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Old age is often a sadness, not so much for the slowing and breaking down of the body’s machinery, but because how it brings invisibility to the aged. Because if there is one section of people who are ignored, as if they don’t exist, it is often the aging. As the world swirls around them, with all it’s passion, conflict, confusion, interaction, conversation, they are there, in the middle of the whirlpools - they are seen - and then unseen.   Nobody seems to have time for the old.   There they sit, quietly, often in a corner, observing the drama, silent with their opinion (maybe they were once told roughly not to interfere?), thinking of how they had faced similar situations, knowing how things would turn out - but, alas,  never turned to, never asked for.   By being ignored, they are rendered static in the daily flow of life. They are bathed and alert, seated and waiting, looking tentatively into the busyness of their loved ones’ lives, asking softly what was up, what was the rush, if there was any help required - but are brushed off - gently, by a good soul; not so gently, by the one who thinks them to be a waste of time.   And they sit quietly, with their newspapers and memories, hushed tones and shaded looks, both proud and concerned. They see the living dynamos, with their blood in them, making a life of their own, with their own choices and decisions; but often immolating themselves in self-lit fires. And then unasked, they get up from their wheelchairs, and break open the glass door of the fire extinguisher, and save the souls of their offspring, the way they did when they were young.   And suddenly, the invisible become visible. The useless become useful. The extinct become extant.   I remember Almodovar’s Talk To Her, where a male nurse spent years talking to a woman who was in a coma, who probably did not comprehend a single word of what was being spoken, who probably had little chance of recovery, but does so because he loves her. I often wonder what stops us from doing the same with the elderly in our family, when they are not even comatose, and would be absorbing of what we say, observant in what they give. In our hierarchy of choices, we would rather exult in the digital euphoria of social media than have the slow patience to savour the quiet delight of a life fully-lived.   If only we go beyond our professed love for our parents and other ageing loved ones, and actually spent time with them, with words or merely sharing silences, we will come back, awash in light and drenched in gratitude. Attention is the soul and water and sunshine for an ageing soul.   As the sun sets, and we revel in its afterglow, grace fills our soul, and the tenderness of what we give comes back to us and makes us malleable and alive.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the inevitabilities of life: She Held His Hand As He Drifted A Garden of Departures An Epitaph Made of Light & Air Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The following music was used for this media project: Music: Relaxation [instrumental, sounds of birds] by Edvardas Sen Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10002-relaxation-instrumental-sounds-of-birds License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license  

The irrevocability of death is a given.   Even as I can't ever reconcile to it, I sit in awe at its messy discipline. It tears worlds asunder, leaves pain in its wake, splits, often destroys,  but moves unreconciled and unrelenting. Sometimes it gives a little air, some space - not a dawn of hope, but a sunbeam - as a vestige, but then again moves across the firmament to find its west - and waste.   As we sit beside the hospital bed of a loved one, and pray, even if it’s for one more breath, deep inside we know it is against all natural laws.  But hope is what we live on. I still remember the story of the Mughal king Babur, whose son Humayun was lying nearing death, and he went around his bed three times, praying to the almighty, for the exchange of life for life, to give his son's illness to him in exchange of Babur’s health, and it happened, his son was saved.   It’s a desperate thought for a despairing heart.   Just as death is really a passage through life, for the surviving - the bereaved, the ones left behind -  death of a loved one is a transition, from a sensory world of togetherness to an estranged world of isolation. With a numb realisation we realise how much we are made, of what we get from those closest to us.  Their demise then is like the opening of a yawning gap, something which often never fills again. It’s the absence of a voice, a touch, a quiet glance, a secret smile. It is the thinking together, it is the sharing of silences, of a bowl of soup, of seeing a sunbeam together. Of shivering in the cold, of finding warmth, of drinking coffee, of arguing, of hugging, of saying goodbye on the doorstep knowing, come evening and you would meet again.   And then all of a sudden, we realise how the absence of one life diminishes our whole world. Our accomplishments are not enough without the ardent cheerleader, our presence is not significant without that someone’s acknowledgment, a life we might be living in multiples is forever laid to rest as a lonely singularity.   A loved one's mortal body dies once, and we, the survivors, die multiple times inside.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on death's call: When Breath Becomes Air Departures What Do I Leave Behind Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The music is a mantra for the peace of a departed soul, performed by Sahil Jagtiani, from the album "Om Namo Narayanaya Chanting".

