Uncut Poetry

There is nothing worse than politics dividing family. I have seen people develop distaste for their dearest and closest because of being on opposite sides of the political divide. Something which is (mere) belief, takes on an expanded definition to include a commentary on character, and acts as an unsubstantiated and unsavoury revelation. And with astonishment we exclaim “What! Y

We live multiple lives. Each one of us have variations, but everyday our paths fork out. And we move from the secure to the stormy; from standing naked to being armoured; from garnering the blessings of the universe to ploughing through the detritus of the denizery. Often we are able to navigate this transition in the simplest way possible - we remain the same in every world, raw a

They say, in actuality, there are only two kinds of people in the world - fighters and survivors. I have often thought about this grim prognosis of life, and without attributing anything dire to it, I really think it is close to truth. In seeking acceptances, we often have to struggle with the true us and the version the world wants to see. Because we are first a subset of a larger

I went to Varanasi a few weeks back, and spent time wandering the lanes, in temples, on the ghats, sitting beside the river. I was a non-sequitur: a non-believer in a holy city, amidst people who had the name of god continuously on their lips. And I saw holiness and ordinariness mesh in seamless ways. Almost like a message that a spiritual search did not entail you to be anything o

Whenever I see couples getting hitched, I say a silent prayer of thankfulness. Because every day the couple has a ringside view of each other, of things which they say and do. They crack a small joke, they fulfil small wishes, they stop someone from stumbling, they secretly make someone’s favourite dish,they listen with their bodies, they stand beside the window and see the morni

We are such carriers of burdens. We have nothing to lose, but we carry the weight of such unnecessities. In the end, irrespective of what the Pharaohs believed, we have to leave everything behind. Which then probably is the only time we truly travel light. But here we are - seducing, desiring, acquiring - and if not for things, we are busy burdening ourselves with myriad feelings,

So much of the good we have, things we are proud of, our looks, our most innate traits, are in truth merely gifts. They are an inheritance in our blood, nature’s largesse for us to build on. But what we become is a factor of what we do with what we are given. We can hold these gifts as talisman, to seek the good beyond them, to figure out our dharma, the very core of why we are i

So much of what we are is because of abandonment. Often as reality, often as feeling. We talk but we don’t get through. Our silences are many, none find a resolution. Our words come out with warm intent, but when conjoined sound harsh. We love to death the very person we find the most fault with. But in this morass of disintegrating hope, we are firm on continuums. We are not rea

This is a repeat of one of my more popular poems, replayed with the hope of getting a new audience, who might have missed it. "We walk under boughs heavy with fragrance, petals touching our cheeks with infinitesimal tenderness, and think back to how meaningless was what we’d said. In a universe of a million possibilities, we could be a certainty, but we suffered our uncertain ine

It’s one of the ironies of life that relationships which have persisted for years, often have hesitation built into their fibre. You know everything of each other, but are still not sure of your place in their lives. The important thing which keeps haunting you is - what do both of you mean to each other. You say the things which you have been saying for years, she reacts the way