A: You always celebrate the festivities of others.
S: It is the Indian way. We are connected to the whole of humanity. We are what is inclusivity and diversity.
A: What did you do?
S: The orchid festival at Kew Gardens which I did with a lady was about the role of orchids and The Four Gentlemen in Confucian philosophy. I leant about Chinese symbolism and fashion, Chinese painting, Chinese ways. There were exquisite sights.
A: Then?
S: At the Old Royal Naval College, in the Painted Hall, I had a Chinese tea tasting session. I sat with strangers discussing the merits of the concoctions learning how to make them and the polite way to drink them. The beautiful Chinese lady that served me told me that my Chinese was excellent when I thanked her.
A: Anything more?
S: The next day, I went to the National Maritime museum with two friends. I watched Chinese dancing, listened to traditional Chinese music and watched the lion dance. The children of the Chinese in Britain had come en masse, all dressed in red. It was a glorious sight.
A: You have become Chinese over the past few days.
S: I almost was Chinese by love.
A: Almost Chinese. But you have remained Indian.
S: India can match with any culture in this world and become more beautiful. She will make any culture her own. That is the splendor of India and her Punjabi son, The Tiger.
S: The poet is raised on poetry. And this world is raised on prose. All there will be is misunderstanding.
A: You say that? But you write. You write incessantly. If you did not believe that there would be one that understood, why would you write?
S: Can you not write knowing full well that you will be misunderstood?
A: It seems pointless.
S: What is of point in this life? The average person in this culture is working to make even more money for the rich. What could be more pointless than that?
A: You believe that you have a destiny though.
S: My destiny is to have been born amongst those that cannot and will not understand.
A: Make them understand.
S: You cannot give intelligence to stupidity and ignorance. You cannot talk to those that will not listen. Arrogance makes them impenetrable.
A: Why then write?
S: The truth is the truth. My truth. I am the truth. I am my truth. The truth will out.
A: Why become Sisyphus?
S: All there is is Sisyphus. There is no one else. And, do you know what? This has been the problem of the writer in every age. The true writer, the writer that is true. They are centuries ahead of their time. Because common sense is common stupidity. The herd think in ignorance. They are cheap thoughts. Not worthy of men. They cannot catch up with the real men, the real writer. If the real writer is saved from the ravages of time, then men look at them and think that this was a real man in the midst of the herd. They say that these men were ahead of their time.
A: You are so egotistical it is unbelievable. You worship yourself.
S: I know my place in the world of thought. I am a genius. I am what has come through six thousand years and more of Indian civilisation.
A: Even Indian people do not agree with you.
S: There are few that can agree with a genius. They are not on the same level.
S: In the love songs of the Hindi films, the male lover is always telling the woman lover that he will bring her the moon and the stars.
A: A lover’s conceit?
S: Of course, literally speaking, he can never bring her the moon and the stars.
A: True. And what about her? Does she ever offer to bring the male lover the moon and the stars?
S: I’ve never heard it.
A: Why talk of the moon and the stars? We are on earth?
S: What would you like him to say? This is poetry. And it has its own meaning.
A: Which is?
S: That the lover will bring his beloved heaven.
A: Absolute falsity.
S: You lack the spirit of romance. It is entirely true. He will bring her the moon and the stars.
A: In what sense.
S: He will bring her heaven upon earth. That is what love is.
A: You have too much of the spirit of romance.
S: Romance jostles with pessimism and cynicism. Love can be entirely hell and the complete opposite of heaven.
A: So why do you support the poetry in these Hindi film songs?
S: Without love, what else is there? Life is insipid and bland without love. It is love that gives life its character.
A: Says you. There are plenty around that won’t love and will never be willing to love.
S: Bland food sells in copious quantities in the supermarkets. Those with the bland tastes of the bland cannot stomach the taste or the food of life which is love.
A: It always veers off into criticism.
S: You criticise love. I criticise the lack of love and what masquerades as love when it is hate. I am Indian. I am the philosopher of love. I am the lover. I am one that lives through the storm and the fire.
