19.09.2026
How do you teach someone hunger?
If social media news items are to be believed, Cristiano Ronaldo said, when he watched his son enter the sphere of professional football, he said that the hunger was the most difficult thing to achieve, to learn. Because his son had been raised in a soft life of luxury. Because his son had not lived through poverty and hardship with only the hunger to raise him above it.
And I? I have been taught this hunger.
Where did I learn this hunger? True enough, I was raised in a council house estate. With a bedroom I shared with my brothers. School dinners were too expensive to buy so we had packed lunches. I wore hand me downs. We had to work from the earliest age that we could as we didn’t get much pocket money. So that is where I learnt this hunger.
But above and beyond that, I was raised by the very poor. My grandfather lived in absolute poverty in India because his father had deserted the family. My grandfather and his brothers went blind because of malnutrition. So that is where I learnt this hunger.
Where did I learn this hunger? From birth. When I was born, the nurses said that I kept on drinking and drinking the milk. I have been hungry from birth.
And this mind, this mind is hunger. The mind consumes the most energy in the body and my mind keeps on working and working and working. I am hungry almost all of the time yet I never put on any weight. This super fast mind means that I have a super fast metabolism. So that is where I learnt this hunger.
And where does this hunger go? It has gone on five degrees, six ‘A’ Levels and eleven GCSEs. All with top grades. It has gone on writing a book, articles in top journals, writing after writing in websites, newspapers, newsletters. Going after experience after experience to develop and see. The insatiable hunger to be a scholar. A writer. A man of the truth. Reading book after book after book, article after article, chasing knowledge after knowledge. Because there is a difference between wanting to learn and having to learn.
I am all hunger. There is no one that is more ambitious and more driven. I have learnt this hunger. In hunger, none can match me.