Uncut Poetry

A home is a person.
 
I think I realized this a long time back. I loved all the homes I've stayed with my parents. Every time my dad changed jobs, and consequently cities and homes. And then in his final assignment in pristine Tribeni, on the outskirts of Calcutta, he kept getting promotions and we kept changing homes. The last one was a colonial bungalow with an acre worth of gardens, and a view from the terrace of the river. It faced west, and I've witnessed the best sunsets of the world while tucked into a comfortable wicker chair, a cuppa tea in my hand, just watching the skies change colours through a thousand shades in front of my eyes.
 
My mum has innate artistry, and in her heydays kept our homes immaculately appointed. The art and artifacts she'd picked up from her travels was displayed with an innante sense of aesthetics. Everything was squeaky clean and there was hell to pay if anything was found askew or a smite missed whilst dusting. 
 
And then I visited homes of some of my best friends. Messy, stuff thrown all over randomly, kitschy stuff fighting for attention with expensive mantelpieces, odours wafting from the kitchen. We could loll on the sofa, run in the drawing room and use any chair as wickets for an indoor match of cricket. And nobody cared when the balls hit frames and marks were left on the wall. This was lived-in, this was fun, and very quickly became the final definition for me of a home!
 
I could sense the strange dichotomy I could not understand at a subliminal level. I was too young. So I spoke to my mum about it. How it was such fun being in that auburn disheveled house, and I could be 'myself', whatever that meant at that age. And in our house,  there were so many rules - everything was restricted - running, throwing, jumping, shouting.
 
She was silent for a bit, and then smiled and said. "Done. Go ahead. Do whatever you feel like. No issues." And gave me a hug.
 
I was ultra-excited and invited all my friends home for the next raucous bout of indoor cricket. My friend entered the drawing room where I had shifted the sofa sets and the center table to create the 'pitch'. He looked around with his mouth open, in absolute awe, and then said something which turned everything upside down in my head. "Dekh, tera ghar mandir hai. Yahan baith kar shanti milti hai. Khelne ki doosri jagah hai na, mera ghar hai na. Yahan baith ke kitna acha lagta hai." ("Hey listen, your home is a temple. There is so much serenity here. There are other places to play, why play here? Let's sit down, I just feel doing that.")
 
And I understood. Homes were people, their personalities, their beings, their inner selves finding expression on the walls, the decor, the sheets, the furniture, the conduct.
 
And that was the day I learnt to immerse myself in all the homes I visited. Because the people I loved were as much their homes as they were the people I dearly loved. They were inseparable.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the places we find homes - 

A Home as an Open Dream

Finally Home

As We Meet at the End of The Day

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The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -

A Sad Toy Story by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/a-sad-toy-story

Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

We complicate relationships because we deny simplicity or simple ways of loving or - maybe - the simple solutions to complex things.
 
Every relationship starts with a clean slate. Pure, unencumbered. Then it gets layered. One incident at a time, one feeling expressed at a time, and often (more vitally), one feeling unexpressed at a time.
 
And the grooves get cut and get deeper, sharper, as the unresolved creates acid and bile and sarcasm and anger. Love doesn't disappear, it gets buried deeper and deeper into crevasses which can't be seen, brought out when needed, indeed, often forgotten but embedded as bitter nature.
 
The tragedy is not that it happenes. We are humans. We have mind-fades, we are fools, we have unreasonable expectations. That is our charm and our curse. We never see a good thing for what it is, we take what is good for granted, we mess up, big time.
Unfortunately realization is slow, redemption is complex. Until it is not.
 
We stop making statements and start asking questions. We stop having expectations, and see the beauty of what exists. We stop comparing and fall in love again with what we had fallen in love with in the first place.
 
