who are you? (microfiction)

17.09.2025

‘Who are you?’ asked Alfonso.

‘Don’t you tell me that I talk too much about myself?’ I responded.

‘I am inviting you to dwell upon the subject. A straightforward question.’

‘I am a man named after a love story. I am a man named after honour and protection. I am a man named after a god. The god of love. All my names are the names of love.’

‘Even Tiger?’

‘Tiger is ferocious because Tiger has a big heart.’

‘Forget about your names. What are you?’

‘I am The Tiger. I am my enemy’s enemy. They say that you have to fulfil all your relationships in India. I fulfil them. An enemy’s enemy. A hero from the Sikh and Hindu community’s idea of a hero. From India’s idea of a hero. A fighter for the justice of the oppressed. An Untouchable.’

‘And what about the shadow? You are not all light, are you? You love to fight.’

‘What of it? It is for the good.’

‘And this hunger of The Tiger?’

‘Don’t be like them. There is nothing wrong with it. Don’t be deluded into thinking their way. They do not know how to live or love.’

‘You miss out everything. Do you not write? Do you not sing and make music? Do you not act? Do you not read all of the time? Are you not a poet?’

‘You did not ask me what I did. You asked me what I was. Yes, I am creative. Yes I am all those things, writer, poet, singer, music composer, reader.’

‘The sulking? The silence? The anger?’

‘You would want one that has been disappointed and never given his true value or what he should have been given to dance, laugh, clap his hands and cry tears of laughter? I am not a clown for their amusement.’

‘Any other thoughts upon what you are?’

‘Introvert. Extrovert. Sensitive. Callous. Quiet. Loud. Everything and nothing. All of these labels, categories. There is one constant. The Tiger is the warrior and the lover. Honest and loyal to the death. Braver than everyone else. Brimming with fire and heat. The power and energy of India.’

‘Vain. Boastful. Childish.’

‘Innocence is not childish. It is the mark of the brave and the honest.’

Alfonso clapped me on the back. ‘You have not said it all. I know there is more in you. I agree with you. You are a genius and an athlete. I have read your thoughts. You deserve to have whatever you want tossed at you. Remain The Tiger. One day there will be somebody on your level. And on that day, you will be recognised for your reality. They that pretend they do not know? They lie.’

puzzles (microfiction)

16.09.2025

‘The more you watch the games of other people, the less you understand. Rather than increasing understanding, age takes understanding away.’

Alfonso asked me if I was saying that the more people I came across, the less I understood them. Which seemed counterintuitive. Surely the more experience I had with people, the more I would be able to figure out what was happening in their behaviour?

‘But that is the assumption that the quantity of the interactions would increase social intelligence.’

‘Is that not a valid assumption?’

‘I don’t think so. Why don’t I understand anyone if that is the case? I know hundreds of people.’

‘But at what level do you know them? You are not in their personal life, are you?’

‘Exactly. There are certain classes of people that you interact with. Elders for instance. Nodding acquaintances. And then other demographics. No matter how many interactions there are, you will never understand. Because they keep you at a distance.’

‘Who is it that is perplexing you? And what are they doing?’

‘Why say? There are a few puzzles. And then there is a major puzzle. The puzzles can’t be solved without going into who they are.’

‘How do you know that you don’t puzzle them?’

‘I doubt anyone thinks much over anything that I do.’

‘Everyone is interpreted. Every action is interpreted as part of them. They think you are your actions.’

‘Are you your actions though, when all you can do is to play a role? Why do you think most of them are conformists? But let us stick to the topic. I am sorely puzzled. And my puzzlement only increases.’

‘It is good. Puzzlement is the modesty of knowledge.’

Still, the main puzzle was of incontestable significance. How to go about solving this particular riddle?

suffering and reading (microfiction)

15.09.2025

‘Instead of suffering, shall we have another topic today?’ Alfonso asked me.

‘Well then, what would you like?’ I responded.

‘Isn’t it more the case of what you think your readers would like?’

‘Is it going to be a question for a question?’

‘Why not?’

‘You would rather have a whole conversation as a question?’

‘Don’t you think it’s possible?’

We both laughed. Fighting and laughing. We did those things the best.

