Uncut Poetry

So much of old age - like life itself - is of acceptance.   I saw a young girl, without fear or preconception,  pet a dog which had just snapped at me. She simply found the love inside her and in some mysterious manner it transmitted to the dog. And I wondered if this wasn’t exactly what life was - like that instinctive dog, which subconsciously knew the deepest instinct of love or indifference.  ...

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.   "I have gone, love, now let me go."   We are all changeable creatures. 50 billion of our cells die every day, physically we are not the same today as we were yesterday. And that irrefutable truth seeps into the very core of our beings. Every day, we change as persons too...

I’ve been thinking these past few days of sanctuaries - of how we take some for granted, how we crave for some. Sometimes both at the same time. I also think of how homes are most often our sanctuaries - but so are memories, so are our desires, as also our regrets. We regret chances we got and didn’t hold onto - we console ourselves that the chances at least stopped by at our doorstep.   Of course...

Like almost every human being in this world, I am perforce political. The fact that I rarely let that side of me seep into my art, hasn’t stopped me from seeing, reading, feeling, reacting. And the singular skew of the narrative and the increasing sharpness of tone of response, and the frightening cohesion of ideologues is disturbing.   It’s a tragedy of our times that time and again we face a wor...

Mornings are such fabulous entry points. This time of dark departures and silent welcomes. Something which is sheltered tenderly through the night is brought out, a chance to wipe every falling tear, the time to see if blossoms can blossom to wipe the night’s sorrow, when the pleasure of the view far surpasses the depth of a nightmare.    I often wake up feeling stale, helplessly hoping for streak...

As the years have gone by, I must confess life has confused more than clarified. Possibly life is a tease, urging me to study the deeper truths of our being, meditate on possibilities, and find what sustains, what doesn’t.   And till that happens, I stay in the splendid anagrams of my confusions. And first up on that is - love. Having a life full of seeing it, reading of it, passing through it, be...

I keep returning to the themes of missing out on the small things which make us feel human, nay, which reward us because we are human. And how their absence is often the biggest tragedy of our lives.   Often the absence is because of unawareness; but when we yearn for them, search for them, the tangibility of tragedy is like physical pain. Our home then becomes just an address, often the one we lo...

The more I live the more I understand - and appreciate - the import of interconnectedness and transience of all things.   The rains come, and so does a gnawing feeling seeking something undefinable; love comes with its fullness, and we wait for the infinitesimal more; the lane we stay is alive with sandwich cafés and chairs on pavements and we sit alone, worse, feeling alone; the temple bells and...

Of course, relationships have rules. The fact that we are animals plus, a more evolved species, only recognizes the fact that humans are feeling, trusting, hurting beings. And in the depth of that reality lies the fact of what makes us much more than merely sentient.   Alas, there are also transient feelings which gatecrash this party of lifelong-commitments. Because beneath the veneer of manicure...

Unrevealed to us, the universe is working for us. Like master chefs will have you bite into something bitter before bringing in a sweet savoury, life will spin out the worst  - only to balance it out in mysterious ways.   It’s my firm belief that if we are open with all our senses  to our inner beings and the world outside, we will capture the subtle genuflection of the universe’s grace. It could...

I see young people together, in love, in lust, lost, planning an event, a day or a life, and I see impatience, I see the desire for appropriation. I see conclusions rather than drifting coffee aroma, I see hard closed city alleys rather than coastlines lazily disappearing into beautiful haze. I see uncomfortable hiatuses, wounded silences, I see complaints where there should be enquiries. I see go...

I remember the story of a bunch of strangers taking shelter under a tree on a stormy night. They could see bolts of lightning falling all around and charring trees. They looked around and saw that they were all high caste Brahmins except for one poor simpering low caste Sudra, who could suddenly see all eyes on him. One particularly arrogant Brahmin pointed his finger at him and said “He is the on...

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...

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 ack...

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 itsel...

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 h...

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...

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...

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;...

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...

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 ne...

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 i...

The bane of my life has been my memory. I forget. I forget prodigiously. Names, faces, conversations. Don’t even get me to started on dates and numbers, groan. In office, at home, I struggle with narrating incidents, at remembering places, things we saw and ate at specific places.   I had a girl who worked for me who, after a decade, still remembered the make of the shirt and the colour of socks I...

This is a repeat of one of my more popular poems, replayed here with a hope of getting a new audience, who might have missed it!   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 w...

I have always wondered about those who are in love and stay cities away from each other, and colleagues who are ready to stay apart for their careers. And I’m gobsmacked at how they make it happen. I’ve asked several of them about it, and the answer is always accompanied by a sigh and the answer “Life.” As if what determined their choices was something out of their control. Which was of course bot...