Episodes
![Politics on the Dining Table](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/ep-logo/pbblog6892851/politics_on_the_dining_Tablebq05y_300x300.jpg)
Saturday May 11, 2024
Politics on the Dining Table
Saturday May 11, 2024
Saturday May 11, 2024
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 uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Liberty Quest by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/293-liberty-questLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Heavens Gate by Frank Schroeter
![Adventures in Two Worlds](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/ep-logo/pbblog6892851/Adventures_in_two_Worlds672zv_300x300.jpeg)
Saturday May 04, 2024
Adventures in Two Worlds
Saturday May 04, 2024
Saturday May 04, 2024
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 uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Misty lights by Rafael Krux
Melodic Interlude Two by Alexander Nakarada
![Adrift (on parents and lovers we survive)](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/ep-logo/pbblog6892851/Adrift_300x300.jpeg)
Saturday Apr 27, 2024
Adrift (on parents and lovers we survive)
Saturday Apr 27, 2024
Saturday Apr 27, 2024
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 uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Yesteryears (DECISION) by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/244-yesteryears-decisionLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
![In Search of a God](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/ep-logo/pbblog6892851/IMG_9437_300x300.jpg)
Saturday Apr 20, 2024
In Search of a God
Saturday Apr 20, 2024
Saturday Apr 20, 2024
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 uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Lockdown by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/7658-lockdownLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Strange New Worlds by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10369-strange-new-worldsLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
![Lovers as Witnesses](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/ep-logo/pbblog6892851/loves_as_witnessesb1iqr_300x300.jpeg)
Saturday Apr 13, 2024
Lovers as Witnesses
Saturday Apr 13, 2024
Saturday Apr 13, 2024
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 uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Sensitive Cinematic Romantic by Musiclfiles
![Things We Gather](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/ep-logo/pbblog6892851/things_we_gather6tyea_300x300.jpeg)
Saturday Apr 06, 2024
Things We Gather
Saturday Apr 06, 2024
Saturday Apr 06, 2024
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 uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Liberty Quest by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/293-liberty-questLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
![A Legacy of Kindness](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/6892851/logos_with_3000by3000_300x300.png)
Saturday Mar 30, 2024
A Legacy of Kindness
Saturday Mar 30, 2024
Saturday Mar 30, 2024
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 uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Francescas Story by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/2981-francescas-storyLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
![Coming to Your Side of The Bed](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/ep-logo/pbblog6892851/coming_to_your_side_of_the_bedbu2py_300x300.jpeg)
Saturday Mar 23, 2024
Coming to Your Side of The Bed
Saturday Mar 23, 2024
Saturday Mar 23, 2024
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 uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
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
![Replay - In the Drift We Will Find Our Certainties](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/ep-logo/pbblog6892851/in_the_driftbe43f_300x300.jpg)
Saturday Mar 16, 2024
Replay - In the Drift We Will Find Our Certainties
Saturday Mar 16, 2024
Saturday Mar 16, 2024
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 uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
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 MusicLFilesLink: https://filmmusic.io/song/9259-heart-loveLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Asperger by Sascha Ende®Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/9264-aspergerLicense: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
![Tracing Shadows On Your Back](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/ep-logo/pbblog6892851/Tracing_Shadows_on_Your_Backazhqk_300x300.jpeg)
Saturday Mar 09, 2024
Tracing Shadows On Your Back
Saturday Mar 09, 2024
Saturday Mar 09, 2024
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 uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
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
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