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PODCAST

Uncut Poetry

Sunil Bhandari is a poet by compulsion. He says he survives in this world because he can get to write poetry. This podcast is of his poetry.

arts performing arts

All Episodes

05:32

Balancing Beginnings

Uncut Poetry ·

2023/09/30

Unrevealed to us, the universe is working for us. Like master chefs will have you bite into something bitter before bringing in a sweet savoury, life will spin out the worst - only to balance it out in mysterious ways. It’s my firm belief that if we are open with all our senses to our inner beings and the world outside, we will capture the subtle genuflection of the universe’s grace. It could be the sudden advent of an astringent odour from childhood, it could be the perfect amalgam of rain and

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04:33

Why We Should be Happy With Berry Jam on Table Edges

Uncut Poetry ·

2023/09/23

I see young people together, in love, in lust, lost, planning an event, a day or a life, and I see impatience, I see the desire for appropriation. I see conclusions rather than drifting coffee aroma, I see hard closed city alleys rather than coastlines lazily disappearing into beautiful haze. I see uncomfortable hiatuses, wounded silences, I see complaints where there should be enquiries. I see good times as planned methods instead of uncapped madnesses. My heart breaks to see ordinariness being

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05:49

Across The Universe

Uncut Poetry ·

2023/09/16

I remember the story of a bunch of strangers taking shelter under a tree on a stormy night. They could see bolts of lightning falling all around and charring trees. They looked around and saw that they were all high caste Brahmins except for one poor simpering low caste Sudra, who could suddenly see all eyes on him. One particularly arrogant Brahmin pointed his finger at him and said “He is the one who will bring us bad fortune!” And in a flash he was thrown out into the storm, above all entreaties

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06:10

Living in a World Deficient in Hugs

Uncut Poetry ·

2023/09/09

There was an incredible experiment done years back where children were put into two batches - one where they were out in the care of nurses who cuddled and hugged and caressed them regularly. And in the other batch none of the nurses cuddled the infants. They were efficient but cold, caretakers not care givers. And they tracked the children as they grew. The results were startling to say the least - the former children grew up to be be emotionally stable and balanced kids, and the other batch had

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04:44

Damaged Bulbs in a Parlour

Uncut Poetry ·

2023/09/02

Finally life is only about choices. The quality of our life depends on it. And that applies first to what our reactions are, and then to what our actions are. Because much of what we do is in anticipation of or in response to what we think people will think. The subset to this is the overriding power of our ego - what it makes us feel, what it makes us look like in this world. The need to feel acknowledged, the distress when we are not. The tragedy inherent in the situation is that we live an

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05:09

A Cynical Old Man Acknowledges His Birthday Very...

Uncut Poetry ·

2023/08/26

I try hard not to be cynical. But I think that’s my terrible gift to myself. Life had a hand to play (of course!), bringing me people and platitudes in equal measure, to leave me nicely acidic for a lifetime. Not that I don’t fight against my worst instincts, read tomes to learn how to return to a crystal-clear state of trust and welcome, a kind of knowing innocence, measured but complete in itself. But it’s easier said than done. As the entirety of my being screams “Alert!” whenever I see a good

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04:37

Minor Earth Major Sky

Uncut Poetry ·

2023/08/19

This is a thought which has haunted me time and again. I have done, thought, engendered, perpetrated things which I know are not me, at least what I’ve thought of as the actual me, the essence of me. Things have happened unthinkingly, impulsively, reflexively, without the intervention of what I call my better senses. Then I reason - all my instinctive reactions and actions have come out of me hence they are as much me as the better ones. If my better senses have a home inside me then so do the

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04:57

I WIll Leave The Last Line For You To Fill

Uncut Poetry ·

2023/08/12

One of the tragedies of growing older is how we see more and more people pass on, even as we wait for our own mortality to kick in. Surviving loved ones is not a blessing, as we find lesser number of breaths intertwined with ours, and our hours spent in longer days. There are several people I remember with great tenderness. Along the years the particularities have started to fade. The slant of a smile, the squelching of eyes, the way some words got spoken, the firmness of a hand on a shoulder, the

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05:54

The Grace That We Give

Uncut Poetry ·

2023/08/05

Karma is destiny’s calling. The smiles and bruises we give, troop back to us in (as the famous Gladiator once said) this birth or the next. (Likely to be this, as I’ve seen God getting to be progressively more impatient). The things we twist, the generosities we quietly lay out like sunlight, the hypocrisies we ooze in our sanctimonious smiles - we might not get our just desserts in this birth but we are definitely found out and scorned for what we really are. The belief has, I must confess, given

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07:20

On Growing Up (that haze of sunshine & dust)

Uncut Poetry ·

2023/07/29

Growing up, and the art of doing nothing. How I wish I was again sure of the former and a master of the latter. Because I’ve lived years, often without experiencing anything new, and fill my time - and myself - so much that there is no place left to give wings to my choices or desires. I still remember the days when I naturally knew what was important - reading, and thinking about what I read; talking, and then letting long silences puncture my words; of waking up, and watching a random tree

