So much of what we are is the amalgam of hurts we carry deep inside. As past life regression reveals, sometimes the hurt runs deep, bringing forward traces of what's left unresolved from the ages before. However accomplished or complete we might think ourselves to be, we roam the world raw, susceptible to the random snide, reacting to the perceived…

It is sobering to realize how insignificant we are in this universe, how much of a speck. And how much the grandeur of nature - a spectacular lunar eclipse, the sun shining on a quiet sea, a moonlit desert - shows us both the incredible world we live in - as also bring us back to the joy of minutiae, if only we have the eyes and time for it. And it…

I am so often in awe. Of another being’s endurance or grace — perhaps a lover, a river, the sea, or even time itself. I want to learn how they do it -from borrowing calm, to letting life flow through, to finally resting in stillness and reverence. To see life as a moving tapestry of happenstances, tragedies or ecstasy; living through them, but not …

We give up on those we profess to love too soon. There is something primordial, something gossamer, to do with the body, to do with first inchoate impressions, which attracts us to one another in the first place. Because relationships often begin in shallow waters. As things start to become serious, the couple traverses depths. It's not easy. And u…

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, Childhood is a town we have to leave. Home is a destination we have to leave and recreate again and again. Memories are the wealth we carry as reflux. And we create ourselves as our own saviours as we search strange lands…

Revisiting a place where one has one's roots is tricky business. On the one hand, there is enough familiarity - relatives, school chums as unrecognisable adults, hazy lines of playgrounds, peacocks, changing views from rooftops, familiar cracks now deeper - and on the other, one enters the familiar as a complete stranger. The air is lighter, the li…

Love is fragile but can withstand blows; it is easily dismantled but can be unrelenting in its persistence. It can disintegrate in a word, but can stand unbreakable after the worst of happenstances. Love is both ordinary and a maverick. It can breathe as if it is taking its last inhalation or linger as if infinity is a friend. There is lassitude, t…

Pondering as I do on relationships, the beauty and brokenness of them, I continuously marvel, nay wonder, at both their tenacity and tenuousness. And how, at the bottom of them all, they all exist on the basis of a single decision: to be together. However old, however strong, whatever the optics, the couple is together only because they want to be.…

We don't always realize, how much of our lives belongs to others, is determined by others. Their concerns, their insistences, their jealousies, their phobias, their happinesses, their frustrations. Their blank stares, their under-the-breath comments, their lack-of-joy. Their obsessions, their obsessive need to control. Their potential reactions, th…

People drift. Love leaves home. Life becomes a refugee. We become migrants in our own cities.What brought two people together often becomes the reason which tears them apart.Poetry is often a glue, often it it only a record-keeper. Often it is a bystander, checking out its own pulse. And the two who loved how poetry defined them, find the suburbs o…

Relationships often run their course. But we don't. And I'm both heartbroken and frustrated at the phenomenon. As I try to decipher the possibility of a rich life, now existing as an afterlife. It's not a question of toxicity setting in, but of a river in full spate disappearing into an arid empty bed. And I ask - why do we hold onto relationships …

What did my palms come to knowwhat did my skin feelwhat did my eyes ownas I transversed universesas I clasped light consciouswe are captive of time and ageheld together in ways undefinableon the wings of unsaid hope, possibilitiesheld as a moment's gift who are we if not fools holdinglove as a talismana bushel of kisses as proofthat when all failst…

Someone said something very telling the other day. In a court of law, the criminal knows he's the one, the accuser knows the criminal is the one. So in the scheme of things, it's actually only the judge who is being judged. I was reminded of this when I realized that our relationships are intrinsically not of the other, but about us - the person in…

So much of our time is spent in yearning. A slow despair of knowing life is slipping by, and of somehow not being able to wrap our arms around its fullness. Of, time and again, sinking our fingers into something we see as compressible but finding mere nothingness. Of having touched love, but having lost it before experiencing its infinite lushness …

We are what we make of the minutiae of our daily lives. Because love resides in them.We have a simple choice - we can curse at the commonplace or be masters of the mundane. The ability to observe and feel and let go, all at the same time, is what determines both the trajectory of our days as also the journeys of our heart. Because the other choice …

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…

I was reading poet Joy Sullivan's book of burnished sepia-tinged poems "Instructions for travelling west", and followed the footsteps of her poems into my childhood. Trying to catch the magic without sinking into syrupy nostalgia. And was amazed at how much I remembered - the games, the bruises, the sweat, the moths, ice-cold drinks - and just that…

I am at that age when I see more deaths than births. And, for some esoteric reason, such news arrives either as an early morning call - these are shriller, as if recognizing the weight of the tragedy - or as a message deep in the night - when the night lights up with the neon glow of a phone which refuses to predict the darkness it predates. And I …