A: What song would you sing? What words?
S: Forever I have sought the spark inside the ice/
S: He is back with a bang, my screen idol, Sunny Deol. The Punjabi actor that is me and I am him.
A: He acts. You live.
S: Whatever he is off screen, on the screen he is the ideal of Punjab. He is The Tiger. He is The Voice. He is Anger. And he is Justice.
A: So, I take it you watched Border 2?
S: In this film is the philosophy of the Punjabi. That the warrior is first and foremost a lover. He fights because he is full of love. And the army? It works because of love. Each man is a brother. He is full of love for his brother.
A: This film glorifies war.
S: Does it? It shows the sacrifices that you have to make for war. It shows why you have to protect the people. Because of love. There are those that would rule the world with this oppression. There has to be a man to fight them. The hero. Counting on others to do the right thing always leads to the wrong results.
A: What is the most striking moment of this film?
S: There are many. When the dead man calls on the power of The Mother to fight the enemy. Durga, the Invincible, The Mother Queen. The one I think of the most is when the enemies taunt my hero Sunny Deol. They have killed his only son who was also in the Indian army. They tell him that they will kill him just like they butchered his child. Sunny Deol is silent. He seems defeated. Then we hear the roar of The Tiger. Sunny Deol explodes. He tells them that he will kill them. He tells them that the martyr inspires courage and not fear.
A: You think about this?
S: Does it surprise you? Is it not strange? Instead of fearing death, the hero charges towards it. Instead of saving himself, he saves the world. When he thinks of the dead soldier, he thinks about revenge for the dead soldier. That is the mark of the hero. That is why I am Sunny Deol. Because I run into the face of danger. Because the martyr does not fill me with fear but with courage.
A: You are in love with death.
S: In this death there is glory. We come from the honour culture. The highest honour is that of the warrior, the one that fights to protect Mother Earth and The People.
A: Instead of controlling and managing your anger, you venerate it. You worship revenge.
S: I worship The Dark Mother. She was filled with bloodlust for her enemies. She was uncontrollable. She wiped off sin from the face of the world. We come from the revenge culture. We are Punjabi. Touch one of us and there will be hell to pay. In the film, they say that if they kill thousands of Indians, then we will run away because we are cowards. They give them the answer. If you kill our men all of India will come for payback.
S: It was a question of a few days ago. After quite a while, I had a whole day of ease.
A: You work hard.
S: Luxury does not sit well with the warrior, with the people.
A: Do not work yourself to death.
S: There is much to do. To change. I was walking into a park to feel The Mother’s kiss, our Earth Mother in my eyes and my breaths.
A: Then?
S: Out of the periphery of my vision, like a dog there came a bark from a stout, grey fellow. He told me to do some work.
A: What was he?
S: He was the fun stopper. He would stand in front of a park and bark work. He would destroy pleasure. He would destroy the connection with nature.
A: And you? The Tiger, The Animal? What did you?
S: At first I did not hear this clown. I did not understand. Then, when comprehension came, I turned and fell on him. I looked up at him with these eyes of marvel and magic – he was much taller than me – and told him what he was. I swore at him. I told him that I had seven jobs and asked him how many he had.
A: What was the return?
S: Fear and cowardice. None can stand before the wrath of The Tiger.
A: So, you stopped the fun stopper’s fun?
S: This rage would have done more. But alas, we live in a country of no honour. I saw him skulking there, looking for others. There are those that would be the bone in the kebab and then also want to be the fart that comes close to you when you are eating the kebab.
A significant barrier to Higher Education for international students from areas of high poverty is that most of these courses are taught in English and have requirements such as the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) or IELTS (the International English Language Testing System) English proficiency exams [1]. International students are required to produce an acceptable level of English at the application stage before consideration for courses.
