Uncut Poetry

Covid was an incredible time for humankind. Rarely have each one of us confronted, in real time, and with examples pouring in daily, death as an occurrence which could hit any one of us, suddenly, irrevocably, and often in lonely quarantine.   Reality, and confronting it daily as a tangible occurrence, became a horror story. We were forced to confront our worst fears - and ironically realize our b...

We are just ordinary people, living lives which often don't make sense, seeking our share of meaning, joy and fulfilment in our own ways. Embedded deep within - undefined, unspoken of, often unrecognised as such - are tiny and eternal stories of love. There are no bells and whistles attached to these stories, nothing to define them as special, but in their quiet ways, they light up lives, and make...

Love can be pretty unrelenting. It's turgidity and its persistence can be intimidating to people who see it collapsing under its own weight and can't understand how it is still standing strong. People in love can separate without disengagement but equally they can continue loving with separation.   Anything anchored in emotion has moorings which may seem fragile but are often unrelenting. Nobody k...

I love this poem because it condenses the thoughts which partners who separate from each other might have of the other.   It's subtle, often the first flush of love, often the first separation. When you know the highs of love, but have not known how the valleys are to be navigated: and you think the first bump, the first infraction, a fight, a being-away-from-one's-sight could actually be enough c...

Summers in Kolkata slide rather than blister, which is what happens when I visit Jhunjhunu. Both are experiences. There's no hiding place here because the humidity is omnipresent - but a shaded tree is enough to save you from the dry heat in Rajasthan. And then I go to a Delhi - where nothing can save you except an airconditioned room, because what does not melt you burns you down.   There's very...

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.   A colleague committed suicide today. 7 am. He woke up early, took a bath, did his pujo, and then hung himself from a fan. His wife discovered him when she didn't see him in the pujo ghar.   I'd met him the day before getting into office, and asked him how he was doing....

A home is a person.   I think I realized this a long time back. I loved all the homes I've stayed with my parents. Every time my dad changed jobs, and consequently cities and homes. And then in his final assignment in pristine Tribeni, on the outskirts of Calcutta, he kept getting promotions and we kept changing homes. The last one was a colonial bungalow with an acre worth of gardens, and a view...

We complicate relationships because we deny simplicity or simple ways of loving or - maybe - the simple solutions to complex things.   Every relationship starts with a clean slate. Pure, unencumbered. Then it gets layered. One incident at a time, one feeling expressed at a time, and often (more vitally), one feeling unexpressed at a time.   And the grooves get cut and get deeper, sharper, as the u...

To awaken every morning is to reward oneself.   The day is desperate for us to discover it, to unravel its mysteries and find its surprises. We do not have to fly or be special. We merely need to be excited.   Then we can see birds with new eyes, and feel the air on our skin. We can sit quietly, sip a cup, gaze out of the window, and know this is what it is to be alive.   An ordinary life.   Many...

There's so much in this world to be unhappy about. The reasons are endless. And we can fallow in the silky self-indulgence of not being in control and letting circumstances take their toll on us.   It's an irony of humankind that in the positioning of action and result, we bring in destiny as a critical component, and instead of letting it be a possible catalyst, we seek to substitute action with...

Don't we all know people who are gold - talented, beautiful, attractive - but who deep inside are uncertain about themselves. They doubt their abilities, and for ever (and ever) they look at every decision they take with trepidation, and consider themselves inadequate. And nothing one says to them, nothing, convinces them that they are talented and just fine the way they are.   Until something mag...

Haruki Murakami said "Death is not the opposite of life but a part of it."    Loss is an inevitable part of life. It could be the loss of a pet, the end of a relationship or loss of a loved one, the loss of a friend, the loss of a child, the loss of a parent or even our health.   No matter the kind of loss, it is never easy. It leaves a yawning crevasse inside our soul. Even if we recover, it's an...