"I look back to see if I had left behind trails of my voice, as if that mattered more than if they had reached."   I stay in Calcutta, and wherever I walk I know I do so on hallowed ground, unseen but still fallow with the blood of revolutionaries. It’s another matter that whilst some of it was a fight for freedom, some of it was misguided, for things which revolutionaries themselves lost sight of. The fight was for a cause - but often for the fight itself. But, foolish or brave, nobody could doubt the valour or the intensity.   At the beginning of this year, I looked back with some despair at my fraught world, and I looked forward with some trepidation. And what emerged in me was a memoir of times I had trudged through, as also a strange memorial for things still to come.   But I had promised myself something a long time back - on that quibble called hope. Friends told me that hope was a fool’s lifeboat, riddled with holes, forgone to disaster. But I had always held that it still floated, and to mix metaphors,  it was still sweeter than the acid of cynicism, which corroded even as it breathed.   But what the despair made me do was to doubt my voice, question it’s potency, ask about its reachability. What it made me do is to question if everybody’s pain needed to be seen with the same heart, if one wound needed to be tended and another ignored.   What would this world do to my soul?   And that’s where I want myself and this world to again seek innocence. To trust, to have faith, to laugh, to love - and maybe get destroyed in the process, but at least live what is left of life in the high castle of hope.   It’s a beguiling wish from a fool. But there are too many stories of fools who have been destroyed but whose mere idea has made us live with love, dignity and passion.   A life lived with this is no mean success, however curtailed it might be.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on identity and hope: Yes And I Know These of You Difficult Child Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Music: Stormpath by Alexander Nakarada Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9816-stormpath License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Life is a pean of reaffirmations. In its hurly-burly urgencies we often forget that what anchors us is often the humdrum boring comfort of relationships which let us be what we are. We can say anything knowing our love won’t be questioned, we can take people for granted without our intentions being put into a dock, we can let silences surround us knowing them to be as potent as a conversation.   But to get to that state is to first embark on a journey. Relationships take time. They have to be transversed through the hills and valleys, yes, but also through the pots and pans, of life. There are glorious sunsets to get lost in but also the harshness of singular floodlights. There are triumphs of togetherness to hold on to, as also the bouts of lonely lookouts. There are the warm summer evenings to linger in but also the biting cold of an aching heart. There is time seamlessly bequeathed but also the tiptoeing when none is given.   The irony of relationships is that if you survive the scrounging of lees in an unending chasm, you will enjoy the riches of the rocks of togetherness. Because what sustains a couple is a mysterious alchemy of the understandable and felt, shown and realised, the brusque and the smooth. With the ones closest to us, too much is often made of too little. The challenge is always then to not mistake  the ephemeral for a fact, just as we often mistake the windblown emotion as a determinant of intention.   Though the longevity of a relationship is scarcely an indicator of it’s quality, the long trudge HAS to be undertaken to understand every strand of a person’s being. It takes time to understand that couples are conjoined not only because of what they are but because of what they have survived, which, in the schemata of engagement, often means surviving each other.  Victims of love always bleed. But the survivors are the ones who hold their hands and find the sun burnishing their skin into gold.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on yearning: The One Who Left (Herself Behind) The Passing of Autumn And She Waited For My Call Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Music: Satisfaction by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/339-satisfaction License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license  

A new year is just an artificial break for us to catch our breath, simmer down and look back to see the terrain we have travelled. There’s nothing good or bad - there are only things to either celebrate or to learn from. The wisest of us has done the stupidest of things - and are often better and happier for it. In thought, word or action we have all transgressed - we have sinned, plotted, cursed. The steam of our desires, obsessions, yearnings have found its outlet. We have some ashes left behind, some remembrance, or just that guilty happy feeling, which somehow fills our life’s crevices.   What we can’t do is to live life with cracks, regrets. To look back or forward and only see impossibilities. There are too many slivers of light surrounding our days for us not to find one to hold onto and climb out of this grim world. All we need is faith, the belief that at the end of the shaft, the bottom of the chasm, or where light turns to darkness, there is something which awaits us, something which we will fall in love with, which speaks to us. Where we can let go, and know there is nothing but a flight ahead.   So onwards, my loves, there’s always something left to celebrate and fall in love with! Revel!   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how time adn tides wait for none: Let Life Break Your Heart How I Stumbled in My Search for Eternity I Am A Residue of Life Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Music: Rising Sun by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/86-rising-sun License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license  