In the UK, the Home Office has waived the IELTS test for citizens of 18 countries where English is seen as an official language. However, the IELTS is still widely taught in Commonwealth countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, India, and Malaysia [2]. In these countries, cost would be a barrier to social mobility for many since just taking the exam for IELTS costs around two hundred pounds [3]. This is a sum which can be a challenge for students from developing countries.
Students therefore have to spend more money on acquiring English as a language with formal qualifications when it is already difficult for them to raise the funds for a degree abroad in the first place. In addition, gaining the level of English proficiency required to pass them requires a considerable financial and time investment. Therefore, in contrast to English native speakers, the international student community has to invest much more resources in gaining an internationally recognised degree. They have a considerable disadvantage which is heightened by the fact that many come from countries where students may not have many financial resources due to high levels of unemployment and poverty.
Singapore’s Mandarin Programs
The People’s Republic of China and India remain the biggest sources of internationally mobile students, together accounting for around 30% of numbers between 2018 and 2022 [4]. This year, four universities in Singapore, namely NTU, SMU, SUTD and SUSS, have launched new postgraduate programmes in Mandarin which would appeal to Chinese international students [1]. For such students, this therefore eliminates the need for acquiring formal English qualifications at a cost. Furthermore, compared to the US and the UK, university fees in Singapore are relatively lower and therefore more affordable [1]. According to one student on the course, an MBA degree in the US would cost about 1 million yuan (US$140,000), whereas a one-year course in Singapore costs roughly half that amount [5]. The offer appears to cut cost for higher education courses for those that can speak Chinese.
Expanding Access to International Study
Singapore’s policy may offer widened access to higher education for the less privileged. As Jason Tan, associate professor at NTU’s National Institute of Education, Policy, Curriculum and Leadership suggested to Singapore’s CNA938 radio show: “the choice of studying overseas is no longer a privilege only for richer people. We’re getting a much broader spectrum now of families in China who are thinking of a postgraduate overseas degree for their children.” [6]
The social experiment may enable wider access to higher education in Singapore and bring in a greater diversity of students around the world who are not limited by cost considerations to study abroad. Higher education is one of the most certain routes for achieving social mobility and therefore for reducing poverty around the world [7]. A recent study has also shown that foreign-educated graduates can reduce extreme poverty in low and middle-income countries [8]. As Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at Oxford University, Maia Chankseliani has stated: ‘Returnees use the skills and knowledge they gain abroad to drive local innovations and contribute to societal changes, which can lead to systemic poverty reduction over time’.
S: I went to watch a theatre play, The Ophiolite. It was at this theatre which seemed to have quite a few Greek plays on. Probably someone Greek on the team out there.
A: Would you do Indian plays if you had a theatre?
S: Most probably. Who else does them in London? The sad truth of the world is that you have to do things for yourself that no one else would do. That is the state of humanity. You would like to do everything for everyone. But in fact, you are only allowed to and only can do things for yourself. You would like to be included with everyone. But you can never really be included anywhere else but in the small world that you came from.
A: But you have those from outside your world, your friends, the one that is yours. How can you say this?
S: We are talking about theatre. We are talking about representation. We are talking about the wider world. Not the world of intimacy.
A: You write plays. You are always writing dialogues.
S: Is it a dialogue? Or is it a conversation with the self?
A: What did you make of this play, The Ophiolite?
S: I sat there with a belly full of Turkish kebabs. Hearing them talking about the Turks.
A: Come, I will ask again. What did you make of this play?
S: Greek culture is like Indian culture. We are the ancient cultures that exist into the present.
A: The Greeks do not think that they are Indian.
S: They are our children. We are the most ancient culture.
A: I’m sure the Chinese would beg to differ.
S: We Punjabis, we are the fathers of this world. We are the ones that invented the mathematics that would shape the world. We invented the university and every form and structure of learning that followed.
A: Come to the play.
