Uncut Poetry

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.   "We would talk of the day to make the outside world our own, and lay joint claim to our individual memories."   A home is of so many definitions. The place we grow in, the place we get our first intimations of the living world, the place we are desperate to get to at the...

This awareness, this stopping to see something insignificant, the overwhelming desire not to look at my mobile for long moments - I sometimes think it’s aging which is doing this to me. The fact that I have seen a bit of life, of tragedy and joy, of the big events of life and some, and no longer wish for the large and the loud.   Now what stops me are things which seem to happen in passing. A snat...

I doubt if there’s anybody who tends to words with such infinite tenderness. For her, they are rounded pebbles on a seashore, sea waves washing over naked feet, the gentle curve of the sea at the horizon.   She holds words the way I hold her.   But strangely when I think of her, it is always with a silent smile, like a truth which leaves us speechless, the way the sun slips out as a guest does whe...

We as persons are so much of the people who inhabit our lives. Not only by way of how they are connected to us and change the trajectory of our lives, but what they mean to us by way of how our souls evolve. But beyond it all is their influence on our minds and hearts to define to us what we are.   Sometimes we are unsure of our own abilities to achieve, to fulfil, to create. And though we might b...

We are never as strong as we feel we are. What’s ostensible, what’s shown, matters little. As we walk, with our eyes wide open, sometimes in wonder, often in fear, we need someone beside us to interpret the world.   A conversation is the blood flow of a love story.   To be generous enough to listen without interpretation, to hear without interruption, is a gift we give our loved ones. Because we a...

Deep inside, we all seek grounding.   In the complex hullabaloo of desires, facades and one-upmanship, within sudden dollops of searing clarity, we search for the timbre of our being and realise the glitzy syncretic synthetic fabric it is made of. And the disquiet emerges.   If the rot in our beings is not all-pervasive, the disquiet is a beginning to our conscience wanting redemption. We want to...

As 2023 turns its back with a sigh, we walk into a brand new year.   Hope - with all its bewitching deceptions - will make us wish for our best selves, to slough off the undesirable and ugly, and emerge fresh and wet, with unfazed optimism to conquer the world. But soon enough, we will know that, as always, all we need to do is to conquer ourselves.   And I sit down and make a list of what I want...

One of the incredible things which are little talked about, but one which I notice ever so often around me, is how the loss of love often frees a person in magical ways.   I tell myself - it can’t be love if it’s absence gives the feeling of liberation. But I also know how life’s bounty comes in contrarian ways. There is life within love, but there could well be revelry beyond.   I know of at leas...

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.   An ordinary life is so complex. In its unending inevitabilities and Gordian knots it is both an unravelling puzzle and an enduring mystery. To mesh our life’s experiences with those who we love, is itself a quotidian Everest to be conquered. And we slip, and we fail, and...

My son got married a few days back to his sweetheart. Both of them make an adorable couple.   As always I’m in awe of people in love who decide to marry each other. I know the atavistic urges and the reasons why we seek to gravitate towards a permanence in our deepest relationships, but I also know how the shelters of each other’s arms is ever so often open to storms and thunder. Roofs leak, house...

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...