instinct becomes a need, the child’s need for her transitions to become a burden.
 
And then there’s an inflexion point when things come to a head. Often in the teens, often later - it doesn’t matter when. What does matter is that it’s almost a rebellion of a kind. Things start breaking down as if everything was fragile to begin with, as if the relationship was nothing more than that of a food-provider and laundry-doer. And the tie is suddenly fraught with the consequences of unreconciled pain.
 
Succour is often found elsewhere.
 
And therein often lies the genesis of the fracture - the bird seeks to fly out of the nest, but the nester is still not done with the chick.
 
But relationships are both the present and the unravelling. A lot of its pain is the passage, though it’s joy is retrospective. And though we might be nostalgic as we look back, we might actually have come out through a long tunnel of pain. But in spite of all its rockiness, a mother remains a symbol of our breath. The sooner we let that one thought overshadow everything else, we would have let ourselves understand the meaning of the most meaningful relationship in our life.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on our times with our mothers:
Mother's Rambling Lessons on Life Imparted in Morning Walks in My Childhood
My Mother's Lines
How Mothers Are Nature's Return Gifts
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
The following music was used for this media project:Music: AnotherDramaticScene by Lilo SoundFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6137-anotherdramaticsceneLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 

Of Rain-Engulfed Rooms and Lovers in Spate

Rain, amongst all seasons, is as much feeling as occurrence. In spite of all its deleterious effects - on roads, homes, countries - log-jammed lanes, traffic jams, leaky roofs, economic devastations! - it can never be bereft of its poetry, it’s memory of growing pangs, it’s matte occurrences of comfort, tea and satisfying dissatisfactions.
 
Everyone has a rain-infused remembrance. The peerless newsletter ‘The Nook’ had a get-together to reminisce about people and their memories of rains -
 
“One (of the participants) brought with them the rains of Kerala, with their many names and each a peculiar character.
 
Another told us of the monsoons in the hills, of mothers and grandmothers climbing concrete roofs and fixing them while children hold buckets and gather stones that roll off.
 
We shared stories of running across paddy fields, our feet tickling; tales of a small family on a three-wheeler devouring patties that we too could taste in our mouths.
 
We were transported to a bustling street in Delhi brought to its knees by the rain. We became kids floating paper boats in puddles, lovers stealing a kiss in the backseat while the driver’s distracted by the romance of the windshield wipers and the rain.”
 
Indeed!
For lovers, the rains are the perfect playlist.
 
Gentle, harsh, insistent, soothing. The world inside finds a rhythm with the world outside. Being inside a time when time doesn’t matter is life’s finest benediction, one which lovers embrace with casual ease, knowing, possibly for the first time in their lives, that the world can wait.
 
And that then is the bittersweet legacy of the monsoons. Of being so close to life that thereafter it doesn’t matter - and then to immediately lose that lesson. In living through the rains, we are filled to the brim with both life’s grace and possibilities. If only we let the aftermath be a continuum.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the romance of rain:
Bringing the Storm Home
Dancing in the Rains
Making Love in a Church on a Stormy Day
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
The following music was used for this media project:Music: Parting of the Ways - Part 2 by Kevin MacLeodFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/4196-parting-of-the-ways-part-2License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 

Yearning (and other things we carry in the journey)

Who are we, if not people who live on hope, thought to thought, day to day, year to year. Often knowing about possibilities, often just whistling in the wind. It could be a change of fortune, a lucky break, a chance encounter, a person we’d always loved. Everything, even what seems to be the minutest of an incident, has the potential to change lives, and more often than not, it does.
 
And until it does, hope binds us to invisible tethers.
 
Gurus talk about yearning, as they talk about the journey, and remind us not to lose the experience of what we go through.
 
To know that the journey of feelings is often more precious than what we finally get.
 
The untetheredness of anguish, the ecstasy of possibility, the world building, the smart turn of phrase, the laughter, the look, the sheer joy of something which could only be defined as tender. That is the road to finally getting something. Heartbreakingly , and retrospectively, when we finally get - what we wanted, who we wanted, how we wanted - it is often bereft of glory. Compared to the striving, what we finally get seems so much lesser - less glittering, less flawless, less satisfying.
 
And thus go things in life, and thus do love stories find their beginnings, their middles and their ends. Too many affairs end at the consummation. And it would be a tragedy to have that as the only remembrance - and not the tease and the expectation and the imagination and the excessive giving and the extravagance leading towards it all.
 
And because of that, every story stands stunted, it’s rich repository of the best of what we human beings are capable of lying discarded with a sheen of regret, as if it meant for nothing. When the truth is that this is what we actually live for.
 
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the urgings and yearning:
Miles Apart
Gather Me
Aaschi (a promise)
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
 
The following music was used for this media project:Music: Odyssee by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/56-odysseeLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license