Episodios

  • Marriage Made Me a Philosopher

    Marriage Made Me a Philosopher
    Apr 11 2026
    Marriage: it was the end of all illusions and the beginning of philosophy: marriage was a lesson in impermanence - not an idea, a daily unfolding. To remain calm in storms not of my making. Dinner is late. Plans change. Cushions are moved. I nod, smile, adapt. an ardent disciple of Aurelius. Closet space shrinks mysteriously. my belongings become philosophical concepts. Arguments teach a truth: words are insufficient. “Where do you want to eat?” “Anywhere.” (Anywhere is wrong.) And I discover the absurd as Camus sighs in his grave. I broach the thesis: “Let’s watch a movie.” I receive the antithesis: “Let’s talk.” And confront the synthesis: talk about why no movie is being watched. “What did I do wrong?” “I don’t know.” But something is wrong. And thus begins a lifelong inquiry into metaphysics - what can truly be known? I examine questions of existentialism: what gives life meaning? Choice? Duty? Love? I lay in bed, see the fan whirl, and ask - what is love, bereft of drama? what is self, when it must bend? what is happiness, when it must be shared? What, indeed, is life, when it seeks surrender, but masquerades as gift. Essay: I sometimes feel that a philosopher dissects the deeper meanings of life, only to figure out that it is meaningless. And invariably, it has to do with human interaction, thought, foibles, decisions, reactions. And within the rigour of its investigation and compulsions is the real time change which humans wrought on each other. Marriage is the ultimate test of change and resilience. Crafted inside the crucible of love, it continuously tests the human power to forbear, resist, surrender and claim victory in survival. A less cynical view would view the wedded journey as a partnership which keeps on recalibrating itself until it hits a rhythm and a seamless marching cadence. In actuality it is a flawed construct, with a societal burden of "till death do us part". Which of course provides a longevity to breeding, rearing and mutual survival, but comes up wanting in providing universal succour. We are complex creatures. Feeling, hurt, chemistry, comfort, vulnerability, ego, belief, residual memory, remembrance, all swirl inside us like a Milky Way seeking their pre-eminence. And invariably coming up short when sought singularly. Luckily we are social creatures , necessarily living in a world which won't exist if not for cohabitation and coexistence. Thus ironically, the most successful marriages are the ones which recognise this need and build an ecosystem of relationships rather than one rooted in ownership, bound in jealousy, and closeted in insecurity. And just this musing is what makes a simple man transition into philosophy. Unknowingly, a man walks into marriage a simple human being and walks out wiser. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on marriage and its consequences -
    • She's a Fierce One, My One
    • Love's Night of the Long Knives
    • How She Knew (that he was unfaithful)

    Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'

    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 - Rising Sun by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/rising-sun Licence: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
    Más Menos
    6 m
  • The Long Now of Us

    The Long Now of Us
    Apr 4 2026
    I sometimes feel we would be better people if we were slaves to love. Not to work for it, not to fantasize about it, not try to record of its wonder - but just to ease into its trust and surrender. Because the secret of love's power is not its ability to sway but its strength to render vulnerability as an essential ingredient. It's contrarian in concept - showing your weakness to strengthen your relationship - but that is how love gifts nesting space. We are allowed to show our worst, safe in the belief that we will be accepted, advised, admonished but adored. And in that paradox lies the crux of our ability to survive the worst of what life invariably throws at us. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the beautiful paradoxes of love -
    • Where We Start & Where We End
    • The Space Between Our Words
    • The Ironies of Love

    Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'

    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 - About Moments by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/about-moments Licence: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
    Más Menos
    4 m
  • A Child Mulling on Life Beside the Sea

    A Child Mulling on Life Beside the Sea
    Mar 28 2026
    The whole process of growing up has an inevitability- and a tragedy - attached to it. A child grows up believing - trusting everything and everyone. An innocence which is endearing - and often encouraged, possibly because of it's anachronism and the fact that an atavistic urge inside us reaches out to something which makes us remember days when we were less cynical, less pessimistic, less prone to mistrust. But how fast realities catch up. Our desire, nay, our encouragements for children to grow up to be 'good' human beings, bumps into reality checks. The advice is then tempered with small counsel like - be practical, don't be an innocent, you have to look out for yourself because who else will. In a wildly confusing world, our children end up being human beings who are copycats of others- self absorbed, confused, unreconciled and ultimately neurotic. Innocence - moribund or ignored - seeks its own burial grounds. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the sea and what it does to you -
    • I Heard the Other Day
    • Kripa (a blessing from a daughter)
    • The Art of Living

    Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'

    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 - Sea Waves Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/sea-waves Licence: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
    Más Menos
    4 m
  • The Art of Living

    The Art of Living
    Mar 21 2026

    I spent three days in Kochi, immersed in the art biennale. And wandering through the lanes, warehouses, waterways, and cafes of the city. The city was alive with art - representations of life, adn its anguish and joy. And hundreds of people from all over immersed in art, as something they now saw as they went to school or office.

    I recorded small pieces as I viewed the art, and have put them up here, unedited.

    They have the sound of the sea, the cadences of life as it passed even as its representation lay splattered in colour or metal in front of me. I loved doing this live recording of thoughts passing through my mind - sometimes shallow, sometimes deep. But all very me.

    Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'

    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 - Sailing through the wide sea by Musiclfiles Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/sailing through the sea Licence: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
    Más Menos
    9 m
  • Memories of Peppermint Mocha

    Memories of Peppermint Mocha
    Mar 14 2026
    It's a startling thought, that someday sometime, there's that final time - and never again - when you will meet someone, hold someone, say that word, share that laughter. Then how do we know that it is not also the final time when we leave with a sharp word, a fight ending in tears, a time which leaves someone in despair, that final moment when the last memory is of pain given and anguish taken. Life's profundities are often written in the simplest ways - to be kind, grateful, to listen, to respond gently. Our last memory has to be the one which we can live with without guilt or pain. Then we can revisit everything which we loved about the one who has left us with gentleness, towards that memory, towards ourselves. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how time takes people away from us -
    • An Epitaph Made of Light & Air
    • Chemo: as I battle myself
    • When We Were One With The Stars

    Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'

    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 - Falling Star by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/falling-star Licence: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
    Más Menos
    4 m
  • Lunatics in Search of Peace

    Lunatics in Search of Peace
    Mar 7 2026
    Animals hunt to fill their stomachs. Humans do so for power and greed. And when they possess weapons of destruction, they think themselves to be invincible. It's easy to say it's primordial, part of the ancient blood running in our veins, but it's also civilizational. Of having - or not having - a spiritual foundation, a religion which teaches inclusion and diversity, and not harp on a supreme monotheism. The urge to convert, failing which to conquer, is the legacy of our flawed religious leaders, who were products of their time, and constructed manuals chocobloc with their fears, flaws and aneurysms of the times. And they forced humanity to see divine in the monstrous. And the moral underpinnings of every endeavour thus became vitiated and compromised. And when men gave into their basest inclinations to acquire and rule, to preen and show, all hell broke loose. Under the guise of righteousness, they found justification to bring destruction, mayhem, deaths. Alas, that is the legacy we will leave behind on this earth, which some day or the other we are bound to destroy - the proverbial cutting the branch on which we sit. Because with hubris comes the suicidal instinct, of so-called glory above all else, justification above logic, of allowing ourselves to be destroyed as collateral damage just to prove a point of our invincibility. A simple fact. There's never going to be peace on this earth. Men, religion and hubris will justify every vile crime done against humankind on this earth. Till we are all wiped off. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the miseries and damage of war -
    • Sounds of the Living and the Dead
    • For Anyone Who Bleeds
    • Will We Ever Trust the Skies Again

    Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'

    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 - Evacuation by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/evacuation Licence: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
    Más Menos
    6 m
  • The Ironies of Love

    The Ironies of Love
    Feb 28 2026
    Words are all what we have, to conjoin or to distance each other, what can make the difference between making a bridge to cross differences, or to find dissonance to deepen chasms. Who are we if not the stray remark which hurt or the heartfelt apology which redeemed. Love finds its bedrock in the glad word: beyond the body pheromones is the reality of the feeling, the thought enunciated in ways which lays bare the truths of a person. We are known (and too often judged) by what we say, because that is what mirrors our innermost beings, because that is what gets people to recognize what we feel, what we think, what the truths of our being are. What else is there? How else can we tell someone we agree with them, that what we think is what is, that we can think the way we can think, that the depths in our beings is greater than what is ostensibly visible. That we like someone, that we sense a chemistry, that, yes, we may be in love. But love, ah. That can have its own language. Because so much of our relationship is not only what is said, but also how it is said. The innocuous remark with a particular tone, an expressionless declaration, a stray sentence, a throwaway statement, a simple reply laden with feeling. Yes. The language of expression and silence and adoration which comes out of a person's very being - in the eyes, in touch, in the presence and in the absence. How, only too often, in love, words fail, but even then the message gets conveyed. Because, sometimes - only sometimes - wordlessness is the most powerful language possible. Being in love does put paradoxes into perspective, and well. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the slow charm of love -
    • Let Me Sit Beside You, Quietly
    • When We Know Love as Found
    • It Takes Time for Love to Find Comfort

    Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'

    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 - About Moments by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/about-moments Licence: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
    Más Menos
    5 m
  • It Takes Time for Love to Find Comfort

    It Takes Time for Love to Find Comfort
    Feb 21 2026
    Relationships take time. Even 'love at first sight' is a construct only, finding immediate challenge in the crucible of real life. I know couples who have gone around for years, but find they scarcely know each other within the first week of married life. The interesting dynamic is the setup provided by love. It could work in two dynamically different directions. It could make you accept what really comes your way with generosity and a desire to work through the unexpected discoveries in a person. The other extreme would be the crashing of expectations, and understating that what-you-thought-&-what-you-got were such such incredibly different things - to be jettisoned immediately. Such does life give - and we choose to give away. We need to understand that ties are always brittle to begin with. There's trust to be built, there's vulnerability to be shown, there are defeats to be accepted along with victories which need to be celebrated. In our attempt to be what we've shown ourselves to be, we should not forget that impressions cut both ways - and truths are often more charming than cultivated lies. We WANT our partners to be mere mortals living and breathing heartbreak, distress, irrationality, madness, quirkiness, and everything else which makes us human. If within those realities, we are not accepted, maybe there is something else in store, someone else to grow with out there, who would enrich our lives in immeasurable ways. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on how loves gives comfort -
    • I Think I Can be an Adventure WIth You
    • When We Know Love As Found
    • Just be Air

    Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Uncuts'

    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 - Epic Intro 2017 by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/epic-intro-2017 Licence: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
    Más Menos
    6 m