Uncut Poetry

I sometimes wonder if there is anything comparable to the generosity of a morning?   Once you force yourself up, the cornucopia of the universe is laid out for our delectation. The sun is at its most benevolent, the birds are full-throated, the flowers are sleepy and demure, the air is soft even as it bites, the leaves are brittle, letting themselves to be crunched to a satisfying exuberance.   Th...

Our lives are a collage of a thousand scraps of random, and often irreconcilable, happenstances and mistakes and decisions thrown onto a canvas of existence.   Love is often the most decisive happening of our lives, often trooping in unannounced and more often than not, grossly disrupting our lives - and mostly overstaying beyond our comprehension.   We are both perpetrators and victims of love, e...

It's basic good manners they say, possibly one of the first things taught to a child, the most primal form of grace. The importance of, nay, the necessity of saying 'thank you'.   But ever so often, we are taught the semantics but not the emotion which needs to go along with it. And there lies the crunch. Because we start noticing the gap, the inadequacy of a formal thank you, particularly in the...

I sometimes look at myself and wonder who I am.   I surprise myself often with the way I react into situations or the way I say things, and I look back and wonder if it was me there. Sometimes it is something outright unpleasant, and I'm completely ashamed of myself. But I also love the times I surprise myself with my own generosity or wisdom, of what I am capable of saying or doing.   And then I...

Our relationship with the almighty is a complex one.   I have grown up with an atheist father (he calls himself agnostic, but the search never ends), and a mother who grew up as an Arya Samaji, so 'believe in yourself, believe in no idols'. Dad was a man of science, well-read, an engineer, hence well versed in his arguments against the presence of god, per se.   As a family on holiday, we only vis...

I think if we did a dipstick survey of happy couples, we'd find an overwhelming number who aren't.   No surprises.   Nobody ever knows what happens behind closed doors. Hurts run deep like rivers which cut through ancient rocks, till you can only see the sunrises above them and not the deep gorges they've created.   Our primitive instincts call out to us to conjoin, cohabit. But nature also gives...

What do you do when a friend dies? The one friend who spoke softly and was beside you in the best and worst of times.   What can you say except that's it's just too soon.   That, if an end was inevitable, why would someone so sweet and kind ever have to go through the pain he had to go? That why would an affliction like cancer affect someone who had not harmed a fly in his life.   I look at his ph...

Every morning I walk into a small shrine, housed by Ganesh and Laxmi, and ask for a blessing for someone in my life. It could be anyone who I feel requires the touch of divine that day.   It could be for someone passing through a tiring time, someone who is worried about outcomes, a couple which has just hitched, a colleague who has a presentation, a friend grieving, or for someone I know as a hap...

We need to walk straight, with our spine erect. There's no other way. We need to know ourselves - what keeps us abreast of ourselves, beyond the bullshit requirements of the world.   There's the sinister expectation of people who plant redemption of their failures on us, and coat it in aphorisms both sweet and compelling. We are sold because we love people and hope to keep them happy. We feel it's...

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!   Youth is so wasted on the ones who carry it as a burden. The changes which wreck havoc to the body and heart are later looked back at as the sweetest damnation possible, irreplaceable but never ever lived through fully.   We all know and understand the alchemy of a mom...

I am so engrossed in the theatrics of my mind that I often forgot that there is a world outside which has been gifted to me to revel in, to find pleasure and meaning in. Getting too intertwined in myself is often the bane of my existence, as I lose purpose in my desperation to resolve the quotidian quibble or the boredom riddle.    Time and again, seeing myself immerse in the labyrinthine issues o...

As we age, we hark back to the ordinary. After we've seen it all, our sense of wonder might  not have dimmed, but it does become selective. And we know that though there is no end to discoveries, we find even a still moment is rich in repast.   And without wallowing in nostalgia, we remember simpler times. And we remember the glow of presence. No details are required, because the feeling remains....