"I will learn someday that truth is a flight from penumbra to light, from the man scared to show his scars, to the child I can be to the world;             there’s innocence in truth,             it makes others reveal their wounds."   The biggest truth of lies is also the most uncomfortable - we tell lies to deflect our truths, not only from others but also ourselves . If we are sensitive to ourselves and our worlds, we find a twitch in our conscience. If we are inured and leathered and layered, we ski over the the thinnest ice with complete elan and disregard.   What makes us tell lies?   Of course, when truths are uncomfortable, if we are revealed to be perpetrators, when the charter of accountability is much greater than the act’s payback. More debilitatingly, when we wish harm unto someone, or are not ready to reveal the truth of what we are. Ensconced in the thin layer of a lie is the desire of image or deflection. So much of what we are is predicated on what we say - we naturally believe each other, and to lie is to create an image of others or ourselves which is skewed as per our own warped imagination.   What of the discovery of an untruth?   We are intrinsically innocent to belief, which is also why when our trust in the other’s truth is broken, it is nigh impossible to put it back into a pristine state again. Lives change with one untruth - battles are won or lost, relationships sustain or don’t, courage is found or varnished.   But what does it do to the perpetrator of the lie?   From time immemorial, the hauntings of lies have destroyed men, as they have not been able to see their own ugliness in the mirror. A man with a conscience is a man forever vulnerable to truth's perpetuating call. Because that’s what it really is. Truths are never clarion calls, they are never drumbeats, they lie quietly as facts, without squealing, without prancing. But  - away from the deflection, away from the glare - they grow in size, in stature, as prosaic as fact, as quiet as an ambush. And when they are revealed, they unwittingly explode, besmirching the ones who ignored it, wounding the ones discovering it.    What about people who boldly ignore ramifications of revelations, who start and end from an instinct of self-preservation or self-aggrandizement? When they embrace untruth with aplomb and carry it through with bold disregard to anything and everything. We all know such people - bold, brazen, ballsy. Likeable people too, powerful ones often, but purveyors of stories. Perpetual liars, often carrying it as a pathological disease.  Is there an Armageddon for them, a final retribution, something which brings back the balance to truth?   Much as we might wish for redemption, the fact is that the world celebrates the bold, people who can get away with anything if they are brazen enough. It is the nature of the beast that with aggression, one can hold on to one’s  lies and ward off truth’s gentle assertions. Liars persevere, they even prosper. They find their suns and preen in their shadowless brightness. We can wish karma to find them at some point, but that is in the air and often wishful thinking.   Truths and lies are personal choices. Their ramifications can torpedo targets or self-inhilate the purveyor. If people can risk relationships for a simple lie, then possibly there is a backstory and they were victims first; if they can risk reputations, they are probably blasé in thinking that nothing can destroy them. Either way, a liar is risking a lot with no line of sight of the harm he creates. Wittingly or unwittingly.   What the worth of a lie is often sought  to be found in the value of its intent or its history. Like everything else, it is but a reflection of every person's owned and personal integrity.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the beauty and heartbreak of life: Lovers of Broken Mountains Chemo: As I Battle Myself How She Knew (that he was unfaithful) Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Music: Mystical Autumn by MusicLFiles Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9755-mystical-autumn License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license  

Each one of us is such a complex mess. Even the most sorted of us passes through noisy bazaars of wavering decisions, competing choices and moral dilemmas. And we invariably are victims of our own pitiable choices. The right and wrong of things is often simpler to decipher than what is right or wrong in the moment. Our ethical dilemma is often a post-act regret or engendered by the heat of revelation. We slip, we regret, we get punished. Then we either move on - or rot in the prison of our conscience.   But it’s a tragedy of our times that we are often characterised as the sum of just one mistake, just one proclivity, just one flaw. There’s a judgement passed.  And our place in the sun is snatched and we are relegated to the darkest recesses of the universe. Every good we have ever done is subsumed in the tsunami of one deviance, one error.   As we sit at the wrong end of a poorly-defined and often hypocritical judgement criteria, we find ourselves judging ourselves and sinking into a cesspool of self-incrimination. Life presents itself in its darkest hues.   We are often our worst not because we are but because the world expects it of us. What is the road to redemption for us who’ve given up on ourselves? Standing in the glare of judgement, we often forget that on the margins of life are waiting it’s grace and kindness. It could be in the form of a person, a poem, an incident, a purpose or a remembrance. That’s life’s hidden sunbeam. The one which is our ladder to reclaim ourselves.   Finally, we have to give meaning to our own lives. Those who stand in judgement are only reflecting their own shadows, and we have to emerge out of those. When we step out of the minefields of our mistakes and the world's opinions, we find endless fields of flowers and sunlight. We would finally be home.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the beauty and heartbreak of life: How I Stumbled in My Search for Eternity An Onanist's Guide to Loneliness The Tragedy of Seeing Life As A Broken Enterprise Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Music: You Can't Stay Here by Michal Mojzykiewicz Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10070-you-cant-stay-here License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Artist website: https://soundcloud.com/michaldrums  