‘So, the topic I will introduce,’ I continued, ‘is reading. When I finished that long trilogy that I was reading, I did not manage to slip into anything else. I made a desultory few pages into a children’s picture book about animal languages. That one is on my library app on my phone. Life is so busy it is hard to read anything.’

‘Didn’t you tell me,’ Alfonso smiled, ‘that there was a certain someone that read everything that you wrote on your blog for two whole years? Every night. Why were they reading and how did they accomplish the feat?’

I ignored the question. I had a theory. But dwelling on such topics was dangerous.

‘I am speaking of myself. I don’t have the requisite tranquillity to read nowadays.’

‘You are lying,’ said Alfonso. ‘How do you get such good marks on your part time university course around work hours? You do seventy or so hours a week on work, maybe even more. And yet you are still doing the reading and getting good grades on it.’

Alfonso was good at cross-examination.

‘I am talking about fiction. Which is supposedly the easiest of reads. But it goes back to the beginning of this conversation.’

‘In what way?’

‘You wanted a different topic from suffering. But suffering is all there is in my life. Reading is a great pleasure to me. It has been since I was a child. I was a precocious reader. Later in adult life, I did an English Literature degree and then a PhD in that subject. To give myself time to read. Yet now? Because I suffer so much, I find it extraordinarily difficult to lose myself in a book.’

‘You blame suffering. Why not blame distractions?’

‘Do you really believe that my attention span has atrophied with these users of their smartphones? I still read more in one day than most people manage in a month. Psychology articles, newspapers, magazines, poems, posts about history, art and culture. I don’t touch the fluff that they degrade their minds with. You are fortunate. You do not suffer. And therefore you read.’

‘Perhaps you should read to escape suffering. To lose yourself in another world.’

‘Before you take a step

Look where your feet are

Before you take a leap

Find what you are anchored to’

‘I make the wish for you to read.’

‘I make the wish to discover life instead. Instead of living as the dead and the dying.’

con-nection

14.09.2025

‘Connection is a con’ I pronounced sententiously.

‘In what way?’ Alfonso had just been admiring a vase of flowers I had put together, with yellow gladioli, pink roses and then some purple asters. I had gone at the stalks with some Japanese pruning scissors which were one of my prized possessions. They made me feel like a professional florist.

‘Whatever human beings have done for connection, it has always led to disconnection. When they created a religion to tie people together, it led to wars of religion and separatism. The same with the state. In our time, they created dating apps to draw people together. All that led to is total disconnection. People have sickened from the dating apps.’

‘So disconnection is a constant of connection?’

‘Perhaps there is a history of disconnection. Perhaps it accelerated with the decline of religion which fostered a community.’

‘Evidence?’

‘There is an argument that newspapers fostered a new public sphere, a nation of readers. Now the newspapers are not even read much any more. More disconnection.’

‘Just because you are disconnected, it doesn’t mean that everyone else is. Just because you are not loved, it does not mean that there is not love in the universe. Just because you are not valued, it does not mean that everyone devalues.’

‘True. But, after all, we care about ourselves. We think about ourselves. When you are in a societal predicament like I am, it does not matter how far it extends outside of the bubble of oneself. One is still caught up in that situation and feels it.’

‘Do you ever say anything cheerful?’

‘What do you want me to say? I am not going to be a yes man for this sick society.’

When I had had my dinner today, a little bump had appeared on my arm in the bicep area. An unexplained circumstance on my skin which itched, and not a little. Out of nowhere, issues come and assail our body and our mind. Suffering appears without notice. It is our lot in life. My skin is pulsing with trauma. Two spots on my face have erupted recently. Old scars are flaring up, the one on my elbow. The skin is inflamed. I am fire and everywhere the volcano is erupting.

tiger’s teeth (microfiction)

13.09.2025

‘They could easily have killed you,’ Alfonso admonished me. ‘There were eight of them and one of you.’

‘Death before dishonour.’

Earlier on in the evening, I had gone to a singles meet up in Hyde Park. I had arrived and there was absolutely no one there at the meet up point. I had sat in the beauty of the pink skies in Hyde Park pondering on this as a metaphor for life in London. There is no connection. There is no hope of connection. Whatever you do is destined to fail. Other people do not exist. It looks like they are there. They are not. It is an illusion.

On the phone, as I walked back to the station, my friend speculated that maybe they had been scared of the Far Right riots.