Marriage: it was the end of all illusions and the beginning of philosophy:   marriage was a lesson in impermanence - not an idea, a daily unfolding.   To remain calm in storms not of my making. Dinner is late.       Plans change.           Cushions are moved. I nod, smile, adapt. an ardent disciple of Aurelius.   Closet space shrinks mysteriously. my belongings become philosophical concepts.   Arg...

I sometimes feel we would be better people if we were slaves to love. Not to work for it, not to fantasize about it, not try to record of its wonder - but just to ease into its trust and surrender.   Because the secret of love's power is not its ability to sway but its strength to render vulnerability as an essential ingredient.   It's contrarian in concept - showing your weakness to strengthen yo...

The whole process of growing up has an inevitability- and a tragedy - attached to it. A child grows up believing - trusting everything and everyone. An innocence which is endearing - and often encouraged, possibly because of it's anachronism and the fact that an atavistic urge inside us reaches out to something which makes us remember days when we were less cynical, less pessimistic, less prone to...

I spent three days in Kochi, immersed in the art biennale. And wandering through the lanes, warehouses, waterways, and cafes of the city. The city was alive with art - representations of life, adn its anguish and joy. And hundreds of people from all over immersed in art, as something they now saw as they went to school or office.    I recorded small pieces as I viewed the art, and have put them up...

It's a startling thought, that someday sometime, there's that final time - and never again - when you will meet someone, hold someone, say that word, share that laughter.   Then how do we know that it is not also the final time when we leave with a sharp word, a fight ending in tears, a time which leaves someone in despair, that final moment when the last memory is of pain given and anguish taken....

Animals hunt to fill their stomachs. Humans do so for power and greed. And when they possess weapons of destruction, they think themselves to be invincible.   It's easy to say it's primordial, part of the ancient blood running in our veins, but it's also civilizational. Of having - or not having - a spiritual foundation, a religion which teaches inclusion and diversity, and not harp on a supreme m...

Words are all what we have, to conjoin or to distance each other, what can make the difference between making a bridge to cross differences, or to find dissonance to deepen chasms. Who are we if not the stray remark which hurt or the heartfelt apology which redeemed. Love finds its bedrock in the glad word: beyond the body pheromones is the reality of the feeling, the thought enunciated in ways wh...

Relationships take time. Even 'love at first sight' is a construct only, finding immediate challenge in the crucible of real life. I know couples who have gone around for years, but find they scarcely know each other within the first week of married life.   The interesting dynamic is the setup provided by love. It could work in two dynamically different directions. It could make you accept what re...

The charm and beguile of life is that it throws the unexpected with such unerring regularity.   We start something with an intent. But the universe has other ideas. We strive for bliss in flight and fall in love with the grizzly earth.  So much of what enriches our lives is the unexpected turn we took, the yes we said reluctantly, the adventure which emerges when we step out in the middle of a dul...

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,   Sometimes you just know.   As someone once said "I knew you were the one, as soon you walked into the room. There was light coming out of your ass!" Frankly, more often then not, love has less drama associated to its arrival, because it is really a feeling which grows...

I reach the summit.   Not inch by inch—no, I arrive in a flood. Talent spills out of me. Love follows, tidal and unquestioning. Directors orbit me like obedient moons; they cannot imagine a world without my sound. I do not merely compose music—I alter its grammar. I am told I am a miracle. I begin to agree.   This is where it breaks.   Because admiration, once mistaken for destiny, hardens into en...

We have to step out of our lives to see what is in the great beyond. Often just outside our gated communities are worlds we know nothing of, lives being lived in ways which we cannot conceive of. Rich, varied, textured, tumultuous. Often beautiful because they are unfiltered and often bleed; frightening because they are so raw.   When we encounter these lives, these stories,  we are aghast at thei...

Why don't we have honest conversations with the ones we love the most? Why don't we listen - really listen - without comments, without reply, without retort - when they attempt to tell us what hurts, where it hurts, and how the hurt devastates them.   So much of the pain we cause, and we feel, is avoidable. Not because we don't tell enough - but because we don't listen enough. The smallest of thin...