Uncut Poetry

In Search of a God

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And The Crowds Roared, As The Music Rose

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 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 -
Die Unendliche Geschichte by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/512-die-unendliche-geschichteLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Mr Hoskote, have you visited Kashmir recently?

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 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 -
Medieval Love by Frank Schroeter

Maybe, a Little Kindness

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 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 -
Motivational Soft Piano Meets Cello by Horst Hoffman