Uncut Poetry

Each one of us is such a complex mess. Even the most sorted of us passes through noisy bazaars of wavering decisions, competing choices and moral dilemmas. And we invariably are victims of our own pitiable choices. The right and wrong of things is often simpler to decipher than what is right or wrong in the moment. Our ethical dilemma is often a post-act regret or engendered by the heat of revelat...

"We made love in our own way, not calamitous, not celebratory in the end, she didn’t relent, I didn’t fail, my love redeemed at the altar of sex.   I held her close, more comfort than desire, we both knew we’d now reached a phase - for love is a feral cry in some throats, and in some it survives with a gentle ache."   I think too much has been said of the sublimity of lovemaking and too title of i...

"I have seen the future hold stars in its hands not knowing how plastic were dreams. I didn’t want the sound of my breaking heart resound such that the solar system be proved wrong but I have seen seamless skies filled with light and wonder to be only refractions from the jagged shards of broken hearts."   I have seen the most deprived child dream. Dream to become an astronaut, nothing less. Her f...

Life pauses when heartbreaks occur - and then it doesn’t. It’s the nature of the beast that nothing stops. But momentum is often not a substitute for reparation. Time sutures wounds, but the scar is insubstitutable - and it often glows when we are lonely. And as memories tumble in, we tumble down. What comes as a rush are gestures and flourishes, the quirky and the infinitesimal, and the forgotten...

One of the abiding joys of growing old together is to remember insignificant minutiae - some which hurt like pebbles in a shoe and some which effortlessly made us remember why we were together.   To persevere in the complex dynamic of personal desires and conjoined plans is itself  a triumph. For if there’s one thing which relationships demand - after they’ve concretised the shaky foundations of l...

I can never forget the Sharukh Khan movie, Main Hoon Na , when a celestial orchestra comes in and he automatically starts singing , as soon as he sees the gorgeous Sushmita Sen being her ethereal self in incredible sarees.  And I remember thinking -  this is a superb idea, and what wouldn’t I do to have this facility from god?! But, alas, as the heavens never listened in to my desires, I curate my...

NOTE - There are some recording audio disturbances in the first minute. Do excuse.    What is it about conversations, that the ones most essential, are the ones we avoid the most?   With our anger or distress brimming over, are we afraid to show the power the other has over us to leave us with such vulnerability? Are we just frightened of the uncharted route the conversation might take? Are we afr...

One of the unending and unerring charms of knowing people is to know them as flawed people, whose very kinks make them the weird loveable irritating entities, who infuriate us but equally make us caring custodians of them.   The particularities of their weirdness is not meant for history books. It is often no more than the whimsy of habit, the caprice of reaction, or the peculiarity of a stand the...

Making love can be the tenderest experience of a day. Truth be told, the day should start and end with it - with nothing, nothing else to take away from its tangy exuberance. Those moments should be the day. But - we have to move on. There are things to be done. There are commitments to fulfil, a job to go to, groceries to be bought, a plumber to be contacted.   And suddenly such days get redefine...

"Often I see myself hiding inside myself wondering how many biographies of pain will I see as my own."   It’s almost a cliché to say that we are much more the reaction then what we are in the action. It is not ideal, but it is a reality. Our lives are touched at a million sensory points throughout the day. Stories, requests, exhortations, kindnesses, things we say which boomerang, acts we do which...

"There's no love like the hour, and when noise swirls in the world,  it's the companionship of breath  which saves souls with its being"   We are blessed that seasons - and the seasons of our lives - are marked by the pomp and grace of festivities. We welcome and we let go, we conjoin and we celebrate. And in both the comings and goings, we are left forever changed.   What is it about the passages...

The passage of time and the passage of expectations are inversely related. So much of what we hope for slips through the sly slivers of time. What we dreamt of is folded quietly, and put beneath our heads, for us to sleep on in seamless blankness. All exhortations for destinations result only in unspecified directions, and a future rife with its own life. We are rarely given what we desire. But th...