"We made love in our own way, not calamitous, not celebratory in the end, she didn’t relent, I didn’t fail, my love redeemed at the altar of sex.   I held her close, more comfort than desire, we both knew we’d now reached a phase - for love is a feral cry in some throats, and in some it survives with a gentle ache."   I think too much has been said of the sublimity of lovemaking and too title of it’s difficulties. The mechanics are intuitive, not the art. There are subtleties which makes the endeavour one of discovery. You can very well put your foot on the pedal and race the car away, but to drive whilst appreciating the passing scenery, to manage the bumps on the road, and to reach the destination drenched in beauty is an experience which goes beyond elemental understanding.   And what about the time when the body ages and desire doesn’t? Or when you age and your partner doesn’t? Lovemaking then is both a rare whiskey and a marathon. When you get there, it’s a relief first and then a celebration; if you don’t, it’s a recognition that time and tide always have their sad messages.   But more than anything else it is an insight into the kindness and affection of partners in love - how do they face changes of diminishing desire or sheer inability. The broader lesson is how relationships need to be open to change and find ways of resolution rather they letting issues  overwhelm them.   The tenacity of a relationship will be tested, time and again, in all kinds of ways - and one of the most moving testaments to it is of acceptance. When we love the soul of a man, small things are quirks, big things are quiddities, and everything is an opportunity to again find grace in the enjoined life.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on finding grace in lovemaking: Such are Such Days (or the days I make love to her) Finding Souls Between Their Legs Map My Body, Lover Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Music: Hopeful by Phat Sounds Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10130-hopeful License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Artist on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PhatSounds74 Music: You Did This by Phat Sounds Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10132-you-did-this License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Artist on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PhatSounds74    

"I have seen the future hold stars in its hands not knowing how plastic were dreams. I didn’t want the sound of my breaking heart resound such that the solar system be proved wrong but I have seen seamless skies filled with light and wonder to be only refractions from the jagged shards of broken hearts."   I have seen the most deprived child dream. Dream to become an astronaut, nothing less. Her family eats one meal a day, sends her to a school to give alphabets to her dreams, and tells her in the night before she goes to sleep hungry that this is her life, there’s nothing beyond. But nothing can stop her from dreaming.   When I talk to her, her eyes have still not dimmed of their stars, and she speaks in broken English and tells me why she loves the school. It is her escape from reality, which she hopes will be the wormhole out of her black hole. Into another dimension, into another realm, into another world.   At what juncture of their lives, do the dreams of children start to break?   As I try in my own ways to find a trapdoor to get them out of the swelter of their hopeless basement lives, I know it’s a battle. I focus on one, and the faces of a multitude appear - with the largest eyes and the brightest dreams you can imagine. And I’m overwhelmed. And I lose focus. And I lose sight of the fact that change occurs one at a time. One dream at a time. One pair of bright eyes at a time.   In the infinity of inequities, what might feel like the Sisyphean rock, is actually the journey inside - because destinations are never reached through a single highway, but invariably transverse the small dirt tracks and country roads, where we drive through clouds of dust, hoping to find clear skies and pellucid streams.   As we work together, they holding on to their dreams and I seeking out roads from reality to find the highway to their dreams, I often find the enormity of inequity. But what in our lives, if ever, is easy. And I can only tell, about ageless truths which say - if you hold on long enough, if you badger the universe inexorably, if you keep battling bad fortune with your sweat and blood pouring out of you, something will change - maybe as a principle, maybe as luck, maybe as a mere dent. And I will tell them each battle is an opening, a ladder, a progression into a different future - and nothing ever goes waste.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on childhood and its dreams: When I Hear The Whistle of a Passing Train Difficult Child Those Days of a Lost Summer Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Music: The Song Of Sirens by Alexander Nakarada Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9663-the-song-of-sirens License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Artist website: https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com/  

Life pauses when heartbreaks occur - and then it doesn’t. It’s the nature of the beast that nothing stops. But momentum is often not a substitute for reparation. Time sutures wounds, but the scar is insubstitutable - and it often glows when we are lonely. And as memories tumble in, we tumble down. What comes as a rush are gestures and flourishes, the quirky and the infinitesimal, and the forgotten becomes unforgettable. We remember nothing huge but remember her hugely. For the fact is that people remain as traces, as the fine dust which settles on furniture and can clog our system without us being aware of it.   Nostalgia, thus, is more insidious than presence.   What is it about those who depart or leave us? Is love forever an interruption? Is it’s value always attached to departures and heartbreak? Is it the universe’s way of redeeming our lives but also punishing us for our non-attention when it might be needed the most? Is love’s exposition - as we see it in our peripheral vision - the one true measure of its bounty? The tiny unasked for gestures, the tea, the pat, the hug, the laugh. The light which comes from silence, the comfort which comes from presence.   We are engulfed in the generosity of people who we unrelentingly take for granted. And whose grace, tragically, lies unrequited till it is just too late.   No wonder, nostalgia is finally tragedy couched in a wistful smile.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on leaving and staying - A City Made of Our Sighs Departures Distances: Kaifi Azmi Ke Liye Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Music: Rising Sun by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/86-rising-sun License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Artist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de    

