Month: Oct 2026

Holiday 01.10.2026

An eight o’clock start, the day began with sleeping in. Then some chi building and meditation and a leisurely breakfast listening to the songs of the great and late Lata Mangeshkar.

After this, I set out to Valentine’s Park with my trusty pair of binoculars and a microscope. I pottered about by myself observing the birds, the trees and also scrutinising the flowers and plants with the microscope. I wandered in the walled gardens and by the stream. I met up with my friend who came down on his cycle and we walked circuits of the park talking about life. He told me that I had made his day by meeting up. We banged into a lady that he knew from the park run just before we headed back home.

Waiting for me was a lunch prepared by my mother which was  hot boiled egg sandwiches which I washed down with water.

I headed off afterwards to the Olympic Swimming Pool Gym in Stratford where I did some heavy weights. It was a good workout. Then I called up my girlfriend.

I popped into work for a quick meeting about a project I was passionate in getting involved in even though it was my day off and then I headed out for some bouldering. It is only the second time that I have done it in my life. I managed to get in a running jump catch which impressed everyone and the video of it has already got 1.5K views on Instagram and many likes.

Bouldering was hard on the fingers but quite enjoyable. I’m always up for a challenge, physical or mental. And this was both because you had to work out the route and the possibilities too, as well as making sure your body could do it.

I called my girlfriend up again coming home and arranged to meet her and my friend later in the week.

Thanks to my mother, I had a dinner of chicken curry on the bone, chapattis and a salad waiting for me at home. Afterwards, on the spur of the moment, I decided to watch the Hindi film ‘Alpha’. It was a slick production with some excellent action scenes for the most part. I thought it was an interesting story, although there were many cliches about war and warfare, those kinds of films. The actress Alia Bhatt is a nepo baby that I have never liked but she has given two really great performances in the last two films that I have watched, this one and ‘Jigra’. Both of them flopped. Why? Because they apparently can’t stomach a female action heroine in India. But I can. We worship The Mother Goddess. She is the epitome of the warrior. We from the warrior culture model ourselves and our world upon her. These films were made for me. The teaching has penetrated deeply. Even when I played ‘Street Fighter’ when I was a kid, my favourite was Chun Li.

waiting for life

01.10.2026

Once upon a time, I was a young student. Naive and inexperienced. At home, my mother did not speak English and was locked into the Punjabi community. My father was always working. At school, the teachers would lie that the outside world was a meritocracy. That it was fair. You can tell how much of outside reality was penetrating into this mind and soul. In this existence, I studied and worked part time. There were no women. I was alone most of the time outside of the family. In this existence, I was waiting for life.

What was it that I was waiting for? I was waiting for a job that would take into account that I was one of the most intelligent and imaginative people in the world. A creative and satisfying, well paid and structured career with recognition for myself and the community of The Oppressed, the Dalits, the low castes. I was waiting for a salon. A circle of intellectuals, artists, musicians and writers all around me. We would speak of cultured things. Live an unconventional life. And above all, what was this watcher of Indian films and their romances waiting the most for? It was love. It was The Woman.

And now? I am still waiting for all of those things. I am still waiting for life.

But that is not to say that I have not tried to make all of those things that I wanted from life.

I have been working in arts and culture for about four and a half years. I have made a significant contribution to the institutions that I have worked for, in both employment and in volunteering. I have been the initiator of a tours project, I have been a curator, I have managed events and people in the cultural industries, I have worked to enhance visitor experience. What has been missing here is the recognition and the reward. And that is an ongoing project.

What about the salon? My friends are teachers, psychologists, architects, scholars in Art History, leaders in charities, and doctors. I have cultured friends that come to me to art galleries, that discuss literature with me. That I can have deep conversations with. And the artists, intellectuals and writers? There, friendship has not worked. I have made the effort but they have not wanted to be friends. And that is an ongoing project.

What about love? The one thing that I waited and longed for so many years and sleepless nights? That is an ongoing project. Privacy permits me to say no more. There are some lines from an Indian film, one of my favourite songs ‘Har Funn Maula’ (Jack of all Trades):

Itni haseeno pe kitni dafa yeh dola

He has fallen for many beautiful women

Phir bhi fakeeron ka pehne huye hai chola

But still he’s dressed like a faqir (holy man in rags that has renounced the material world)

In India, they say that the fruit of patience is sweet. This patience has lasted for a lifetime so the fruit should be the sweetest of all. One waits for life. It is the man’s lot. He waits for this woman. Where is she? Rouging her cheeks and lips, scrutinising her loveliness in a mirror, flowing perfume upon her beautiful form. The man waits at the door. He saunters in front of the house. He even tries to walk up and down the block a bit. His life and his love is there and he is here. She is here and he is there. He waits for his life. And she? She is always elsewhere. Always somewhere else. But despite that, the dreamer and the poet tries to make her appear. He dreams of his reunion with life, this life that he imagined. Through work and service, he lives in his dream. This is what it means to wait for life.