S: It is about the family. It is about The Mother. It is about the Orphan. It is about Cyprus. It is about love across cultures. It is about how Britain tries to shape the children that come from a marriage across cultures. It is about family and its delusions, its grasp of total purity. It is about the clash of cultures, about the seismic tectonic clash of cultures. It is about mourning. It is about inheritance. It is about Antigone. It is not about Oedipus. It is about Elektra. It is about dying. It is about the law. It is about deceit and it’s relationship with love. It is about fairness. It is about colonialism. It is about postcolonialism, although there is no postcolonialism and only colonialism. It is about romanticism and truth. It is a metacommentary on the theatre tradition from Ancient Greece to Chekov. It is about the nature of understanding and misunderstanding. Above all, the play is about anger.
A: You are the angry. You are the one that rages. You are The Tiger. Only you could understand this play.
S: Only the honour culture understands this play. Because it is fundamentally about honour. Honouring the dead. And honouring the father.
A: If this is about your culture, then why do you say that the Greeks do not think they are Indian?
S: Ask the Greeks why they think so.
A: What did you make of this play?
S: It was the unfolding of passion. It was deep. It was the expression of rage and separation. It was the contest of power between the entities in the play. The younger against the older. The young as the hope for the future. The tense relationship between tradition and modernity, belonging and individualism. The meaning of the nature of freedom in a colonial context. And the law’s orchestration of this freedom and the future.
A: You see much.
S: I am India. We are the Eye of the World. We are the Voice of the World. And we are the Heart of the World.
A: You are performing. You would talk about a play within a play, like Shakespeare.
S: Shakespeare was not as inventive as I am. Because my life is the most engrossing drama that has ever been concocted. Pieces of interest make up this metalwork that is my existence.
A: What do you look at when you watch this play?
S: I watch the drama of the face as the expressions dance upon it. I watch the dance of the bodies and the hands and the legs. I watch the postures adopted. The actions taken. It was all energetic. The acting was electric.
A: Was it natural?
S: The intensity was unnatural. That is why it was conflict and drama. This electricity would confound the world.
A: You too have this intensity within you. You are far from natural. And you play with words which none can stand.
S: He that is the poet would play. He that is the fire would erupt.
A: And in the ending of this play, what was there?
S: Hope. And love.
A: A good ending?
S: I would question whether there was ever hope.
A: You have told me that you are an optimist.
S: I am a realist and a cynic.
A: You would question if there was love?
S: I am the lover and the poet. I am love. I am the god of love. How could I deny my own existence?
A: Well, it is well then that you watched a play about love on Valentine’s Day.
S: They often write of love. They often act of love. But the question is, do they love? And of that, there is no certainty.
I was writing to Alfonso. Always Alfonso. I was relating the adventures of the day. He was interested. There were others who were too, for who knows what reasons? Whatever love they had, they would not show it.
In one of the choices of life that make up your everyday existence, I made this choice. That I would choose life over books. Books that are so intoxicating, so stimulating. But that cannot give you love. The company that they give you is fine. But it is not the feel and the sight of that which is most beautiful and most human. It is because of this choice that I dedicated this day to doing and not to reading.
After waking up, I read newspapers and poetry in Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, Spanish and French. I also read The New Scientist and articles on psychology. There was a very interesting article about the communication network between the organs in the body. Life is about communication. So we communicate. Some of us are understood. Some of us are not. But with me, there is one that makes the attempt to understand. It took an eternity to find them.
In the morning, I went to the Tower of London. There were a group of twenty of us. I have seen this place from afar so many times and now I was going to be inside. It was a fine day although the promise was of rain. As I went inside, I saw that they had launched a children’s trail with Beano comics, comics that I read as a kid. Some familiar faces to guide me in. We started off with the history of the White Tower and I learnt that William of Normandy was the son of a skinner’s daughter. So am I. Our caste in India is of the Untouchables, the leather workers. Inside, after what seemed like a long time inside the armoury and its extensions, I wandered off from the group and went to admire the Crown Jewels. After all, from an Indian perspective, they are ours. They are mine. I was looking at my things. Someone was looking after them for me. The pernicious state that could act as the steward for no one. I looked upon the Kohi Noor, the Mountain of Light. They took it from us, from the hands of a Punjabi child that they forced to bow before them. A stone of rare beauty.