One of the abiding joys of growing old together is to remember insignificant minutiae - some which hurt like pebbles in a shoe and some which effortlessly made us remember why we were together.   To persevere in the complex dynamic of personal desires and conjoined plans is itself  a triumph. For if there’s one thing which relationships demand - after they’ve concretised the shaky foundations of love and blown apart its airy notions - is to see each other with new eyes after years of togetherness. To jettison back-stories, to wipe out bad behaviour, and to sit firmly on the conjoined hard earth, and look at the stardust (even if it’s a fistful) which got made together. Possibilities of persistence lie embedded in the ephemeral  and the insignificant, which we take the trouble to notice.   What gives us joy is not emblazoned in the skies. It comes unexpectedly as teardrops, and finds its way into us as a brook. We have to know how to lean in and how to linger, we have to know how to let the fragments pass us by - as is their won't - but not to lose the grace they invariably leave in their wake.   So much of what we are is predicated on things we don’t even notice - things which pass through the slivers of our thoughtlessness. It could be the cup of tea appearing before us every morning, it could be the slant of winter sun straining to reach out to our cold body, it could be the whiff of perfume which leaves us in restless anticipation. But these are the things which goldplate our brassy days and render magic where we think none is possible - if only we have the eyes to see it.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the tenderness of love - I Love You I Can Be Your Poem Lovers In The Morning Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -   Music: Paradise Of Love by MusicLFiles Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9358-paradise-of-love License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Artist website: https://cemmusicproject.wixsite.com/musiclibraryfiles    

I can never forget the Sharukh Khan movie, Main Hoon Na, when a celestial orchestra comes in and he automatically starts singing , as soon as he sees the gorgeous Sushmita Sen being her ethereal self in incredible sarees.  And I remember thinking -  this is a superb idea, and what wouldn’t I do to have this facility from god?! But, alas, as the heavens never listened in to my desires, I curate my own music for my variegated moods.   I play music to the beat of my breath. As I brush my teeth, as I move from one place to another, as I work on a desk. It’s soft, When I want to concentrate on other things; it’s loud, when I’m drifting through life’s unavoidable drudgery; and the decibels become ruthless, when I’m head banging with issues.   Every morning as I go out for my jog, I run into an orchestra of shrill joy! I doubt if anything ever receives the welcome which birds give to every dawn. It’s the universe’s urging to living beings to realise we are alive - which also means being alive to all possibilities.   When I was growing, and had a house in Tribeni in Bengal and had the dark river Hooghly winding by, every night at nine I was out in the verandah with my battery-operated radio, to hear a sampling of old and current Hindi songs. It was always curated for a dulcet mood, just right for the time before bed. I used to put the radio on the concrete balustrade, and then jump to sit alongside. And I knew in the rows of houses, demarcated by flower beds and vegetable patches, several of my friends were doing exactly what I was. And the river flowed by silently behind me, as both of us eased into the folding night.   In my school and college days, to discover a song which we fell in love with meant we should know the lyrics to hum along with. Remember, those  were pre-internet days, and there was nothing available on tap. But for a buck we used to get cyclostyled booklets, printed on the most abysmally cheap paper, with the lyrics of the songs of the particular movie we wanted . And we used to memorise the l to heart. And that’s  how I discovered songs to be  poetry set to music.   Today, for this poetry podcast, I cannot think my poems without a musical underpinning. If the musical notes and my poetry mesh well, I feel heady.  I love hearing Call Me By Your Name or Bringing The Storm Home, for example, because the music seems to have been created just for those poems. (I feel this! Do you too?)   I see musician friends create music the way I write poetry - as a calling, as a compulsion, as survival. And I can imagine the experience of writing musical notes and lyrics to be as gorgeously uplifting as finishing a poem, making its way into tunes, after working out of split arteries.   As I hear the incredible thump and vigour and magic of ‘Varaha Roopam’ from ‘Kantara’, as I sit on my desk and write this, I know music as transcendental - something from beyond, something to take us beyond.   The poems mentioned here, where I feel the music magically meshes into the words are - Bringing The Storm Home Call Me By Your Name Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   Illustration - Giselle Dekel   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Music: Odyssee by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/56-odyssee License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Artist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de Music: The Way To Kataka by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/11-the-way-to-kataka License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Artist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de  

