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  • The Lives of Others

    The Lives of Others
    Jan 24 2026
    We have to step out of our lives to see what is in the great beyond. Often just outside our gated communities are worlds we know nothing of, lives being lived in ways which we cannot conceive of. Rich, varied, textured, tumultuous. Often beautiful because they are unfiltered and often bleed; frightening because they are so raw. When we encounter these lives, these stories, we are aghast at their truths and trajectories. They are so rich in their lived-in textures that our own lives seem bland and empty. That's why I love talking to strangers. For their tales and their lives. Each person is a universe, a cornucopia of dreams and desires, often of unrelenting courage, often of failure, anguish and hope. We are woven together through our common place on earth. However much we might think ourselves as special, we are purveyors of the same resources, prisoners to the same gravities, trying to make our lives out of what we have been bequeathed, trying to make more out of what we've got. And when we do this interaction, we are twice blessed - one, when we give the grace of understanding the other, and when we lay ourselves open and vulnerable with own stories. We all want to do well. We all want to do better. But when someone shares tales and hope with us, we are part of the same family of humankind. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how a life is made of so many beautiful things -
    • Lemonade at the End of a Buzzing Day
    • Just Be Air
    • Stealing Beauty

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    Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com The details of the music used in this episode are as follows - Winterland by Frank Schroeter Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/winterland Licence: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
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    4 Min.
  • The Space Between Our Words

    The Space Between Our Words
    Jan 17 2026
    Why don't we have honest conversations with the ones we love the most? Why don't we listen - really listen - without comments, without reply, without retort - when they attempt to tell us what hurts, where it hurts, and how the hurt devastates them. So much of the pain we cause, and we feel, is avoidable. Not because we don't tell enough - but because we don't listen enough. The smallest of things becomes intractable, our understanding of what things mean have no relationship to what it actually meant. We don't clarify, we conclude, and are damned for it. Bridges which connect love become chasms, and we stand at both ends and wonder - what happened, how did two beautiful people find their worst selves in the relationship which mattered the most. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the dissonance in relationships -
    • A Love Letter from a Frustrated Husband to an Exasperated wife
    • A Primer on How to Deal With (Being) Hurt
    • Lovers Who Synchronise (& those who don't)

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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 - Sehnsucht by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/sehnsucht Licence: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
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    4 Min.
  • A Poem as a Gift for a Girl With No Confidence in Herself

    A Poem as a Gift for a Girl With No Confidence in Herself
    Jan 10 2026
    Poems have a way of showing truths and making us recognize what we are often blind to - that the best we have is adequate and the worst we think we are can also be beautiful. There is so much we lose out to life because of our fears - of what we think we are, of what others might think we are, of what the world thinks when we fail. The sad truth is - nobody cares. Everybody is immersed in their own stories, and beyond a flurry of gossip, have scarcely any mind space for anybody else. Only the ones who care for us, are the ones who feel for us, in ways which are genuine and true and beautiful. And when they hold us close, in spite (and often because) of what we are, we become the beauty they see in us, we are rendered marvellous, we see the infinite in ourselves because that is the core of us - the boundless possibility, the opening of a flower inside us, the feeling of being with the divine, of being blessed. And all because someone found us worthy of time, of attention. Of a sliver of love. Maybe a poem. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how we blossom into the person we should be -
    • Lemonade at the End of a Buzzing Day
    • I Have Watched You Make the Ordinary Holy
    • When We Know Love as Found

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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 - Feelings 2 by Frank Schroeter Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/feelings-2 Licence: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
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    4 Min.
  • I Think I Can Be An Adventure With You

    I Think I Can Be An Adventure With You
    Jan 3 2026
    As new year eves crack our worlds open into two - a past and a future - albeit as tenuous in concept as they come, deep inside we know the celebrations - like those we do for birthdays - is just messaging of mortality for all things we hold dear. And embedded within that reality is our realization that the experiences and relationships we live and seek and want to linger in are what sustains and gives meaning to our breath, the limited number that we have. The songs we hear together, the storms we take shelter from, the books we cry together to, the traumas we live together through. Life's fullness manifests itself in our life through our shared experiences. Moments ripen into full fruits when we experience them as summer, letting its warmth flood us into sweet submission. Our lives our only half of their possibility if we consider the indulgences which enrich our lives as ordinary. Or things in passing. The kisses we steal, the hands we hold in the dark, the crook of our arms we give for rest, are more precious to remembrance when we look back than any tinsel star or success in passing. Public adulation is the worst. It engulfs us without redemption, leaving us hungrier for being there, and empty when it passes away. I'm quite sure god lives his life through what we do. And I think the sensory is what he would remember, the unexpected adventure, the advent of serenity because we chose to do nothing one winter morning but sit with our ageing father to look out onto the changing skies. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the beauty of things pass -
    • When I Hear The Whistle of a Passing Train
    • One Summer
    • Rediscovering Heaven

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    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 Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/liberty-quest Licence: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
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    5 Min.
  • Stealing Beauty

