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The other day I was reading a poem called "At Night, I Let All the Women Inside me Roam Around the House" by the marvellous poet Kelly Grace Thomas. And it made me realize how interweaved our lives are into a hundred other iterations of our own lives, and how so many unconnected things and occurrences in our world instantly become ours, how the tiniest things which might be happening because it is in their nature to do so, still find incredible resonance in our lives, reaffirming something inside us, making our lives better just by being. Thus a ray lightens us up, laughter emanating from across the room tells us how life can be randomly beautiful.   There is a point in our lives, when we grow infinitely comfortable with all the contradictions of all the people we are, and settle into the infinite variety of our complex beings. The indulgent father, the generous boss, the irritating spouse, the impatient son, the charming host, the omniscient friend. The hanuman chalisa chanter, non-indulgent to liberal hypocrisy, embraced of a thousand conspiracy theories, a doom scroller, the occasional hypocrite. An incomplete irritating occasionally loveable man, who is as ordinary as anybody in this world. Trying to keep body and soul together. And trying to live with all possible contradictions and possibilities. And surviving. And finding beauty in every wart.   And loving oneself and the world precisely because of it.     If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the kind of people we can be -  What Do You Fear The Most? Selfish When We Are Tired of Hiding Our Stories Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Cinematic Angelical Upbeat Ambient by Musiclfiles Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/cinematic_angelical_upbeat_ambient Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Love is, finally, comfort. To talk, to tell the uncomfortable truth, to tell the story of the day, to share a silence, to share a film and disagree on it, to find a thing of beauty and to think of him.   We all need one such person, for us to find a resting place in our Sisyphean lives. Often I think a poet is merely that one person who is all alone in this world, putting her deepest concerns into words, which she has no one to share with.   To find couples so much at ease with each other - in film, fiction or real life - is to find god's finest benediction. Thats why I am convinced a Shiv/Parvati, a Krishna/Radha, a Ram/Sita work, not only because of their  devotion to each other, but the ability to communicate to each other. Ram faced opprobrium, told Sita about what townspeople were saying, and it changed the direction of the mythology. But the important thing which one misses out in this interaction is the ease which they had to talk to each other about uncomfortable topics. Regardless of where it would lead. Because in that deep abyss of consequence, you have to believe that whatever occurs is for the best.   But most importantly, devotion in a couple is a manifestation of life's possibilities, in the worst and best of times. It is to know that 'two' is both the natural and the best state of existence.   When everything fails, there is always someone who will either not judge, or judge and accept. And be there because that is what both are together for.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the slow and long burn of love -  I Can Be Your Poem I Love You A City Made of Our Sighs Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Aerobatics by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/aerobatics Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Relationships are so amorphous - and so complex. You can’t hold them in your palms, yet they can crumble in front of your very eyes.   I have no idea about the statistics or the studies, but all around me I see dead ties that persist. And I’m glad they do.   In a world where we demand perfect relationships and expect them to become shiny almost overnight, there is something worth remembering: relationships take time to find their richness, become their best - or, at their worst, become bearable.   I think most couples will agree that once the honeymoon is over, the toughest years are often the early ones. That’s when they discover that sharing space is vastly different from sharing love.   She wants a harder bed; he wants the room chilled to 18 degrees at night. She wants an “I love you” before breakfast and twice after dinner. He thinks a thought, a hug or a phone call is quite enough. She loves elaborate gifts because she loves giving them. He couldn’t care less and is happiest writing her a personal poem - which, naturally, leaves her dissatisfied.   The trouble begins when these differences stop being differences and become permanent battle lines.   Some things have difficult solutions, of course. But when both people keep digging in their heels, they are simply creating a frontline. And then another dynamic kicks in: one starts feeling that they are always the one giving in. Isn’t that unfair?   So the heels go deeper. More arms are added to the frontline.   And then the inevitable happens. One person begins to feel that they are always giving more. The uncomfortable truth is that, in most relationships, there will be an imbalance of sorts. One person will take more decisions; another will be more involved in the home; one may handle more of the finances. And there will inevitably be moments when one person has to take the majority of the important family decisions. Like it or lump it, that’s often the nature of relationships - working or personal.   