NOTE - There are some recording audio disturbances in the first minute. Do excuse.    What is it about conversations, that the ones most essential, are the ones we avoid the most?   With our anger or distress brimming over, are we afraid to show the power the other has over us to leave us with such vulnerability? Are we just frightened of the uncharted route the conversation might take? Are we afraid that however tenuous the fraught relationship, this was still one precious relationship, and why should we ruin it by cleaving it apart?   Or are we simply afraid to face our own truths, in the voices we still love or once loved dearly?   I’m personally afraid of strong reactions, of reactions which start at point a and then proceed to reach point z in a rush, annihilating everything in their wake. Conversations have often turned to slugging matches, and invariably resulted in arteries of our inner being being torn into shreds.   So many of my conversations have got completely emotionally wrought, where views are construed as accusations, where thoughts to resolve are taken as signs of intolerance, where everything ends with the words “You hate what I say and think and do. I will just withdraw into myself and not utter a word again.”   Conversations seeking reconciliation have ended in more distances.   What do we do to have conversations which bring us closer, to have distrust change into trust and our relationship to then build on that, to see honest feedback about the other’s characteristics, not as things we dislike but as the desire of a loved one to help the other.   I have realised that the depth of a relationship doesnt have a natural correlation with its width. Often the longest bonds are deep in habit and shallow in their richness. It is not a question of seeing each other’s best and worst and knowing each other inside out, but a simple question of respect. When you try to understand what the other means to say, when you try to know what makes the other do what they do, when you have faith enough to know that listening and absorbing are more difficult but more rewarding than merely reacting.   The persistence of a bond is a miracle, but seeking its depth with grace is a bigger one.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on collapsing relationships - Favourite People (Who We Love & Leave) The Door Is Unlocked. I Am Awake Love's Night of the Long Knives Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Music: Primeval [Electronic] by Banjopickerdee Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9988-primeval-electronic License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license      

One of the unending and unerring charms of knowing people is to know them as flawed people, whose very kinks make them the weird loveable irritating entities, who infuriate us but equally make us caring custodians of them.   The particularities of their weirdness is not meant for history books. It is often no more than the whimsy of habit, the caprice of reaction, or the peculiarity of a stand they take - nothing which takes away from who they are, nothing which requires a shovel to check their depths.   Ever so often, relationships get predicated on these quirks, which are no more, or less, than the ripples on a pond from a wind which decides to blow on it. If we reject the pond, we lose the treasures which lie in its depths.   To know, to understand, to adopt (and adapt to) each other’s quiddities is to have character and latitude, because it entails that we have the ability to look beyond the obvious brass to see the gold inside. And to realise that we are equally flawed and, in our peculiar ways, fun. If only someone could look beyond.   And to meet someone who gives us a glimpse into the gentle and the outrageous, the tangy and the plain, the obvious and the awesome, is to have encountered a whole universe in a person. To reject someone like this because the odd thing makes their heart go a-flutter, or they slurp soup in hideous ways, is the biggest injustice we can do to ourselves. Groan, growl, but persevere. There’s too much richness inside, which would require years to explore, and a lifetime to savour.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the lovable weirdness of people - Dancing in the Rains An Onanist's Guide to Loneliness In the Darkness of Our Autobiographies Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Music: Paradise Of Love by MusicLFiles Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9358-paradise-of-love License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Artist website: https://cemmusicproject.wixsite.com/musiclibraryfiles Music: From my Heart With Love by MusicLFiles Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6267-from-my-heart-with-love License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Artist website: https://cemmusicproject.wixsite.com/musiclibraryfiles  

Making love can be the tenderest experience of a day. Truth be told, the day should start and end with it - with nothing, nothing else to take away from its tangy exuberance. Those moments should be the day. But - we have to move on. There are things to be done. There are commitments to fulfil, a job to go to, groceries to be bought, a plumber to be contacted.   And suddenly such days get redefined, the Northern Lights lose their effulgence, not only by contrast, but because everything humdrum brings its drama into our senses. And we lose the one thing which should have been the only thing which was defining life that day.   What is it about us that, time and again, we lose sight of the ethereal and the beautiful. That we take lovemaking - this experience of life, death and rebirth - as a commonplace occurrence, as an ability available on tap - and hence lesser for it. Why do we human beings always diminish our own worlds and find ways to move on - when we should be hiding, lingering, treasuring. And not letting go of these moments where meaning is discerned, and everything else falls by the wayside.   Making love is our wildest and tenderest manifestation as sentient human beings. And for us to let an occasion pass or devolve into insignificance is nothing short of a tragedy. We speak too much of work-life balance and too little of work-sex balance. As one fully-alive philosopher once said - “Make love not war.” It might not solve the world’s problems, but it would definitely send us out into the world wishing for only good things to happen to it!   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on making love - Of Bodies in Bed & Uncertain Joys Finding Souls Between Their Legs Why Don't You Make Love To Me Anymore? Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -   Music: Sailing Through The Wide Sea by MusicLFiles Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6243-sailing-through-the-wide-sea License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Artist website: https://cemmusicproject.wixsite.com/musiclibraryfiles  

