07.11.2026
S: Every ugly action is always explained by charisma.
A: In what sense?
S: You do not have an opinion on this?
A: I would like to hear your first.
S: Russel Brand has just been convicted of rape and sexual offences against women. Why did he get away with it for so long? Undoubtedly because he was powerful and the women were scared to speak up. But also because he is supposed to have had charisma.
A: I can tell from the way you said that that you don’t think that he had any charisma.
S: None of these people do. You would have to be an imbecile to believe so. I remember the sheer disbelief I had at the time that women were actually attracted to this guy and thought he was a hearththrob. He looked dirty and seemed arrogant. But then, I am different to everyone else. I have never been someone that ‘got’ coolness. I didn’t think it was cool to smoke at school, or to do bad things. I looked down on those people.
A: You are a square.
S: But to get to the point. Let us talk about politics. Those buffoons that appeal to the lowest common denominator like Farage, Trump and Boris Johnson, they are also supposed to have charisma. I absolutely don’t agree. To me they are nothing less than dangerous clowns. Yet the public actually listen to them because of their so-called charisma. It was the same with Hitler. It is a characteristic of facism and racism that the leaders are thought of as charismatic. There is nothing more ugly in this world than what is thought of as charismatic.
A: Who then do you think is charismatic?
S: If I were going to think of an example, it would be someone like Tom Cruise. Because you hang on to every word that he says in a performance. He is charismatic and has a personal magnetism. But that is all a performance. Because he is an actor. David Attenborough has charisma. Because he is hard working and because he knows his subject.
A: So, in the whole world, those are the only two examples that you can think of?
S: This charisma stuff does not work on me. I have told you. And do you know why it does not work? Because I studied Thucydides, one of my favourite Ancient Greek authors when I was a schoolboy. And he hated the demagogues. I have had this distrust inculcated into me. All of these people, like ‘Teflon Tony’ and David Cameron. I was repulsed by them when the public was fawning over them. Because power does not attract me. The powerful cannot seduce me.
A: I have known you for a while. Are you sure about that? All of your pursuits are quite middle class. You pursue culture obsessively through museums, art galleries and theatre.
S: You forget India. I watch Hindi movies. That is not middle class. You forget that I read everything, not just what the middle class read. And why should art and culture be for the middle class only? I am the challenge that says that they are for all. The only power that has seduced me is the Dark Mother. She who is power herself, her name is Shakti or ‘Power’, the Mother Goddess, the Warrior Queen. And the one I model myself on, the one that I fight for? She is the poor, foreign woman in a strange land. The one that is powerless. In literature and thought, I am Euripides. I have never forgotten where I come from or what I owe. I am the voice of The Oppressed, the Dalits, the Untouchables.