The unfairness begins when you start keeping score. When the relationship becomes a place to prove who gives more, who sacrifices more, or who is the boss.   It rarely ends well.   Counsellors would grow hungry if all of this were revealed early enough in a session. Because when all a person can see are the bad things in a relationship, they become completely blind to what drew them to each other in the first place.   And once that happens, the road to perdition is already well laid.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on broken hearts -  A Primer on How to Deal With (Being) Hurt When You Lose the Lover but Not the Love I Walk Alone (wishing you were beside me) Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Adventure by Alexander Nakarada Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/adventure Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Oh that delicious feeling of never getting out of bed. The battle within. Knowing that routine was king, and would win, because life is weaved around a framework, which urges disciple, and gives rewards, which are really life's gifts.   But once in a while, just sometimes, when the windows lay unopened, the curtains remain drawn, and the body pleads for respite, sometimes as a false alarm for rest, sometimes just for indulgence, sometimes as a mere call of indolence, we decide to give in. Without guilt. As a valid choice, as a happy choice without any value judgement.   Because life deserves the pause between moments, the lazy minute between two busy ones.   As our mind eases and slips into a peaceful penumbra, in that half-light of giving in, we, strangely, find answers to questions we might not have even asked. And we know, this is life too, that this too is important.   That between being busy and madness, this comma is the circlip which keeps us connected, springily, alive.   So - the world outside calls us into action, but for one brief morning we recognize that languor is just another way of belonging to the world.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the mornings of our lives -  Mother's Rambling Lessons on Life Imparted in Morning Walks Lovers in the Morning A Morning Ramble in How Love is Rediscovered at the Bottom of Rubble Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Liberty Quest by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Liberty-quest Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

I am forever left bemused with how unprepared we are to the inevitable. And I talk not only of deaths, but consequences. For every action, thought, word of ours pushes the engine of our existence and our world forward.   A dear friend always chastises me when I say something dire, even when it is in jest. He then rattles off five examples of things which went wrong because someone spoke of them - maybe even merely thought them!!   But the lesson is subtle - and a lesson for life. The very basic tenets of Buddhist and Jain philosophy talk of 'good words, good action, good thought'. It is not said as a cliche or lightly, it is a truth, even if it is oft-spoken, sometimes reflexively. Because a lot of sorrow which we gather in our lives is because of what is said to us, and what we say and immediately regret.   Alas, nothing valuable in life, once lost, is ever retrievable. There is an inevitability. And it's our bane in life to carry with us in all the days left.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on noticing and observing -  Marriage Made Me a Philosopher This Light Like Love On Death (if it happens to stop by) Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Imagefilm033 by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Imagefilm033 Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

We carry so many stories inside us, which keep dying small deaths. Nobody to narrate them, often lying in the dungeons of memory, sometimes forced there, often simply ignored.   So much of what we are, and why we are what we are, are these stories. But we are afraid to tell them, often even as they are happening. Because we don't have safe zones in our lives. People who will not start looking at us differently when they discover something contrary to what they see us as.   And we live these lives of half truths, or full lies, and navigate our days with beatific smiles which have nothing to do what is going inside us.   The caveat is that sometimes we unravel. We either let go physically and find our emotions overflowing or anorexic. Or our minds split due to stress and we are rendered untethered, a psychological shadow searching for its host.   But do all our truths deserve the sun? Wouldn't it be chaos if we lay ourselves out bare and naked? Is it better to be true and friendless or halfway there but a part of a culturally acceptable reality.   That is where it is critical that we seek and keep safe places, people with whom we can be our worst selves, and we would know they would still love us even when we make it really hard to love us.   Because this is so rare, that's why we have people becoming liars or simply collapsing in their internal stress.   The only solution is to live a true life, as close to one's proclivities as possible and let the world know about it. What is inside is then outside. Nothing more nothing less.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on stories we tell ourselves -  The Sublime in the Ordinary I Don't Think Poetry Will Save Us. And Yet, and Yet... Seasons as Consultations To Life Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Sehnsucht by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/sehnsucht Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