"Often I see myself hiding inside myself wondering how many biographies of pain will I see as my own."   It’s almost a cliché to say that we are much more the reaction then what we are in the action. It is not ideal, but it is a reality. Our lives are touched at a million sensory points throughout the day. Stories, requests, exhortations, kindnesses, things we say which boomerang, acts we do which come back to us as benediction. We are an amalgam of what we give and what we get - and what we make of all of it for ourselves.    And what drives us ever so often is longing. A longing to connect, a longing to be the chosen one, a longing, very often, to be at the wrong end of the stick, but to have known that we were, in some way, the chosen one. And in that recognition often lies the leitmotif of our lives. How can we transverse this earth without being noticed? Without knowing that we meant for something. Knowing that what we wrote, thought, said, did, did make a difference.    Our lives then are a combination of curiosity, creation and craving. Our connections build on that. There’s nothing extraordinary which our lives then seek. Just that we notice, get noticed - and find out peace in that ordinariness.    Note - The name of the poem is named after a performance piece curated by the exceptional dancer Diya Naidu   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on questions relating to the meaning of longing and attention - On Some Additions to Introspective Psychology An Onanist's Guide to Loneliness Favourite People (Who We Love & Leave) Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.     The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -  Music: Sleepers by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/3232-sleepers License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Artist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de  

"There's no love like the hour, and when noise swirls in the world,  it's the companionship of breath  which saves souls with its being"   We are blessed that seasons - and the seasons of our lives - are marked by the pomp and grace of festivities. We welcome and we let go, we conjoin and we celebrate. And in both the comings and goings, we are left forever changed.   What is it about the passages of rituals that we are never left unmoved? As if it is not just Diwali or Id or Christmas, but an important rite of passage, which even if bereft of its symbolism and allegory, becomes the time to come together, to revel in something essential inside us, which often lasts dormant, but finds an awakening and leaves us rejuvenated.   But even more than that, these marks in the calendar, these pauses, are rewinds to simpler feelings, as we find meaning in the ‘again’. The times when loved ones got together, to swap tales, to intertwine lives, to revisit old joys - and often festering wounds. It is the time to exchange familiarity and at least THINK of forgiveness as an option, to at least remember that seeking unfiltered joy is nothing but the soul aching for a return to innocence.   In the liturgy of our lives, this is the familial moment - private with those who care, festive with those we revel in, revealing with those who are tender with our softest parts, and being a different person to ourselves. More than opening up, we involuntarily crack open.  We are better for just being.   And then the aftermath. The unwinding, the closures - and the closing up. As if the festival was an event and not something which changed Iives. Something which we carried as a memory which mixed with other similar memories of revelry and became generic rather than being tagged as the time when we sprouted flowers from the cesspool of our deepest selves. We could well be the goddess left adrift in uncertain currents or a fir tree abandoned in a mothballed  attic till another season.   Or we could let the passage of the days go right through us. Without making us feel abandoned as detritus but helping us blunt the shards of our hurts with unquestioning presence.   Deep inside, we are ever so often only the hurt child who finds solace in an abandoned church, realising in time, that god also fought battles in the universe, and the church was also his resting place.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the hurt and glory of seasons - •Dancing in the Rains •Waiting for a Storm •Those Days of a Lost Summer Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Music: Majestic Autumn by MusicLFiles
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9662-majestic-autumn
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist website: https://cemmusicproject.wixsite.com/musiclibraryfiles