So much arrogance! I see people preen into their power, as if they owned every bit of what they are. Old wealth and position are often the worst. Privilege turns into a right; dissent sparks righteousness; power becomes a press drill; wealth is mistaken for intellect. People forget they are humans - a bundle of gorgeous contradictions, always at th…

So much of our lives, nay, our heart-space, our mind-space, is about flying or falling, of binaries like coming ahead, being there first, being smarter than the other. We live and die in comparisons. And as always, when we wallow in shallow waters, we never ever get drenched fully.Without realising that this is the way of the world, that we can be …

Friends, lovers, relatives. People we know intimately. Who do we become when apart? Our bodies replace 330 billion cells every day. Every 15 years or so each one of the cells get fully replaced. We do not remain the same person physically, then what about the metaphysicality, the psychology, the soul, the belief systems of us? How much of us is bui…

I was in Emirates business class,on the way to Dubai, en route to a holiday.I was happy with myself, my life.A full meal, two rom-coms, one to go,and the relief of my kids tethered,as they slept after all kinds of indulgences.There was a peaceful sea which awaited me,massages, and sunset walks.This is life, I deserve it.I sighed into my smile. Then…

I have always wondered about people who go through tragedy, and then fall into profound grief. Such that their lives change, trajectories bend, and a state of being moribund sets in. In much of our existences, we are all living half-lives in our own way, pur-blind, half-dissatisfied, fully-disgruntled. The world refuses to work according to our dik…

There are so many microscopic things which happen which tend to change our lives - not in cataclysmic ways, but in infinitesimal ways making us the persons we become.A word said in passing, a kindness shown when not expected, a smile out of the blue, a touch when unexpected. And when a person opens up to you with all her vulnerabilities, bare to he…

"My love, of a thousand reaffirmations,we know we will never find ourselves in adequacies.Beyond the blemishes you absorbed, the ones I ignored,it was enough for us to have foundthe places where we fitted." Who are we if not a pack of confusions and misdirections? Because we are so inadequate in our understanding of what we are, and what is truly i…

Sometimes you just know. As someone once said "I knew you were the one, as soon you walked into the room. There was light coming out of your ass!" Frankly, more often then not, love has less drama associated to its arrival, because it is really a feeling which grows and found incrementally, one conversation at a time, one walk at a time, one infrac…

Someone once said "The path of peace goes through power." It's not only the truth, but a reality. Sadly. In a world largely ruled by men, rules are set as statements of power and domination. Even if someone seeks a hassle-free existence, unencumbered by positions, they are forced to seek bullies as allies, and are blackmailed in the name of securit…

Vincent Van Gogh, possibly the loneliest man in history, once said - “A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke.” We are so much, and so little at the same time. As we transverse our fulfilments and relationships, seeing one flourish, and the other flounder. And we struggle to u…

Too often, only too often, couples live lives of quiet despair. Without knowing that's not ordinary, that's not what coupledon is all about, that we can't have lifetimes compromised to the extent that an entirety passes by and there's nothing to show for it. Life is valuable and nobody, no relationship, has a right to take away from the preciousnes…

Summer is late in the city I stay in. There are discussions about it but no conclusions. Some say - enjoy the extended spring. Nobody minds, as there are high winds coming in from the south-west, and windows rattle. There is more time to get the air conditioners serviced. But the intimations of summer have not ceased. Much before the papers announc…

The riches of our lives, even when we are not searching for it, is like the journey of Santiago, the young Andalusian shepherd boy in Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. The treasure is always nearby, always close. We just don't have the eyes for it. The treasure is often our search for meaning, sometimes it is the clarity we seek of what the fulcrum of …

Aloneness is forced, solitude is a choice. Loneliness forces me unwillingly to be with myself. But solitude, as the great Montaigne said, gives me a chance to know how to belong to myself. A mental stand - and an entire outlook changes. But, of course, it is not so simple! Ironically in our worlds, we have to forcefully claim our aloneness, often t…

Coming back, when you've slammed the door behind you, is not easy. Literally or metaphorically. There is too much history to deal with, to have it hit us again like hale. Fresh starts are rarely as heroic as in fiction, and there is too much pus oozing out of the pores of common history for it to be a conjoinment without terror or distress.We do no…

You have to say it first. You have to do it first. You have to use the words. You have to acknowledge what is burning inside you. You don't have to find a reason. You don't have to wait for an apposite season. Lack of Reciprocation, fear of rejection, the vulnerability of putting one's heart (one's ego?) on line. Life is a hurdle race and love is s…