So many people in good jobs and thriving businesses, find out, some day or the other, that they have lost their way. And frittered away life by focusing incessantly on a living. On the promise of a something-promise, a glittering, a destination, a kind of a fulfilment. Of course it is. It is a pursuit, a dream of so many. And we are blessed for anything which brings us our daily bread.   But after that?   Every life has an inflection point. A point of giving in, giving up, looking in, or simply pausing. Of realizing. That having only one precious life is about putting everything at stake, if we don't do what needs to be done.   But here's the kicker. We know - and still get bound. To the machinery which is sold to us as our saviour, our meaning, our definition.  We are marketed other people's dreams to be our own. But what does one do? We have to live, we have to eat.   But there are always escapes. As slivers, as days, as nights, as time stolen so we could be with ourselves. With our baggage, our broken dreams, our imperfections - but always aware that if we are alive, we have a chance to find what seemed - almost seemed - lost.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on ways of living -  This Light Like Love The Love of an Ordinary Life A Child Mulling on Life Beside the Sea Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Yesteryear's Decision by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Yesteryear's_decision Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

I can never stop writing about how beautiful this world is and how much we shortchange it. As we drown in its inequities and issues, we lose focus of its true meaning and what it means to our lives.   Because to obsess about its warts, its slings-&-arrows, its knockdowns, is to lose track of why these come into our lives. Not to move away from them, not to brush them away or try to machine gun them out of our lives.  They exist to ensure we do. For us to recognize that they are all episodes, to help us realize what we are capable of  - just a few steps away from recognizing what the world has to offer.   And then we find that what surrounds us is a beauty which can leave us breathless. Everywhere. Inside a flower. In a touch. In the first sight of a loved one's face, the sound of her breathing.   And then we know why we are here, in this birth, in this world. To know how to find beauty. And immerse in it. And become as beautiful as we were always meant to be.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the grace of poetry and living -  Walking into the Morning's Wisdom This Light like Love Stealing Beauty Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Imagefilm 002 by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Imagefilm_002 Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

What do you fear the most? Ma went around the table asking each one to tell.   Son was quick off the bat - losing all of you. (Isn't that a given, wife said, misty-eyed, she held out her hand. Still doesn't stop being a disaster, he said, unless - you reach an age of 150, become batty like hell, and I have to go to god and say, you're having fun buddy eh? Isn't it time you took them up!)   Dad mulled a bit, his mind we could see, rushing through empty spaces, things he'd lost, with traces like comet tails, grabbing at what he could catch, things which glistened - he sighed - "to forget who you are as you look down at me as I take my last breath - to not know love or the ones I loved is to rob myself of the only treasure I can call my own." (We were all crying by now, and daughter said "this is a bad idea, I'm out" but mum held her arm  - hear this out dear, we are just being real, to know what haunts.)   I thought of life and what it meant, the love we give, the love we get, how we strive to make our breath count. "I just fear not having made a difference to the world, to you, to anyone, to take so much of this world's beauty, and not give something back - to be mistaken to be merely a taker, someone who merely wrote and then went to bed.   Wife was gazing out of the window, as the city twinkled back at her, a woman who thought deep, a face of a college girl, a soul as old as the world. "I can't bear to go before all of you, to not hear the changing inflections of your voice, to not see you beautiful with wrinkles, to not see you hold a child - or see the sun rise in your soul. I want to die a moment after you all take your last breath - not a second earlier."   We were quiet, just swallowed in the depth of what love could be.   Mum had two large tears shimmering on the surface of her eyes, a little smile which spelt sad - I fear not being on my own, to be the person who needs to always ask for help - the hand which helped so many now reaching out to steady a step - to lie helpless in a bed, gazing forlornly at a bedpan.   And daughter was weeping openly now - there's nothing I fear more than losing this - this - the way we open our hearts, and know our universe is here, what the world brings is advantages, there is no end to the purses and scarves I collect, but there will be an end to these voices, this touch, this look, but none to this love or the broken heart I will carry after you till the end of my life.   And we let the night pause a while, as we all held hands in an uneven circle, and let our breath be known, that we were alive, and this touch, this look, this smile, this passing moment, this colossal fear but our greatest joy.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on togetherness -  Assisted Suicide Living Tragedy Forward If I Commit Suicide Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Rising Sun by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Rising -Sun Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