I write so much on so many things. Relationships is a recurrent topic, as I traverse myriad emotions. Because of them my heart and my mind are my poetry labs, and I'm never bereft of things to write about. And I'm amazed at the discoveries. Day in day out I find new ways in which I can hurt - and get hurt. There are old fault lines which never get repaired, and fresh wounds which find their way in...

What is the ethical and practical length we would go to save a relationship or a situation or ourselves? Is our segue into safety always self-protection and a rapid walk through a portal of lies? Or do we girdle up, step up, chin up - and say the truth (and nothing but the truth), consequences be damned.   Or do we tell ourselves - let's be practical. Let every situation determine our choice of wh...

George Meyer, a co-writer on The Simpsons, referred to marriage as “a stagnant cauldron of fermented resentments, scared and judgmental conformity, exaggerated concern for the children . . . and the secret dredging-up of erotic images from past lovers in a desperate and heartbreaking attempt to make spousal sex even possible.”   There's bitterness and cynicism there. That's a relationship at its v...

Relationships are such journeys! Once you get into one, one prepares for the long haul. Railroad crashes, car rides, boring flights. The odd distraction, the unwilling participation, and the rare view of the Kanchenjunga through impenetrable clouds. One wishes for transcendence and encounters reality checks.   In our closest relationships we discover our worst selves.   But then a few things start...

So much of our lives is a choice between the hard rock and a soft landing. Time and again we struggle, forgetting this is one life, and just a few million breaths. Beyond that, it's retribution.   Endings are rarely spectacular. Because, we are all slaves to our insecurities, our fears holding us tightly. And it is in very rare occasions of singular clarity and fearless realisations that we let ou...

I'd written this poem years back. I can't even remember the context or the time. But it brings an overwhelming feeling of loneliness, of evanescence - of people and loves who move on, always too soon it seems.   Parting seems like demise, and its irrevocable passage doesn't make it any easier. Bitter lovers have often talked of such periods as those of wasted opportunity, as if anything which does...

Ara (who goes by the name 'petrichara' on Instagram) writes "someone who allows you to rest is the relationship dynamic of all time".   And I think - it's not only people but places too.   Places we're familiar with, places which allow us to ease into ourselves. Like a home. Where we know everything, where everyone knows us, and all we have to be is what we are in our own skin.   And often when we...

The relentless agency of living, its insistencies to persist - until it no longer could - its proclivity for drama, its calmness to tired souls:   that's one way to see life, when you are about to give up on things, when there seems to be no redemption to distress, when life seems to be an unending travail - something which doesn't give up even when you are ready to.   And you search for a reason...

How much we are afraid to say what often simply needs to be said. It's an unavoidable fact - the conversations we avoid are the conversations we require the most.   Often we are afraid to face the black-&-white of the spoken truth, often we fear the unpredictability of confrontations.  Maybe, in the past, we've had to face the consequences of a scathing talk, and have now sworn to avoid anythi...

What is important to us? This question needs to be asked every morning, because weeks, which have been days, soon become years, and when we look back, we find that things have changed and people have drifted.   It's not that we lose ourselves in the trivial. It's how we let things subtract our lives rather than add to it. And we regret the time where we let go of opportunities to be with people wh...

It's been a tumultuous few days. According to WHO, one person is murdered every 60 seconds in this world. One person commits suicide about every 40 seconds.  One person dies in armed conflict every 100 seconds. And busy with our quotidian struggles, we let the numbers swirl around our consciousness before slipping away. Until one day, our blasé conscience finds something which goes beyond even our...

Who are we if not slaves to our addictions? In the annals of definitions, we are often what we are at our worst. Which is the world's way of prioritising simply - and slotting conveniently. But much worse than our ruthless judgement is what we do with our own judgements about ourselves.   Within the tumult of being a sex addict or an alcoholic or being bulimic, there are those despairing battles w...

Our feelings are a yo-yo. Forever seeking more, something different, something ultra energising. As if different is better. We are not able to figure out the difference between excess and endurance. Everything around us moves so rapidly - technology, circumstances, opinions - that even relationships fall victim to the syncopated rhythm of indulgence & desertion. And in this cornucopia of life,...