Later on, when I walked out of my dinner at McDonald’s in Leicester Square, I got my own experience of the Far Right.

There was a fucking little cretin with a flag walking along with his dickhead friends. He took a look at me and pulled a face at me. He was trying to intimidate me because of my brown skin.

‘Fuck you’ I said aggressively to him.

Suddenly, from being the aggressor and feeling safe in his little crowd of fucking Nazi scum, this piece of shit was surprised. ‘What?’ he asked me lamely.

‘Fuck you you piece of shit’ I said loudly.

From being full of stupid insolence and cheap impudence, this little shitbag was suddenly full of fear. Because my body had gotten ready to fight. I gave him a look of absolute ferocity. They were not just words. But he had his piece of shit Nazi friends to try and impress, to try and give them the illusion that they weren’t little coward non-men united by hate with no balls.

He took a few steps towards me gingerly.

‘What the fuck you going to do about it you fucking dickhead?’ I bellowed at him.

Ridiculously, I heard someone say ‘You little sausage to me’. It didn’t surprise me that these uncivilised dicks couldn’t even speak properly. And suddenly, all of his friends were standing between me and him, protecting him from me. I think bystanders got up to get between us. Because they knew. They knew that I was The Tiger. They knew what was going to happen to that little bastard.

I walked off. I didn’t look back. I’m not scared of anyone.

Alfonso was still telling me off.

‘What are you, my mum?’ I asked him.

Alfonso took a moment to laugh. ‘You are wrong. You are throwing your life away.’

‘I was born to fight. I come from warrior culture. He was up in my face. I taught him a lesson. These little fucking cowards melt before a real man. They show their true colours. Nobody in this society can handle a real man.’

‘You are wrong,’ Alfonso said to me. ‘You are risking too much.’

‘All I regret is that I wasn’t able to teach him his lesson’ I said sourly. ‘I love to fight.’

To show face in an encounter is the badge of honour. I don’t get scared. I don’t back down. They back down. That piece of shit was trying to put fear into us. Fear into The Tiger? Impossible. There was no one to write this little account of war. There was no one to sing the legends. But do you know what? People in my culture prayed that they could become The Tiger. They prayed for the will, the composure and the ferocity. They prayed for just one chance to become The Tiger. But who actually was The Tiger? It was me. I was built to be a machine of war. They didn’t just call me Tiger. I called myself Tiger. I had my real name and my real identity. It hadn’t been taken from me.

And that’s why these little chickenshits were scared of me. Even if they walked around in a group of eight and I walked alone in the night. Because the sheep walk around in a fucking herd. And The Tiger? The Tiger hunts alone.

Wherever The Tiger puts his feet, that is his territory. The sheep don’t count. They don’t have a territory. This is my country. Not theirs.

lost for words (microfiction)

12.09.2025

Not always too predictable as a whole, Alfonso had given me a bit of a surprise. We were going down the escalators at Kings Cross station after a literary tour through Hampstead Heath, the haunts of Coleridge the poet. It had been a long day, something in the region of thirty thousand steps. I was commenting forlornly to Alfonso that now, surely, at the end of the day, I wasn’t going to meet anyone.

Alfonso had looked up behind me and explained to the lady there that his friend wanted to meet someone, so would she be able to help him out? I turned around and the woman had smiled at me and introduced herself.

And I? I laughed. I didn’t say anything. What was there to say? Hadn’t I been trying to connect and communicate with others for my whole life? Who was there for me? I turned around and got on with my life. There was no point talking to anyone.

Alfonso had asked me afterwards whether I understood communication at all. No, I replied. I did not understand communication. I did not understand connection.

‘But,’ Alfonso said. ‘You are friends with me.’

‘It is an exception,’ I had told him. ‘I am struggling. I don’t understand other people.’

‘I think,’ Alfonso said, ‘that the problem is that you understand them all too well.’

‘Not at all,’ I replied. ‘I don’t understand anything or anyone.’

‘Why then,’ Alfonso continued, ‘do you then characterise this world as what it is according to your agenda?’

‘Who doesn’t?’ I had asked Alfonso.

Promptly, he then changed the topic. He asked me what I wanted. He said, ‘I thought you wanted to meet someone? I introduced you to someone there. You did nothing.’

‘I want to be left alone and in peace if I am never going to have any genuine connection with anyone.’