For an agnostic, I'm pretty vigorous in my temple-hopping. I don't let go  even a single opportunity to visit a religious place. Earlier it was a visitation only if the temple was scenic (!) then I transitioned to "if it's accessible, I'm in".   Along the years I realized I could treat the Almighty as an ally -  often for resolution (success rate 50%), sometimes with a request for a miracle (largely ignored), more often than not just to unburden my heart, with whatever is haunting me at the time.   So now I seek chats with the Almighty. To sit down in front of him (or her) and go into soliloquies - the few conversations I can have without being disturbed! Or, as I found in Harmandir Sahib, to just sit and let the quietude and munificence of the lord's presence (there, the non-believer has said it) wash over me.   My mum says she can feel the same grace, when she is with her guru. She can talk, be listened to, not judged, and leave comforted.   Because in the best presences, we learn that meaning lies inside us. A benevolent lord or a good guru only helps us wipe the patina off and makes us see ourselves as the solution, as the wonderful beings we already are.   And that for me is miracle enough. Anyone - an almighty, guru, alien, coach, mentor, friend -  who helps me centre myself, and find the goodness and kindness I'm capable of, is a god for me.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on all things God -  In Search of a God I Have Often Thought About God Closer to Death.Nearer to God. Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Betonwaldromantik by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/betonwaldromantik Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Too many love stories are about a single self-love. One person's agenda determines the relationship. And a couple subsumes into a singularity without a merger. There are those who survive, through will, by finding a life outside the relationship, considering it fate, or by just adjusting expectations.   And the couple misses a significant beat.   Two people together have the opportunity to discover two universes, and make both their own. To discover the inner world of someone who you care for or who is your life partner is to discover their core, to become a special denizen in their world, to discover what thrills them, what terrifies them.   It's the privilege of a steady relationship.   Nothing in our lives happens automatically. Everything has to be earned. Relationships primarily and upfront are about sensitivity and awareness. It is work until it becomes second nature, a subsummation rather than a subjugation. And the couple changes forever. Because to know someone's guilty pleasures, to know what gladdens, gives tranquility, brings solace, is to recognize the best and worst of them. To dislike them once in a while but to never fall out of love with them.   The alternate is isolation, to be in front of riches and roam about in emotional penury; of having your flag bearer, your cheer-leader, your 3 am call, your staunch supporter, your potentially-forever fan, right beside you but transversing your life searching for him/her.   If that's not a tragedy, then what is?   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how we can be alone even when we are together -  Love's Night of the Long Knives On Breaking up (without breaking) Distances (Kaifi Azmi ke Liye) Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - The Way to Kataka by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/the-way-to-kataka Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Would things have been better if I had used different words? If I hadn't said what I did? If I hadn't done that, which in retrospect, seems short-term, short-sighted, short-everything. We realize mistakes, often whilst we are making them, often much after the deed is done and dusted, often only when we face the consequences. Anf sometimes not at all.   We are human. We are a cauldron of weaknesses and mistakes. And we learn to live with ourselves, sometimes with ease, often reluctantly. Because we don't know how to change. The strong-willed bear the pain, learn the lesson, maybe seek redemption, irrespective, move on.   But often this is easier said than done. And in relationships, it never is. There is never a clinical break. Memory ensures threads remain, thin, seemingly fragile, but embedded deep inside us, lingering, refusing to leave.   Which makes me realize the bigger point - we are never free of the wrong we do. Never. We are haunted in ways which we might never connect with the wrong done, but which come into our lives as echoes without a sound.   Our lack of self-awareness makes us seek strange solutions, when the real solution lies in change. Change in the way we think, the way we conduct our lives, our behaviour, our attitude, our requirement for kindness, of accepting our fallibility, of realizing our arrogance.   And because it rarely happens, we have to stew in the heat of our misdeeds.