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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

05:02

Elegante Solitude

Uncut Poetry ·

2025/04/12

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 to fight for it. It is antithetical, nay, antisocial, to voluntarily eschew company, and be alone. In its own way, it's a rejection of social norms,

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05:00

I Come With Mud

Uncut Poetry ·

2025/04/05

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 not always desire recall, because rewinds bring with them memories of unbearable pain. But often there's a knock on the door which we cannot ignore. And

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05:44

I Said I Love You First

Uncut Poetry ·

2025/03/29

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 strewn with obstacles. In the magnificent tapestry we create of our own scars and wounds, a bulk of them - unmentioned, hushed - are self- inflicted. But

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05:49

Assisted Suicide

Uncut Poetry ·

2025/03/22

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 was quite clear - I get to decide when I will end my life. But he asked a simple question - is your life only yours? And it made me pause. And as

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04:38

I Call Myself a Poet

Uncut Poetry ·

2025/03/15

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 story so I camouflage the truth, to iron up to rebuffs and to the reality of losing space. To know that I am both a mirror and a weapon, though I

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05:16

Last Legs of the Day

Uncut Poetry ·

2025/03/08

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 that's where the truth of our sighs and lights resides, of what haunts us in the night and of what drives us in the morn. Of what irritates us, what

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04:39

Tenderly

Uncut Poetry ·

2025/03/01

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 thinking that life will keep giving. That we will keep rebuffing its generosity, with impatience, with disdain, with ego, and we will keep getting what we

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03:42

Love Actually (more & mess)

Uncut Poetry ·

2025/02/22

Love they say Is the mess you invite, The mess you make And 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 sky Because 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 brownie you crave, It's a drink you like strong, It's a glass too many in a pub, It's a staid party and you want to pole-dance. It's the

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06:01

Sometimes We Remember So Hard

Uncut Poetry ·

2025/02/15

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 tired evening, when a passing strain of hopelessness seeps into us, and nothing seems to be right - the ones who are closest seem far away, and

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05:04

I Would Hate To Be That Man

Uncut Poetry ·

2025/02/08

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 anything - a film which knocks the daylight out of me, music which haunts me through the day, a shadow I see lengthening as I lay in the winter sun,

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06:34

Waiting for My Flight to Chennai at the Kolkata Airport

Uncut Poetry ·

2025/02/01

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 illusion of easy divisibility. But a line drawn is a slash on a heart which in spite of divisions seeks conjoinment. In thought, religion, spirit or

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04:57

Walking Into The Winter Sun

Uncut Poetry ·

2025/01/25

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 to be crunched to a satisfying exuberance. The trees above are in a state of measured chaos. Bushes which have grown thick have deep caverns and

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05:13

Perpetrators & Victims of Love

Uncut Poetry ·

2025/01/18

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. We are both perpetrators and victims of love, even as we are the helpless receptacles, seeing ourselves change - beyond our own comprehension. All

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06:05

Different Ways in Which You Can Fail to Say Thank You

Uncut Poetry ·

2025/01/11

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 inadequacy of a formal thank you, particularly in the closest of close relationships. One theory says (in the form of twisting an immortal line) that "Love

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03:44

The Stranger In Me

Uncut Poetry ·

2025/01/04

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 what I am capable of saying or doing. And then I sit back and wonder about how, after so many decades of knowing myself, of living in my own skin, of

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05:49

I Have Often Thought About God

Uncut Poetry ·

2024/12/28

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 god, per se. As a family on holiday, we only visited temples if they were scenic - which of course meant that I have climbed more hills and trekked more

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05:53

The Happiest Couple You Will Ever See

Uncut Poetry ·

2024/12/21

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 to conjoin, cohabit. But nature also gives us the complex tapestry of emotions, often irreconcilable, with the uncanny ability to bruise. And the

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05:58

I Heard That You Just Set Off on a Journey

Uncut Poetry ·

2024/12/14

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 not harmed a fly in his life. I look at his photograph and I think of the times we'd shared. From college, through our respective marriages, to having

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04:48

In Memory & Mist

Uncut Poetry ·

2024/12/07

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 friend grieving, or for someone I know as a happy person and I seek a blessing for her not to lose her joy. I have survived, been saved, been held

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04:17

Why I Disagree With The Moon

Uncut Poetry ·

2024/11/30

We need to walk straight, with our spine erect. There's no other way. We need to know ourselves - what keeps us abreast of ourselves, beyond the bullshit requirements of the world.There's the sinister expectation of people who plant redemption of their failures on us, and coat it in aphorisms both sweet and compelling. We are sold because we love people and hope to keep them happy. We feel it's incumbent that those who reach out to us are a challenge, a benediction, an opportunity, a duty to be

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