Inside one of the buildings, there was the chapel of the Normans. It was one of the most beautiful places I have seen in my life. I was hypnotised by it. I enjoyed reading about the role of the Tower in the world war and also about the animals that they would keep there. In the imprisonment room, I spent a while reading the grafitti. The message that struck me most was that it is not adversity that overcomes men, but impatience. Watch and wait. That is the secret of wisdom. That is why we hold onto life. Reading the exhibit of how the state had crushed the spirit of resistance was invigorating. They could never kill our resistance. We were difference. And difference you can never crush. The man that was standing in this Tower was one of a long line of those who fought for independence, those willing to take on the biggest bully, the gangster that coerced with duress and evil.
Afterwards, I mooched around in the gift shop for a moment, admiring the replica of a skull and trying to see all of this through the eyes of a tourist. They were awed by British sovereignty. And I? I was repelled by it.
The Lucien Freud exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery was next. I have never been overly a fan of his work and the supposed psychological depth of his brush. However, I am also always willing to give everyone a chance to prove themselves. Why not? This world that does not give me chances, I cannot become as corrupt as it. Because I am fair where they are not. What I made of the exhibition was that it was certainly passable and certainly striking. Looking at the green, grey and blue tints in the flesh of the sitters, at all of the pictures of his lovers and the intensity of his gaze with its distortions, did I feel anything? I could see the originality and the concentration on observation. Yet I could not see the connection. The mother of the artist had salvaged his brightly coloured doodles in crayon as a child and I spent a while contrasting the mature work with that of the boy. He had lost the feel for colour and gone for moody and sombre tones. But he had retained that simplicity of style.
Seeing the artist’s long row of lovers and then the failures of his romances was sombering. I wondered to myself why there were so many marriages and divorces. And then, his work, it could be seen as the dance of attraction and repulsion as things fell apart. One unfinished painting suggesting the death of the relationship.
At Charing Cross Library, there was an exhibition of Chinese Children’s costumes. There were wonderful fabrics and designs displayed on the balcony of the library. Brilliant colours which captured the identity of the peoples. One story I found absolutely fascinating was that of the Miao people, who wore history upon their textiles in the face of nomadism and the lack of a written language.
At the library, I also picked up a copy of The Motorcycle Diaries by Che Guevera that was on the sale pile. After all, what I am I but the Revolutionary? I also had a dream when I was a teenager of riding on a motorcycle all through Europe. But I did not do it. Because I had too many responsibilities and I was in a hurry to get things done. To work. But then, I come from a different background. I am not of the middle class. I am Indian. Yet I have the love of freedom too. And that is because I am Indian, because I am Punjabi. I read about fifty pages of the book while commuting to and fro from places. Che has a beautiful style. At heart, like The Tiger, he is a poet.
The last stop of the day was with friends. They were suffering politics. They were suffering the state. And yet, they got on with life. And this is the thing. The state will always be there to wreck everyone’s life. But we will still get on with things. We will still live. Even though the state is death. We sat in this coffee house. They had mocha, I had hot chocolate. And we talked and talked. We have missed each other. We talked about old times. We talked about things now. We talked about the future. As I looked into their faces, I thought to myself that a face is not a visual object. It is a fantastic projection. It is all the memories together that replay when you look at the face of someone. That is what constructs the face.
I spent time afterwards looking at the floral arrangements in Selfridge’s for Valentines. Always learning. There were Ikibana exhibitions because the floral shop is now owned by the Japanese. I also looked over at the watch designs. Always looking and looking, always trying to find something in this world. I spent time on the phone with the one that is mine. Listening to their voice, listening to their day.
When I got home, I joined the Central tickets website and booked an excursion to the theatre tomorrow for Valentine’s day, a play about Cyprus and death. A dark play. The reality is that life is dark. But we fill it with light. This world is death. But we want to live.