What are we if not morsels in this universe searching for meaning? If we are alive to the moment we float through life; if we battle with time to get its predominance, we find passages with hurdles; and if we search and mull and have conversations with life to figure out it’s import, we find false endings.   What are we to do if not wrestle with ourselves, to give credence to our struggles?   We f...

The passing of a speeding train. It’s whistle from afar. The smoke from the now-disappearing steam engines. The rapidly decreasing chug-chug as it leaves a railway station.   These sounds and images are sepia-tinted in my memory, fraying at the ends with passing time. But making me remember - what a time that was. And I drown so heavily in the past, that I wallow and I wonder - is nostalgia a bene...

We lose out on so much of life because we know lesser and lesser of lucidity. We find knots where none exist. We tie ourselves up when there is nobody out to do it. What is it about the wiring of our brains that we revel in complexity and then dream of a simpler life?   It is the nature of the world we live in that pushes us towards choices and then watches in glee as we careen over the cliff. But...

So much of what we do is a matter of awakenings and slumber. Literally and figuratively, we go to sleep in doubt and awaken with certitudes. But ironically the importance lies in the drift. Because that’s when we are true to ourselves, and not berating the universe for its shingle or rust. The magic is in the moment.   To love, to ease into lovemaking and then to sigh into remission, are life’s un...

A marriage is already beset with contrariness in its very idea. They say, anthropologically, a marriage is against man’s overriding instinct to rampantly spread his seed, to ensure progeny from someone at least. Nature-wise, it goes against the principle of seeking fulfilment, because one person can rarely, if ever, fulfil the myriad parts of a person's needs. I can be gregarious but end up with a...

These past few days, I’m thinking a lot about the reality of a nation, and time and again I’m coming back to the idea of a nation. I talk to people who love this country - possibly can die for it - but when questioned about the state of the nation, are either heartbroken, broken, or ready to break something.   There’s an atlas of indignation inside them and they follow its contours whenever the co...

Mornings are strange places. They are an urging, a calling, a welcoming. But often they are a desperation, a question, a challenge. We define it, the way we lean into it. But by its mere presence, it provides space to our lives.   If we seek to be presences, knowing how to let the universe pass through us such that we can be witnesses to our own lives and to the world, we can let the morning be a...

The what-ifs of life are a perennial enigma, a source of continual fascination.   What touches us does change us, what passes by always leaves it’s fragrance. The possibility of the butterfly effect - where everything changes at the flutter of a butterfly’s wings - and the intrigue of the sliding doors - what if the metro you were running for slides shut just when you got to it. Would your life be...

"I muse often of his being and his departure, missing the softness of his glance. He’d looked at me with happiness, as if my presence itself was good news."   So much about life is to know about death. In its very concept lies life’s only immutable truth.   As our days drift into countable numbers, we can either lean into the reality and wait, or fight the Dylanian battle of “not going gentle into...

I like people who do their own thing. The youngest of the young, the maddest of the mad,  the dreamer in the group who gets ribbed, the one with the wildest theories, the one who always has the last laugh.   I love the ultra sensitive. The one whose heart breaks when she inadvertently steps on a tiny monsoon snail, the one who gets lost on the way to familiar destinations, the one who picks only f...

We are what we are. But we are also all the people who have arrived, moved on, stayed in our lives. People whose very touch may feel like a hug or an abandonment , a benediction or a scare. People we’ve loved  and fought with, people we’ve been secretive about, those we’ve cried for, those who’ve cried because of us. Just as relationships change, we are changeable too.   We are what we are. But we...

"I can see the wind pick up it’s pace. The skies have turned moody again. Will it be a blizzard, she piped in her little voice holding tightly to my hand, lest I be blown away."   In life we are both the flow and the stock. The flight and the roots. Logical and unhinged. Reasonable and petulant. Generous and anarchic. We are all this, we are all this together. Often in seriatim, more often overlap...

"I have woken nights thinking of her and then turned into myself to dream other things. She’s in my mind but like shifting sands."   'Belonging' is a word which fills us up. It gives agency to us, a sense of community. We feel attached to kindred souls.   It could be with people who we connect with because of a commonality of interests or service, in which case we would be driftwood, sailing where...