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05:35

My Mother is Full of Water and Ready for Sonography

Uncut Poetry ·

2023/07/22

Our relationship to our mothers is a supple thing. Day to day, year to year, age to age, it changes. Beyond the evolutionary grounding, beyond the nurturing necessities, we are an amalgam of the obvious and the extraordinary. To be gifted the kind of unprecedented unflinching support we do get from mothers is a benediction of nature. Our steady rejection of it, and her holding tight to the tethers, is the obvious unravelling which this relationship goes through - her instinct becomes a need, the

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06:38

Of Rain-Engulfed Rooms and Lovers in Spate

Uncut Poetry ·

2023/07/15

Rain, amongst all seasons, is as much feeling as occurrence. In spite of all its deleterious effects - on roads, homes, countries - log-jammed lanes, traffic jams, leaky roofs, economic devastations! - it can never be bereft of its poetry, it’s memory of growing pangs, it’s matte occurrences of comfort, tea and satisfying dissatisfactions. Everyone has a rain-infused remembrance. The peerless newsletter ‘The Nook’ had a get-together to reminisce about people and their memories of rains - “One

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05:09

Yearning (and other things we carry in the journey)

Uncut Poetry ·

2023/07/08

Who are we, if not people who live on hope, thought to thought, day to day, year to year. Often knowing about possibilities, often just whistling in the wind. It could be a change of fortune, a lucky break, a chance encounter, a person we’d always loved. Everything, even what seems to be the minutest of an incident, has the potential to change lives, and more often than not, it does. And until it does, hope binds us to invisible tethers. Gurus talk about yearning, as they talk about the

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06:01

Memory Keeper

Uncut Poetry ·

2023/07/01

The bane of my life has been my memory. I forget. I forget prodigiously. Names, faces, conversations. Don’t even get me to started on dates and numbers, groan. In office, at home, I struggle with narrating incidents, at remembering places, things we saw and ate at specific places. I had a girl who worked for me who, after a decade, still remembered the make of the shirt and the colour of socks I’d worn when I’d first interviewed her. I guess there are bigger tragedies in life (people are still

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05:56

Replay: Favourite People (Who We Love and Leave)

Uncut Poetry ·

2023/06/24

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! We are what we are. But we are also all the people who have arrived, moved on, stayed in our lives. People whose very touch may feel like a hug or an abandonment , a benediction or a scare. People we’ve loved and fought with, people we’ve been secretive about, those we’ve cried for, those who’ve cried because of us. Just as relationships change, we are changeable

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05:20

Miles Apart

Uncut Poetry ·

2023/06/17

I have always wondered about those who are in love and stay cities away from each other, and colleagues who are ready to stay apart for their careers. And I’m gobsmacked at how they make it happen. I’ve asked several of them about it, and the answer is always accompanied by a sigh and the answer “Life.” As if what determined their choices was something out of their control. Which was of course both true and not true. But I was more interested in how they made it happen? How they kept their

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05:52

One Quiet Woman is Much Like Another

Uncut Poetry ·

2023/06/10

Agency! Agency! That’s what people would say - women lack agency, that self-respect, which would allow them to accept no nonsense from their partners. Violence? Infidelity? These were lines which once crossed were unretractable, unforgivable. But women do the unthinkable - they scream and shout, but they also forgive, they also stay on. And in that one decision seems to lie embodied their helplessness, as they sacrifice their intrinsic force, jettison their innate power, lay down their weaponry

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05:46

Compatriots of Trust

Uncut Poetry ·

2023/06/03

It’s so easy to say that trust is absolute. That what is trustworthy has to be fully so, or not at all. In the grey complexities of life, it’s both the toughest give and often an unreasonable ask. Humans are fragile, they are also duplicitous. They lie, betray a trust of years, but are ironically ready to lay their lives on line when it comes to things they care for - and for those whose very trust they may have betrayed. Ensconced in the biggest tragedy of human nature often lies it’s gold mine

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06:33

If I Commit Suicide

Uncut Poetry ·

2023/05/27

If I commit suicide, it will be on a happy day. I would wrap the day as efficiently as I would wrap my life. Instructions clear, bank accounts safe, investments earmarked. I would make your favourite dish (stuffed aubergine with sun dried tomatoes), serve it with garlic bread, call in your favourite ice cream (Jamoca Almond Fudge) and have a glass of chianti on the side, as you look on in wonder. I would watch you with pleasure as the sun sets and fills you with its glow. In the end, I would have

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04:40

Finding Home in Broken Places

Uncut Poetry ·

2023/05/20

It’s one of the ironies of life that we spend more time searching for what’s wrong and flawed in those we love than on the pleasure their presence provides us. We are crotchety with praise. We could be pillows or doors for them, we could be their skies or their earth, their truth when they require it, their boost, their grace, their heft. We forget they are breathing masses of soul, liable to be torn, likely to bleed. That they need to be embraced more often then turned away from. And I wonder

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