Uncut Poetry Sunil Bhandari

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 expectation before we start to even begin to be our own person.
 
The corollary to this is often the complete abdication of lives. Most often to parents, soon enough to partners - husbands, lovers. We are first loved for what we are, and then are given a larger acceptance only if we confirm to their idea of us. If we waver from there, try to become something which is truly us, if we protest, we have to face consequences. It could start from emotional appeal, transcend to consequences, end in incarcerations of all kinds.
 
We often seek refuge, escapes; clutch at straws, good hearts; and find ourselves giving into patterns. One prison for another, as it were. Unconsciously we build shackles inside of us. Without realising we have become our own prisoners. Which becomes difficult to break out of.
 
There IS redemption. Alas, it comes with a high price - shame, isolation, death. Often even unconditional love is not enough, as it it riddled with complex past archetypes, windmills of the confounded mind, as it were. We are finally of ourselves, suicidally jettisoning this one wondrous life.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems talking about our relationship with parents - 
My Mother is Full of Water and Ready for Sonography
Mother's Rambling Lessons on Life Imparted in Morning Walks in my Childhood
Tea-a-Tete with Mum & Dad

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 -
Yesteryears (DECISION) by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/244-yesteryears-decisionLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

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 other than what you are - messy, complex, confused. Because that is where every journey begins.
 
Varanasi is special because unlike other holy cities - Vrindavan, Assisi, Ujjain, Vatican - it is not a mere destination - it is the beginning of a journey. That’s why it’s co-existence as a city of chaos and one of silences, gives it a sense of transcendence.
 
Because that is what, if you really think about it, true religion is all about. It starts with belief, not cynicism; it has intimations of doubt, bouts of questions, dollops of scientific inquiries. And the only reason a person persists is because she knows there are too many questions which the normal human experience cannot answer. And in the space of the unexplainable, we find what seems like the miraculous. We can accept it as grace, and move in our lives with a sense of utmost gratefulness. Or we can give it a name. God. The Unexplained. Mystery. Maybe - mother.
 
In whatever way we find the Unknown, Varanasi is an immersion. With or without the holy dip.  It will never leave you unaffected, unmoved or unscathed. Varanasi will hurt you - even as it holds you, heals you, makes you its own.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of the holy - 
Windblown Om
Capturing the Feeling
When the Goddesses Depart

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 -
Lockdown by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/7658-lockdownLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
 
Strange New Worlds by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10369-strange-new-worldsLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

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 morning sun drop on the floor.
 
We all need someone in our lives who can see us for what we are, way beyond what the world sees us, as someone made of greatness and grime, someone who is beautiful and ugly at the same time. Someone who sees us as selfish and doesn’t turn away, someone who recognises the smallest gesture as generosity and embraces us for that.
 
To be ready to be a couple is to be with each other, through the massive and the minute, to know we can be huge in tumult and small in celebration, and still not turn away, because we have promised to take each other as we are. To know that we have the capability to accept  way beyond what we can dream of.
 
Because we are privileged to be the witnesses of the lives our lovers lead.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of love as a thing to be witnessed - 
Coming to Your Side of the Bed
Letting Go (because I'm alive)
The Things We Become When We Leave

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 -
Sensitive Cinematic Romantic by Musiclfiles

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, emotions which we should have experienced and moved on from, felt and unfelt, tasted, remembered and then forgotten.
 
But such is our blind-sightedness for immortality, our instinct to persevere and our desire of acquiescence, that we give the halo of permanence to the things which are most ephemeral. And therein lies the deepest cut. Because much more dangerous than the quicksand of useless acquisitions is the accumulation of feelings. And how little do we know how to handle those.
 
It is never our passage through emotions that is deleterious, it is our staying in those emotions which creates havoc. Because that’s when we ponder and speculate and conjure - and invariably think of the worst.  Much more than the action which precipitates our feelings, it is our continual analysis which brings about fractures in relationships.
 
We have to learn to live through passing storms of ties, be swirled, tossed around, battered, but then to survive and move back into the warmth of our mutual sanctuaries.
 
If we realise that it is in the nature of things that they don’t last, we would be less hard on ourselves or others. 
 
If we stop being conscious of the world and learn to revel in the quixotic quirkiness of our beings, and learn to laugh at and laugh about it, we would have found the core of life’s mysteries. Laugh and move on.
 
There would be no need to go to another realm to find ourselves.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on things we gather and those that we leave - 
Balancing Beginnings
Yearning (and other things we carry in the journey)
Gather Me

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 -
Liberty Quest by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/293-liberty-questLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

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 in this world. Or we can just let them define us in shallow ways, as we work behind the facade, building our dynasty of desire.
 
I am just glad to be part of a family which is both my biggest cheerleader and the sternest rapper of knuckles possible.
 
Our strictest teachers are the ones who love us the most. The ones who hammer into us where we’ve gone astray are the ones who cry and pray for us in the silence of the night.
 
I am blessed to be born to the parents I have. Not that he has much choice, but I hope my son looks back to me some day and feels the same thing.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how kindness changes lives - 
Maybe, a little kindness
What I Miss is the Tender Moment
The Grace That We Give

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 -
Francescas Story by Sascha EndeFree download: https://filmmusic.io/song/2981-francescas-storyLicense (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

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 ready to give up. Because we know things change, people change. And no season is permanent.
 
And such do relationships survive.
 
And often, very often, they find their equilibrium. Not so much as a reconciliation, which is often there, but as an understanding. Beyond the spontaneity of an outburst, or the harshness of a habitual word, one recognises the heart, well hidden though it might be. And then everything is forgiven.
 
But there are times when such understandings do not emerge. And that’s when two good people are found to be excavating the worst of themselves: in relationships people discover the depths of depravity or dismay or disillusionment that they can reach.
 
Alas, that is what then defines us as people - everything else is forgotten.
 
Even if we move to the other side of the bed, we find it empty.
 

If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems which talk of the complex rhythms of relationships - 
Tracing Shadows on Your Back
Letting Go (because I'm alive)
Of love (& other bouts of sadness)

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 -
Good men do bad things by Phat Sounds
Shadows of Autumn full version by Musiclfiles