Uncut Poetry

Love can be pretty unrelenting. It's turgidity and its persistence can be intimidating to people who see it collapsing under its own weight and can't understand how it is still standing strong. People in love can separate without disengagement but equally they can continue loving with separation.
 
Anything anchored in emotion has moorings which may seem fragile but are often unrelenting. Nobody knows inner stories, of holding on to ties, of despair and of not giving up. Logic falls by the wayside.
 
Trouble starts when reconciliations are compromised without addressing the cause, the core of what eats away at the soul.
 
What draws people to each other is either what resonates or the things they miss in themselves. It's only later that the true differences of nature and thought get revealed. The sunken body of the iceberg can then be seen. And it is not always pleasant, and it often rests against the very grain of what the other stands for.
 
The true challenge of love starts there.
 
Because ignoring what haunts is to let our inner turmoil and resistance and unwilling consent keep eating the foundation like termite, even as the newly-painted facade of coupledom glistens in public glow.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on ways of the resilience of love - 

Marriage Made Me a Philosopher

The Long Now of Us

It Takes Time for Love to Find Comfort

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Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.

Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -

Imagefilm15 by Sascha Ende

Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Imagefilm15
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

I love this poem because it condenses the thoughts which partners who separate from each other might have of the other.
 
It's subtle, often the first flush of love, often the first separation. When you know the highs of love, but have not known how the valleys are to be navigated: and you think the first bump, the first infraction, a fight, a being-away-from-one's-sight could actually be enough cause for anything-to-happen.
 
We are in a tumult of love and have not reached its calm yet. And every ripple on its surface makes us question its depth.
 
That's why it often takes years of togetherness and a multitude of experiences for people to figure out the truth of their relationships. I will never forget the film where a happy family is holidaying in the Alps, and then there is an avalanche, the man runs away rapidly without thought of his wife or kids. I think even more then the wife it was the husband who surprised himself with his action. Because the truth is - as always - when things happen, it reveals more about us as individuals than of the state of our union.
 
If it always has been a facade, a relationship is bound to collapse under its weight. If it's a mutual revelation, it's time for reflection (of course), but also reexamination, recalibration, redemption or / and repentance.
 
It's ironical that a couple which is together for eternity often finds is bonds brittle enough to not even withstand the most basic onslaught on its foundation.
 
What ensues - whatever form it might take - is not a tragedy but a realization. Depths then are discovered as profundity or merely as depthless crevasses.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the progression of love - 

Love's Night of the Long Knives 

Love (after the stories are told)

I Love You

Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'

Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.

Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
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

Summers in Kolkata slide rather than blister, which is what happens when I visit Jhunjhunu. Both are experiences. There's no hiding place here because the humidity is omnipresent - but a shaded tree is enough to save you from the dry heat in Rajasthan. And then I go to a Delhi - where nothing can save you except an airconditioned room, because what does not melt you burns you down.
 
There's very little that's romantic about an Indian summer, except for a strange immersion. Much more than an attitude of mind-over-matter, it is an alignment which can save you - of deciding not to escape but just to be one with what the universe offers. It's surprising how quickly our bodies can get distracted from discomfort.
 
The important thing is to be alone in this battle inside, so we are not influenced by the opinions and incessant cribbing of others. And since this seeps into other things, I'm very careful about whom I go out for all experiences. Then I have the luxury of my flawed reactions - to let my emotions flow untouched by anything other than my own proclivities and prejudices.
 
I cannot overstate the pleasure of letting a morning sweep over us with all its intimations of fresh possibilities. Possibly nothing has changed in life's continuum, but there is still an incredible sense of renewal which can only sweep over us if we are alone with our feelings, untouched by anybody else's aura.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the magic of mornings - 

A Morning Ramble on How Love is Rediscovered at the Bottom of 

Mother's Ramble 

Sipping Tea in a Rumi Morning

Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'

Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.

Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
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

This is a repeat of one of my more popular poems, replayed here with a hope of getting a new audience, who might have missed it.
 
A colleague committed suicide today. 7 am. He woke up early, took a bath, did his pujo, and then hung himself from a fan. His wife discovered him when she didn't see him in the pujo ghar.
 
I'd met him the day before getting into office, and asked him how he was doing. He was cheerful. I asked him to drop by for a cup of coffee. Another colleague did two meetings with him. Another one said good bye to him at 7 in the evening. Just another ordinary day.
 
Last year his wife had come to me with their son and talked of how there was something which had snapped inside him. He wanted to resign. There was immense pressure, and he had an unsympathetic and cruel boss, who went unrelentingly after him. It was often ugly. And the pressure was getting to him. And he was doing frightened office-talk even in his sleep.
 
I and my HR colleague got him aligned with a good psychiatrist. And in a few months, he was as near normal as possible.
 
Till today.
 
Do we all have breaking points? However strong we might think we are. That point where our heart breaks and our mind splits. And a strange duality emerges, of moving ordinarily in an ordinary life, but carrying a soul in turmoil.
 
Didn't he have anybody he could talk to - with full vulnerability, unfettered by judgement? What was that last thought, before he took that decisive step? Didn't he think of the wreckage he would leave behind?
 
Is suicide then, intrinsically, a sad amalgam of despair and selfishness?
 
But more than anything, I'm angry at bosses who let go without constraint on hapless subordinates, without the sensitivity of the overwhelming effect their position has on those whose livelihood depends on them.
 
I only wish I had stopped for that coffee when I'd met him. Maybe he would have opened up. Maybe things would have been different.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on ways of dying - 

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 uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -

Lonesome by Sascha Ende

Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/Lonesome
Licence:  https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

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

Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'

Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.

Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
 
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