    Stealing Beauty
    Dec 27 2025
    We are privileged enough to linger in beauty without thinking of livelihood. We spend time with the skies, linger over petunias, chrysanthemums, dahlias and marigolds as they burst in exuberance, watch a frog jump onto a lotus leaf, spend a day in Givenchy, go rapturous over a Zaha Hadid design, go pensive over a Selma poem, linger over a drying leaf in the walking path, bite slowly into the sumptuous juiciness of an Alfonso, spend a day reading a Ludlum, just sit in the winter sun. I am blessed to have a mother who read poetry to me in childhood, and still points out passages which linger. My legacy to my boy, and to those who spend time with me, has always been to point out, read with, talk about the riches strewn all over our universe, things which make life worth living. Going high on a swing, playing cricket in the burnished neighbourhood field, hang on the balustrade of a verandah as we see the summer sun throw a million colours into the lakes beside our house. When we travel, we do so in beauty. Van Goghs we love, local Banksys, rapturous sunrises we travel miles to see, music concerts we see from the fan pit, ruins whose stories we listen with rapt attention, theatre we see, discuss and then discuss again. And the poetry and the books, which are sewn into the fabric of our breath. And the people, our people we love and refuse to take for granted, the people who we don't know but who are all universes in themselves. All who can be portals, gurus, path seekers or companions. These are the ones who make all the difference in our search for what is most precious to the sublime thing called life. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on beauty we find in our worlds -
    • Rediscovering Heaven
    • When We Were One With The Stars
    • Kintsugi

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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 - You & Me Forever by Musiclfiles Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/you-&-me-forever Licence: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
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    5 Min.
  • A Love Letter from a Frustrated Husband to an Exasperated Wife

    A Love Letter from a Frustrated Husband to an Exasperated Wife
    Dec 20 2025
    Darling, make no mistake. There's so much of you I crave and care for. My morning gratitude wishes are of you, whatever nightmare you might have put me through a sweaty night. I've learnt the hard way that married life is less a game of naughts and crosses, and more of remembrances and erasures. Because the burden of memory in a marriage is Krishna's Butterball rock in Mahabalipura, balancing on a point. But, gosh, how much you can cry. Tears are your inbuilt bazookas. And your hysteria is no match to the desperation in my rising voice. And we find reason jettisoned, and notion & conjecture reigning. We become our speculation of each other. We make each other the worst versions of ourselves. You want primacy - to both have the headlights shine on you - and be the headlamp. And I acknowledge it - the moment you see the softness in my eyes and I slip my hand in yours, it's me feeling gushy inside. You have my heart, my fealty, my side, my air, my breath. And then you start off on what's wrong. The fantasy of what's wrong. The perception, the illusion. And I am gobsmacked. What is the genesis of it all? Here we were, happy, sentimental, beautiful together. And then - bam! - the genefluction. What is the genesis of this reverse alchemy? Golden evenings descend into ironic discussions on you not being acknowledged enough; stellar afternoons drift into brassy discussions of how I fall short on your parameters: you clearly remember everything I've done wrong, not the effort I've put in to be the imperfect but hardworking lover. And then I ask - why are we together? What are we doing with each other if we can't be wild roses in our most intimate moments, when I have to hold back afraid of what you'd think, when our conversation is of need and not comfort. When you don't believe me, and I can't ever know why you don't. When all that we are and all that we need, alas, are different things, where, pray tell me, where is our meeting point? Where do we go, my love, where do we go from here? If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the frustrations of love -
    • I Should Have Loved More Wisely (they say)
    • Love's Night of the Long Knives
    • Distances (Kaifi Azmi ke liye)

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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 - Bells of the Burguoise by Tim Kulig Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/bells-of-the-burguoise Licence: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
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    5 Min.
  • Let There Be Fewer Stories This Winter

    Let There Be Fewer Stories This Winter
    Dec 13 2025
    Summer makes me light and present. The monsoon pulls me into its flood of feelings. Autumn turns me inward—part stranger, part seeker. But winter is where I truly awaken. In its drifting mists and sudden shafts of light, old emotions unseal themselves; warmth rises gently from the cold. My mind clears, my questions deepen, and I feel myself walking through unseen passages within. I’m reminded that we are rarely as flawed as we imagine, our circumstances rarely as dire as our stories insist. The world is as complex or as ordinary as we choose to make it. Life’s puzzles soften when we stay still enough to let them simply pass through. Perhaps that is why winter feels philosophical: it offers haze and clarity, cold and warmth, the riddle and its meaning. It asks for no quick truths—yet reveals them when I step back into the open. Winter is what you make of it: always misty, always beautiful, always ready to lift its veils for you If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the the way seasons change -
    • Those Days of a Lost Summer
    • The Passing of Autumn
    • The Slant of the Winter Sun

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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 - Village Ambience by Alexander Nakarada Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/village-ambience Licence: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
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    4 Min.
  • Going Home

    Going Home
    Dec 6 2025
    We are such fools, we are, knowing all about inevitabilities, but never (ever) prepared for them. We will lose loved ones, they will die, some in their prime, some before they would have discovered their worth, some even as they burned themselves on both ends. Such is the life of denial we live. Refusing to acknowledge what we know as truth in the deepest fibre of our beings. And when the end does come, as of course it will, we are emotionally, spiritually, illogically, found wanting, found unprepared, found broken. We refuse to acknowledge the known, and the known's blow lands on us like a bludgeon. And we are broken into smithereens. When, if we had faced unto the reality of situations, we would have moulded our time, our priorities in elegant and deep engagements, which would have brought in a final grace in the ones we love to bits. Because often, only too often, we have to let go - of those we love, of those we hold on too tightly to - because in that release, we are also freeing ourselves from the burden of living on, of being the one alive, of the guilt of destiny, of the luck of having some more breaths left. The action of letting go is often the very action which gives us permission to live on. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the ways death finds us -
    • What Do I Leave Behind?
    • An Epitaph of Light & Air
    • Chemo: As I Battle Myself

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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 - Clean Soul by Kevin Macleod Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/clean-soul Licence: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
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    5 Min.