‘You cannot be alone. You live in a society. And you do not want to be isolated. Your body and your mind is sickening because you don’t have a genuine connection in your life.’

‘You have no evidence of that,’ I told Alfonso. ‘When anybody looks at me, they cannot tell if I am sad or if I am happy. I laugh. I joke around. Whether I am acting or not, nobody knows the difference. Even those that think they are closest to me don’t know what I think or feel about anything. I am inscrutable. You do not know that I am sick or sickening. I keep it to myself.’

‘There is something off in you,’ said Alfonso. ‘Why do you think nothing is working for you? It is because there is something off.’

‘Possibly,’ I told him. I was wondering what it was that I wanted. Did I want anything at all now? Or had I just given up? There is a psychology experiment with dogs, ‘learned helplessness’. At a certain point, you realise that nothing you ever do is going to make any difference to your predicament. And then, you just give up. Had I reached that point now?

a flirtation with destruction

11.09.2025

‘It is the death instinct versus the life instinct.’ Alfonso was drinking a lime cordial in soda water. It was a drink that I had introduced him to. I would admire the green bubbles of fizz and savour the coldness of the refreshment as it went down. I wondered what he made of it. You can never step inside another’s body. Another’s mind, perhaps. Not the body. That was why they could not understand what it was to be me and to have this hungry high testosterone form. I was an alien to them.

In the morning, they had killed that aide of Trump’s. It had been a topic of conversation. But that was not what we had been talking about. In the evening, as I staggered home from fatigue and sadness, I had not looked when I had stepped into the road. A car was just a few metres away from me. Instead of walking back a few paces, I had sprinted across the road.

‘Did you not care that you would get hit?’ Alfonso asked me.

‘No, not really. What difference would it make if I did get hit? Who would really miss me?’

‘How close did the car get?’

‘I’m fast. Not too close.’

‘Don’t you feel that you are worrying the drivers when you do this kind of thing?’

‘It’s only happened a few times.’

‘You obviously do not care if you live or die. You just want to take stupid risks.’

I didn’t say anything. Alfonso had shown some real anger. It was what I felt inside. This anger. I was trying to control it. I was trying to stop the fire from ravaging through the world.

Instead of letting the fire out, I was typing a few words in my bed. I was dying of tiredness. I had overstretched myself, done too much. And it was never going to get me anywhere. The more I dug, the more stuck I was. I was trying to live but everyone wanted me dead. The only difference was that no one was going to shoot. I was going to have to live the pain.

the moon undressed (microfiction)

10.09.2025

‘Do you think other people see you as a poet or a genius?’ Alfonso was drinking a gloriously pale pink shade of something. I looked at the label: Still lemonade with cherry blossom and yuzu. I had tried some earlier and it was delicious because it had freshly squeezed lemons in it.

‘No. Others cannot recognise or acknowledge genius or reward it.’

‘What is it that makes you a genius?

‘The unfinished book that is in its first draft. The construction of madness in society. What no one can see but me. Originality. Vision. Analysis. The greater truths of this society.’

‘Quit the blurb. You have fanciful notions.’

‘Only truths. Do you remember yesterday that you said that our eyes did not meet on the moon, nor our minds?’

‘Yes. That was truth.’

‘Well look again. I took this photo of Lady Moon all undressed. Now, whoever reads here, their eyes will see the same moon that I do. And our eyes will meet on the moon. We will meet on the moon.’

Alfonso laughed. I laughed as well. He kept on chortling to himself. ‘You are the lover. In love, you are a genius. I have to give it to you!’ He clapped me on the back.

I looked at the moon and whoever looks at the moon looks at me.

meeting on the moon

08.09.2025

‘It is a full moon tonight,’ Alfonso remarked.

‘Full and beautiful. Do you know, there is someone looking at that moon at the same time that I am looking at it. And our gazes meet on the moon.’

‘Forget about your romances,’ Alfonso remarked drily. ‘No one looks at the moon and thinks of you. They think of someone else. Or themselves. Only you think of them.’

‘While I think that they would spare a thought sometimes of me, what can I do about it if they do not? In any case, I made no mention of romance. You did.’

‘The moon is the apt figure for any romance in your life. Because you do not talk to any of them. And they do not talk to you. You look in silence, if that.’

I did not respond.

‘Do you not have any romance in your life?’

