thoughts – 04.09.2026

Often, in the past, I’ve kept a thought diary. Just like I’ve kept a stories diary. I have been concentrating on writing diaries and fiction recently, as well as theatre, art and film reviews. When one is a real writer, one can write anything. In any case, I will share some of my thoughts from today, a tiny proportion from this mind that keeps on thinking, thinking, thinking…

1. Why do racists see us as closer to nature? Because they hate and revile nature. Being in harmony with nature and one with it should be seen as a goal. Instead, anyone that is not a white man is seen as too at one with nature, like us and women.
2. Why does realistic art only arise in certain cultures? Can it be the case that stylisation and abstraction, imagination and distortion, these are the intuitive way that we understand the world?
3. What if there was nothing? No universe? Nature abhors a vaccuum. Is nothingness stable? Is it capable of being sustained? Does there have to be something?
4. Why has primitive art been characterised as powerful and an antidote to the west? Is the West attempting to absorb the power of difference through it rather than learning from it? Is this simply a power play?
5. Why didn’t Da Vinci share his knowledge? Why do we learn about his thoughts on trees many centuries on? Was the academic infrastructure not there? Was he unconcerned with what others thought? Why create and think if you cannot bring it to the people? Was Da Vinci selfish?
6. Henry Moore’s titles use language as a direct reference, such as ‘Hole and Lump’. He did not want fancy titles, just words that pointed to things. Is this is a naive view of language? Or did he not want his direction to overtake the interpretation? Moore was not a realist. So why did he use a ‘realist’ vocabulary in his titling, that in which A is referred to as simply A? As though language is not an intervening web? Was this a creative act or a distinctly uncreative act?
7. A community is something that you have to make. It is not something that simply happens.
8. I have sculpted my brain. Just like I sculpt my body with weight training. And the weights for the mind? They are words and ideas. Which are therefore part of the forces of the universe, of physical reality…
9. I am the product of Salman Khan and the fitness revolution. Khan is a Hindi film actor that become a masculine body ideal with his body building. The fitness revolution is still sweeping the Indian film industry.
10. What is the philosophy of failure? One thinks of Batwara 1947 failing even though it had the right ideas about harmony across religions and nations. It is good to fail when the world around you is full of hate, prejudice and suspicion. They did not read the public mood. The mood of monsters, not men.
11. How do you read the public mood? Do you have to be one of the people to read it? Or view it as one removed, through a glass darkly?
12. Why do some people not have an opinion and struggle to think? Everything they say comes second hand from someone. That is why people call me original, why I have been described as an original thinker through my five degrees. I think things through by myself and am therefore exceptional.
13. I have had the training to believe that I can change the world. My grandfather worshipped Dr. Ambedkar who revolutionised Indian law as one of us, an Untouchable and Dalit from the lower castes. He is the one that taught me. That is where this confidence comes from.
14. Funny how research institutions like academia and museums are happy for ethnic minority men like me to do unpaid work but they never offer paid opportunities or more pay for our labour. It is toxic and exploitative industry if you have the wrong colour skin. Arday managed to do it and they came for him in the end. That is the real story there.