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on loss and remembrance -  Memories of Peppermint Mocha Let Me Sit Beside You Quietly On Death (if it happens to stop by) Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - About Moments by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/about-moments Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Human beings. Our blessed lives, this gracious breath, this universe. And then the small infractions blown out of proportion, the disputes, the ego play. Human beings doing what they do best - destroy what's good.    And then men & women with their particularities starting to chip away at the very foundation on which their worth and purpose and joy is built on - the people they love. Simplicity is never the preferred choice. Power, ego, insistences. Relationships become a web. To capture, enrapture, to keep, to not let freedom find its course.   A word, a tone, a brusque denial. Sometimes the smallest infractions make the deepest holes. And then a refusal to acknowledge, reluctance to seek understanding, an alacrity to come to conclusions - to not forget, to hold onto hurts. The refusal to heal as memory teases ego.   Men are boorish, physically, in nature - often just as a masculine cover for uncertainty. Women too are boorish - as they instinctively understand the chinks in their males and find ways to control - stooping cleverly, as it were, to conquer.   Nobody makes a mess like human beings - indeed, they conjure new ways to hurt, blame, destabilise, destroy. They wallow in self-pity, hit out viciously when encountering emotional cul-de-sacs, not realizing that when they maim, they hurt themselves too and become equal victims.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on marriage and its complexities -  The Games of Thrones We Play With Ourselves Marriage Made Me a Philosopher A Love Letter From a Frustrated Husband to an Exasperated Wife Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]

Darkness slips into every life. But it is upto us to allow it to slip into us. Except for lives marred with extreme deprivation and choicelessness, each one of us has the power to give direction to our destinies.   Mystery enters our lives after determinations.   But if we die every day, there is only so much of a safety net life can provide us. Death wishes are not looked upon kindly by the universe. Be pessimistic but not fatalistic. Dire predictions are subliminal messages which find their truths in unexpected ways. Hence the adage "Don't talk about it, if you don't want it to come true."   Relationships are a strange configuration of entanglement provided by nature. They have to be anchored and shored and propped and protected on a daily basis. 'Giving up' is a germ which multiplies prodigiously. Just as every thought is not a truth, neither is every feeling a finality.   The problem with us is that we take our own internal conversations too seriously. We are wrong, very often wrong. But consider our feelings to be repositories of final truths. We scarcely realize it but the biggest bane of our lives is is the lazy and prescriptive nature of our hearts and minds.   The very moment we realize that every morning is new, and in a thousand ways, new as a new beginning for relationships, for life, for decisions, we would have repurposed our lives into something which comes alive with the crack of dawn, and repurposed into something precious.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on life's vicissitudes adn life's trajectories -  Where We Start & Where We End Marriage Made Me a Philosopher Naked, My Love Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - This World Instrumental by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/this-world-instrumental Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

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 biggest strengths. Because embedded in the tales of heartbreak and horror were also the ordinary unsung stories of resilience and recognition.   Confronting the fragility of life helped repair relations by engendering conversations. As we sat in front of our worst fears, we realized the preciousness of what we already had and how we could lose it all in the blink of an eye.   Conversations were had, bitterness poured out, regrets laid out gently on the table: love was kindled, babies were made. For those who survived, it was rejuvenation, often resurrection, of what was secretly moribund inside.   Sharing of chores became a symbol of how people came together, for days on end. There were conversations had of deaths, of what will be missed, of what had gone right between people, and what they loved about each other.   When you are in an enclosed space for months on end, when life itself is uncertain, what we consider as bad suddenly seems inconsequential, and what floods our hearts are the things we would miss about each other.   Passion for work transcended to become love for each other which in turn became a worship of life.   And in strange ways we were, for that brief, oh too brief, time, better for having confronted, and seen at close quarters, mortality itself.   If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on confronting life -  Let Me Sit Beside You, Quietly Memories of Peppermint Mocha When You Lose the Lover, But Not the Love Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts' Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup. Get in touch with me on [email protected]   The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Odyssee by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Odyssee Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-licens