‘I will not disclose whether I have or not. There is nothing in talking about such topics except for disdain, fear and loathing from anyone that hears. That is this culture. Love is outlawed here. Hate is legal.’

‘You think you are a prophet? Why make such pronouncements? All they do is to upset people.’

‘I am spoiling for a fight. I am a fighter. Come at me. I will take them.’

‘All you do is fight. Come, rest. Talk about the things of peace.’

‘This dishonourable peace? You want me to talk about the things of this dishonourable peace? The world is burning because of the excesses of the rich. The future is being torched because of the worship of status and rank and possessions. The poor are being enslaved because of the iniquity of the world. The oppressed are starving. The corrupt politicians are building their walls. Everywhere there are lies and injustice. And you want me to talk about the things of peace? In this world?’

‘Constant criticism will not win friends.’

‘I don’t want friends that live in a sugar coated reality. A warrior looks for an army and a warrior fights for the truth. If you cannot bear the truth, you cannot be a warrior.’

‘Wars are lies.’

‘Not just wars. If I did not believe I fought for the truth I would not be alive.’

‘Do you think you have what it takes to fight? You live in a world of fantasies.’

‘They are not fantasies. They are ideals of love, truth and justice. If you cannot bring your ideals to life but you spend your life fighting for them, then you have not lost. You have won. The one that tries never loses.’

‘Yet you told me yesterday that the hero always loses.’

‘In the Ramayana, Rama who is of perfect virtue fought against the villain Raavana because Raavana had abducted Sita, the perfect woman. Rama won. But could he keep Sita with him? No. Because the people thought her honour was tarnished. It is the duty of the king to follow the wishes of the people. It is the duty of the king to maintain the honour of the people. Sita had to go. The earth swallowed her alive. And Rama? Rama wept. The hero always loses. It has been known for thousands of years in India.’

‘Do not import your love stories into your explanations of myths,’ Alfonso admonished me. ‘You are not Rama and there was no Sita in your life.’ Alfonso sighed. ‘Come, it is getting late. Let’s retire. Tomorrow is another day. Forget these ill-fated romances. Read another book.’

the hero never wins

07.09.2025

‘I have just finished reading the Divergent books,’ I declared to Alfonso.

We had not spoken for a short while. He was elsewhere, both physically and mentally. Life events cause ruptures. But not separation. That could not happen with me and Alfonso. He was not like these fair weather friends of convenience that were around you all the time. He was as solid as a stone.

‘I am surprised that you read it.’

‘They have told me that I do not understand women of this generation. I make the attempt.’

‘And what did you understand?’

‘The false narrative. That the hero should and must die for love. In fact, the hero has to live for love. That is what I am doing. Living for the ones that I love. Not for myself.’

‘Any other observations?’

‘That you cannot escape your destiny. She was brought up in a culture of self-sacrifice. So was I.’

‘You confuse yourself for a hero. When this society has you as the villain.’

‘Who is there to believe? Them? Or the dreams of my mother and the dreams of the people?’

‘You hate the people. They are disorderly, mean, grasping, selfish, repugnant in every way.’

‘Yes. But that is all the more reason to fight for them. Because they could be good if they were given a chance.’

‘What do you make of the book, this western story about heroism?’

‘It is the same as the Eastern story in the Indian films. The hero never wins. Do you know the basic story of the Indian action film? Someone in the hero’s family is killed. It is the duty of the hero to get revenge. But even when you get your revenge, do you really win? In the film Sholay, when the Thakur kills the enemy, he weeps afterwards. Because the villain killed his whole family. Even the children. The hero can never win. That is this world. Not just fiction. The hero cannot win. The people that win are the monsters.’

‘What monsters? They are human beings.’

‘They are evil. Those bastards like Trump and Farage, the whole lot of them. That bastard Starmer. All these fucking pieces of shit. They are vermin. If I…’

Alfonso stopped me by raising his hand. ‘Don’t. Think it. Don’t say it. That is the policy that you have to adopt with things. Truth is not to be borne here.’

‘I know it,’ I said. ‘I don’t write stories. Because the real story is that only the evil and the mediocre prosper. The fucking sheep. In a story, the good and the best prosper. And it can only happen in the imagination. Because this world is full of shit. It stinks of it. The stink is fucking everywhere.’