I read about the famous economist Daniel Kahneman, author of 'Thinking fast and slow', opting to end ha life through assisted suicide, euthanasia. He went to Switzerland, and died. A friend and I were talking about it. And I remembered what Tanu and I have often discussed -Not to live if we become a permanent burden on someone. I told my friend, I …

I often feel that as a poet I am destined to live through the infliction, the gain and the loss, the incandescence and the darkness, of a continuing bruise. I have to confront too many truths, and make sense of them, I have to face the world with too much honesty, and to crack open too many of my lies and illusions. I feel alone, trying to tell the…

So much of life is of journeys, just the way death is the final one. Of course, I'm not only talking of trapezing around the world, country to country, city to city, in innumerable trips. I am also referring to metaphorical and metaphysical journeys. The ones which reveal the greatest of mysteries - of what we truly are. The journey inside. Because…

What are we if not the ones who crave for second chances. And what is this world if not a place which is spatially abundant but trajectorily linear. An opportunity lost, a call not made, an apology kept back, a feedback reined, a love abandoned. Life is a compulsive giver. It's we who are blindsided with the cornucopia of choice - mistakenly thinki…

Love they sayIs the mess you invite,The mess you makeAnd the mess you leave behind.) It's a flash, it's a paint,It's basil in the soup.It's a kite which finds the skyBecause its cut loose. It's a shore being tugged by the sea,It's the moon staying on in the morn,It's the sunshade in a roadside cafe,It's the chef's apron he can't take off. It's the …

So much of life is about forked roads and where we choose to lead ourselves.If we are vigorous about living, we would give little time to ourselves to reconsider or think back to our choices. We ensure that our lives overflow, each minute tumbling into another almost breathlessly, with little time left for reflection or regret. But oftentimes, on a…

I fear disuse. I fear lack of purpose. Not necessarily in terms of conclusions but more in terms of direction. Whatever I do, I feel good to think it adds something somewhere. No, I'm not thinking of increasing the national GDP or my fame or fulfill a spouse's desire. I think of it more in terms of experience. Where nothing goes waste. It could be …

We are all strangers singularly and a brotherhood en masse. With a seamless earth and a sky being shared between us, in spite of boundaries - of homes, cities, countries, continents, hearts, colour - we cannot but be similar, looking out for each other and being there lending a hand when we see the other struggle. The tragedy of borders is their il…

I sometimes wonder if there is anything comparable to the generosity of a morning? Once you force yourself up, the cornucopia of the universe is laid out for our delectation. The sun is at its most benevolent, the birds are full-throated, the flowers are sleepy and demure, the air is soft even as it bites, the leaves are brittle, letting themselves…

Our lives are a collage of a thousand scraps of random, and often irreconcilable, happenstances and mistakes and decisions thrown onto a canvas of existence. Love is often the most decisive happening of our lives, often trooping in unannounced and more often than not, grossly disrupting our lives - and mostly overstaying beyond our comprehension. W…

It's basic good manners they say, possibly one of the first things taught to a child, the most primal form of grace. The importance of, nay, the necessity of saying 'thank you'. But ever so often, we are taught the semantics but not the emotion which needs to go along with it. And there lies the crunch. Because we start noticing the gap, the inadeq…

I sometimes look at myself and wonder who I am. I surprise myself often with the way I react into situations or the way I say things, and I look back and wonder if it was me there. Sometimes it is something outright unpleasant, and I'm completely ashamed of myself. But I also love the times I surprise myself with my own generosity or wisdom, of wha…

Our relationship with the almighty is a complex one. I have grown up with an atheist father (he calls himself agnostic, but the search never ends), and a mother who grew up as an Arya Samaji, so 'believe in yourself, believe in no idols'. Dad was a man of science, well-read, an engineer, hence well versed in his arguments against the presence of go…

I think if we did a dipstick survey of happy couples, we'd find an overwhelming number who aren't. No surprises. Nobody ever knows what happens behind closed doors. Hurts run deep like rivers which cut through ancient rocks, till you can only see the sunrises above them and not the deep gorges they've created. Our primitive instincts call out to us…

What do you do when a friend dies? The one friend who spoke softly and was beside you in the best and worst of times. What can you say except that's it's just too soon. That, if an end was inevitable, why would someone so sweet and kind ever have to go through the pain he had to go? That why would an affliction like cancer affect someone who had no…

Every morning I walk into a small shrine, housed by Ganesh and Laxmi, and ask for a blessing for someone in my life. It could be anyone who I feel requires the touch of divine that day. It could be for someone passing through a tiring time, someone who is worried about outcomes, a couple which has just hitched, a colleague who has a presentation, a…