Uncut Poetry

Vincent Van Gogh, possibly the loneliest man in history, once said - “A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke.”   We are so much, and so little at the same time. As we transverse our fulfilments and relationships, seeing one flourish, and the other flounder. And we struggle to understand why. We find that we are that person w...

Too often, only too often, couples live lives of quiet despair.   Without knowing that's not ordinary, that's not what coupledon is all about, that we can't have lifetimes compromised to the extent that an entirety passes by and there's nothing to show for it.   Life is valuable and nobody, no relationship, has a right to take away from the preciousness of each moment. Because we have too few in t...

Summer is late in the city I stay in. There are discussions about it but no conclusions. Some say - enjoy the extended spring. Nobody minds, as there are high winds coming in from the south-west, and windows rattle. There is more time to get the air conditioners serviced.   But the intimations of summer have not ceased.   Much before the papers announced the hot days ahead, the mornings had starte...

The riches of our lives, even when we are not searching for it, is like the journey of Santiago, the young Andalusian shepherd boy in Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. The treasure is always nearby, always close. We just don't have the eyes for it.   The treasure is often our search for meaning, sometimes it is the clarity we seek of what the fulcrum of our life is, so often it is our despair to put t...

Aloneness is forced, solitude is a choice. Loneliness forces me unwillingly to be with myself. But solitude, as the great Montaigne said, gives me a chance to know how to belong to myself. A mental stand - and an entire outlook changes.   But, of course, it is not so simple!   Ironically in our worlds, we have to forcefully claim our aloneness, often to fight for it. It is antithetical, nay, antis...

Coming back, when you've slammed the door  behind you, is not easy. Literally or metaphorically. There is too much history to deal with, to have it hit us again like hale. Fresh starts are rarely as heroic as in fiction, and there is too much pus oozing out of the pores of common history for it to be a conjoinment without terror or distress. We do not always desire recall, because rewinds bring wi...

You have to say it first. You have to do it first. You have to use the words. You have to acknowledge what is burning inside you. You don't have to find a reason. You don't have to wait for an apposite season.   Lack of Reciprocation, fear of rejection, the vulnerability of putting one's heart (one's ego?) on line. Life is a hurdle race and love is strewn with obstacles. In the magnificent tapestr...

I read about the famous economist Daniel Kahneman, author of 'Thinking fast and slow', opting to end ha life through assisted suicide, euthanasia. He went to Switzerland, and died.   A friend and I were talking about it. And I remembered what Tanu and I have often discussed - Not to live if we become a permanent burden on someone.   I told my friend, I was quite clear - I get to decide when I will...

I often feel that as a poet I am destined to live through the infliction, the gain and the loss, the incandescence and the darkness, of a continuing bruise. I have to confront too many truths, and make sense of them, I have to face the world with too much honesty, and to crack open too many of my lies and illusions.   I feel alone, trying to tell the story so I camouflage the truth, to iron up to...

So much of life is of journeys, just the way death is the final one.   Of course, I'm not only talking of trapezing around the world, country to country, city to city, in innumerable trips. I am also referring to metaphorical and metaphysical journeys. The ones which reveal the greatest of mysteries - of what we truly are. The journey inside.   Because that's where the truth of our sighs and light...

What are we if not the ones who crave for second chances. And what is this world if not a place which is spatially abundant but trajectorily linear.   An opportunity lost, a call not made, an apology kept back, a feedback reined, a love abandoned. Life is a compulsive giver. It's we who are blindsided with the cornucopia of choice - mistakenly thinking that life will keep giving. That we will keep...

Love they say Is the mess you invite, The mess you make And the mess you leave behind.)   It's a flash, it's a paint, It's basil in the soup. It's a kite which finds the sky Because its cut loose.   It's a shore being tugged by the sea, It's the moon staying on in the morn, It's the sunshade in a roadside cafe, It's the chef's apron he can't take off.   It's the brownie you crave, It's a drink you...

So much of life is about forked roads and where we choose to lead ourselves. If we are vigorous about living, we would give little time to ourselves to reconsider or think back to our choices. We ensure that our lives overflow, each minute tumbling into another almost breathlessly, with little time left for reflection or regret.   But oftentimes, on a tired evening, when a passing strain of hopele...

I fear disuse. I fear lack of purpose. Not necessarily in terms of conclusions but more in terms of direction. Whatever I do, I feel good to think it adds something somewhere.   No, I'm not thinking of increasing the national GDP or my fame or fulfill a spouse's desire. I think of it more in terms of experience. Where nothing goes waste. It could be anything - a film which knocks the daylight out...

We are all strangers singularly and a brotherhood en masse.   With a seamless earth and a sky being shared between us, in spite of boundaries - of homes, cities, countries, continents, hearts, colour - we cannot but be similar, looking out for each other and being there lending a hand when we see the other struggle.   The tragedy of borders is their illusion of easy divisibility. But a line drawn...

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...