And we allow each other to grow into our inner beauty - by making it easy and pellucid and non-judgemental. We begin by believing that the worst he does is not personal. We begin by realizing that you are not the center of his very existence, and neither is he of yours. You are moon and the Venus - maybe Neptune also - but definitely not the solar system. Because we have needs beyond each other  - she could have a travel best friend, he could have a coffee best friend, another who he loves gossiping with, another with whom he discusses office politics.
 
That's why we are in this world, that's why we have the bounty of so many people in our lives. They all add something and make us complete and fulfilled and beautiful.
 
Neither of us has the right to deny that freedom to the other.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on relationships and how we navigate them - 

The Space Between Our Words

The Ironies of Love

Marriage Made Me a Philosopher

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

To awaken every morning is to reward oneself.
 
The day is desperate for us to discover it, to unravel its mysteries and find its surprises.
We do not have to fly or be special. We merely need to be excited.
 
Then we can see birds with new eyes, and feel the air on our skin. We can sit quietly, sip a cup, gaze out of the window, and know this is what it is to be alive.
 
An ordinary life.
 
Many things could happen, maybe nothing. We might go to office, a normal walk in the park, or spend time with a friend. Or maybe fall in love. It could all happen just now.
All this in one mere life.
 
To see the universe in the very fact of our own day. To know that things pass even as they happen. 
 
To know we can be anybody, anywhere, anytime, and find ourselves to be sundrop and stardust and moonglow.
 
All in one solitary life of breaths.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how life is richer if it is slowed down- 

I Like the Ordinary Life

I Have Been Thinking of Life Again

Stealing Beauty

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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 -

Motivational soft piano meets cello by Horst Hoffman

Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/motivational-soft-piano-meets-cello

Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

There's so much in this world to be unhappy about. The reasons are endless. And we can fallow in the silky self-indulgence of not being in control and letting circumstances take their toll on us.
 
It's an irony of humankind that in the positioning of action and result, we bring in destiny as a critical component, and instead of letting it be a possible catalyst, we seek to substitute action with it. By further combining it with religious suppositions, we give laziness an exalted position.
 
And lose out on life.
 
We face life with slumped shoulders - and a severe indulgence in self-pity. We go to temples to first cajole god, then bribe the poor unsuspecting deity, and finally to confront and demand.
 
We seek to find happiness as if it's a commodity waiting to be excavated and distributed - as if it is  in short supply hence rationed by celestial diktat.
 
In all these years if I have learnt anything it is the simple challenge which life throws at each one of us - to use it to the hilt, to challenge it, to confront it, to squeeze it of its last giving life-affirming juice.
 
We are the stewards and guardians of our own destiny. Only after we've done our work does the magic of any stardust - which we often mistake as god's indulgence - falls on us.

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the trajectories life takes  - 

On Falling and Failing

Lemonade at the End of a Buzzing Day

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 -

Last Breath at Dusk by Sunil B
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/last -breath-at-dusk

Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Don't we all know people who are gold - talented, beautiful, attractive - but who deep inside are uncertain about themselves. They doubt their abilities, and for ever (and ever) they look at every decision they take with trepidation, and consider themselves inadequate. And nothing one says to them, nothing, convinces them that they are talented and just fine the way they are.
 
Until something magical happens. Maybe a poem, maybe a person with insight, maybe a sentence, maybe a song, an art piece - anything which splits something open inside them, and lets out the feelings lying prisoner.
 
They are able to again look at the mirror and see themselves afresh, not with disgust or inadequacy, but as someone just right, just right to fit into the skin they inhabit, gorgeous because they are flawed, and happy to be who they are.
 
Is this transformation easy? No. Will it happen in a jiffy? Possibly not.
 
But when the touch of alchemy comes by, in whatever form, and whatever length of time it might take, it could transform the person. And then it is a resurrection, a rekindling, a reawakening.
 
And the gold always discernible to others, is the person they recognize as themselves.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how we blossom into the person we truly are - 

Lemonade at the End of a Buzzing Day

I Have Watched You Make the Ordinary Holy

When We Know Love as Found

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 -

Oil by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/oil

Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license