A: You have the same story. The world entire is against you.
S: It is the truth. This world of injustice, conformity, stupidity and oppression is against genuine difference. Despite that, genuine difference exists. I am it.
A: They call you a relic and a mistake.
S: What are they? A miscalculated novelty.
A: How is this world against you?
S: They hate truth. I am the truth. They hate genius. I am the genius. They hate the poor and the oppressed. I am the poor and the oppressed. They hate our voice. I am the voice. They hate god. I am god. They hate men. I am the man. They hate the Revolution. I am the Revolution. They hate The Tiger. I am The Tiger. They hate India. I am India. They hate The Mother. No one can separate me from The Mother. I am her lover and son.
A: Their strategies?
S: Silencing. Or the attempt. Restriction. Repression. Deceit, lies. Slimy sneaky shittiness. A pretence at universality, fairness and meritocracy. Complete hypocrisy. Cowardice pure. Rejection, exclusion, marginalisation. False love. Lip service. Forever playing at being the victim when they are tyrants. Above all hate. That is what they are geniuses in, hate. They are fucking pieces of shit.
A: And against the whole world, you stand? What are a few scribbles going to do?
S: They cannot even stand the few scribbles. They try to erase those too. But the heart that is brave has no rival in this universe of cowards and non men.
A: They will never give you a fair fight.
S: Yet we will fight them with everything. We are The Tiger. It is our destiny. We are The Mother. This world is won through culture, not their arrogance. Jai Maa Kali! Hail the Dark Mother!
India has been called the ‘world’s first successful poor democracy’ [1]. The majority of low income countries failed to sustain experiments with democracy. The Subcontinent is an exception to the usual rule. In some countries, military dictatorships took root, while elsewhere one-party states or ethnic autocracies developed [2]. What is the impact of poverty on democracy in India?
While there has been attention to its growing importance in world trade, India can still be described as a low income country because of its per capita income, which does not compare with that of advanced democracies. Furthermore, there is a patchy distribution of public goods such as healthcare, education and infrastructure [3]. Whatever the force of these challenges, India has had a working mass democracy for over 75 years. Somehow, Indian democracy beats poverty. In fact, the impact of poverty on democracy in India is a constructive pressure.
Poverty’s Challenge to Democracy
What is poverty’s challenge to democracy, which India has overcome?
Based on empirical evidence, the UN writes that poverty and inequalities are major threats to democracy. [3] As many enduring poverty are also victims of injustice without legal redress, many of them distrust institutions of democracy. Confidence in institutions is also shaken by large and increasing disparities in equality. [4]
Interviews in the United Kingdom have indicated that people who have contended with poverty feel disconnection and alienation from political and governmental systems. They distrust the government and think that it cannot understand their lives, that it cannot hear their voices. [5]
Indian Democracy Beats Poverty
Democracy has thrived in India despite inequalities. In fact, the poor and disadvantaged castes cast more votes proportionally than the rich and the upper castes and even more so than those in developed democracies. [6] There is no lack of trust in democratic institutions. Indeed the poor have higher expectations of the state than those that are wealthier [7]. This faith of India’s poor and marginalised stems from the law’s requirement for the state to provide fair opportunities to all, whatever their caste, creed, religion, and economic status, and to actively work to eliminate these barriers [8]. As a result, the alleviation of poverty is a political necessity for politicians if they want to be elected and to stay in power. [9]
Democracy’s Challenge to Poverty
Research suggests that a country that switches to democracy achieves about 20% higher GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita over time (approximately in the next 30 years). [10] India’s belief in equality is what fuels its belief in democracy and the state and is what will eventually lead them to prosperity. The poor determine the structure of power in India and not the wealthy elites. This contribution of the poor and the marginalised is enshrined in the Indian principles of democracy which seek to create a society free of inequalities and with real fairness for all groups in society. What is the impact of poverty on democracy in India? In India, poverty cements democracy as hope for the people.
diary of a lone man 