The passage of time and the passage of expectations are inversely related. So much of what we hope for slips through the sly slivers of time. What we dreamt of is folded quietly, and put beneath our heads, for us to sleep on in seamless blankness. All exhortations for destinations result only in unspecified directions, and a future rife with its own life. We are rarely given what we desire. But therein lies the universe’s ironic dilemma.   Embedded in the mystery of choices, lies one for us. Not chosen for us, but meant for us. Within the dynamic of what we are, what we think, what we feel, there’s a mysterious algorithm which puts our destiny into place. The underwhelming present of choices and our disappointments at how things seem to be turning out is only a question of a passage of time. For later, much later, we look back and see how things really fitted in. Life’s vicissitudes and our fortunes conspire to gift us a life which we can make something of.   In our desire to seek parking slots in life, we often forget that first there’s a road to transverse. Someone WILL rashly park where we thought we would back in, but going around the block or parking in a No Parking zone has its frustrations but also its own zen charm or delicious mischief. Once we make the choice, or one is made for us, leave aside parking lots, our need  for cars will disappear by itself. For we would  know  the secret of levitation.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on questions relating to the meaning of love and life - On Some Additions to Introspective Psychology Of Bodies in Bed & Uncertain Joys Favourite People (Who We Love & Leave) Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.     The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Music: New Sky by Rafael Krux Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/5693-new-sky License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Artist website: https://www.orchestralis.net/  

What are we if not morsels in this universe searching for meaning? If we are alive to the moment we float through life; if we battle with time to get its predominance, we find passages with hurdles; and if we search and mull and have conversations with life to figure out it’s import, we find false endings.   What are we to do if not wrestle with ourselves, to give credence to our struggles?   We face life with our hands curled into fists, battle-ready, already battle-weary. We think it is a race to hit the tape, a game of dominance, to be something called the best. We get entangled in trappings and on a daily basis we diminish ourselves in a desperate bid to be a beast.   We forget, time and again, that we merely need to be the best of ourselves , to know the best of life. To know generosity, to know giving as the only way to get, to face vicissitudes with the excitement of a scholar discovering new principles.   But, over and above everything, to know that in seeking meaning, we give meaning. And nothing, nothing, goes waste. Everything we give of ourselves into the universe has a legacy, the fruits of which we might or might not see in our lifetimes. It could be tangible as art or the written word, or it could be amorphous as a thought, which still gets transmitted to the world in mysterious ways.   We are magicians. We should never forget that. But are we the ones who bring awe and wonder into the world or are we evil, using our talent and clout for personal gain which the universe deems as unwieldy and unsustainable. The messaging is clear and unambiguous, it’s we who are arrogant enough to ignore its signs. Untimely sickness, pain, loss. They all find their way into the vacuum which evil leaves. Generosity fills, and there is no space left for anything at all, because happiness is expansive enough to fill the universe.   The thunder which reverberates in our skies could bring rain which nourishes our soul further - or it could bring storms which destroy  everything which we built because we’d already destroyed the foundation on which we built our home on.   Eternity then is nothing more than the innocence  of our souls and the embracing of the thunder which engulfs our life perforce.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on questions relating to the meaning of life - Rediscovering Heaven Yes... Seasons as Consultants to Life Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -   Music: Relaxation 4 by Frank Schroeter Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9834-relaxation-4 License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Artist on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/frank.schroeter.52  

The passing of a speeding train. It’s whistle from afar. The smoke from the now-disappearing steam engines. The rapidly decreasing chug-chug as it leaves a railway station.   These sounds and images are sepia-tinted in my memory, fraying at the ends with passing time. But making me remember - what a time that was. And I drown so heavily in the past, that I wallow and I wonder - is nostalgia a benediction or a curse? Writers extol me - don’t drown in that lake, or your words would forever be cursed by mush and sentimentality. My heart says - linger, a little longer, before climbing the mountain of today.   When has a poet ever listened to his head? I fallow.   I sometimes think the wonder which filled our Iives in our childhood had more stars than the skies - the innocence of growing up allowed anything and everything to fill its illimitable space. And as time passed by, the skies drowned in the depth of minutiae’s ocean. Till memories surfaced like flotsam when an ancient breeze came by to ripple the water’s surface. And we asked  ourselves “whither?”   Life’s trajectories always seem to take us away. Away from what we love, away from what we cared, away from things which made us the persons we were, away from what we now call ‘our roots’. But by then we are far gone, foregone. We are the rubber band which has been pulled beyond shape. And we look back, stretched and irredeemable, with yearning and regret.   I now know what the writers meant - and what they missed.   Nostalgia is a country for the tired soul. Its revisitation is not a weakness, because it is primarily a resting place. It is to do with standing at one’s own window, letting either the winter sun in or the falling dusk, and remember what it all meant, at a time when we were not in search of meaning at all. And how those times mean the world to us now.    If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems steeped in nostalgia - Those Days of a Lost Summer Lost Atlas of Belonging One Summer Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Music: The Train in the Darkness by MusicLFiles Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/7240-the-train-in-the-darkness License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Artist website: https://cemmusicproject.wixsite.com/musiclibraryfiles Music: Autumn Dusk by chilledmusic Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9843-autumn-dusk License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license