accepted

01.04.2026

S: There are stages to the quest for acceptance.

A: This is a topic you speak much of.

S: Acceptance is what the brain is wired to seek out.

A: But you do not accept acceptance.

S: As I have said, there are stages. You are young. You seek it out. You have been misled by the teachings of the herd. But then, there comes a vision. The reality of the herd and what it means to be accepted. The betrayal of the self. The loss of the self. The death of authentic being.

A: You say this? You model yourself on The Tiger.

S: The Tiger is the ideal of India, of the Sikh community, of the Ravidasia community. The Tiger is unparalleled, matchless, the king of the jungle.

A: There is a fire in the jungle.

S: The Tiger is the master of the fire, of the waters, wind and the earth.

A: If you are acceptable then you will be loved.

S: This love is unacceptable.

A: Difference breeds hate.

S: You are wrong. Real difference breeds real love. The Tiger is love. Love of the son for The Mother. The warrior stands throughout human history as the difference between good and evil. The real man stands despite this decadence and corruption, this moment. His body and mind is strong. He bears suffering. The real man never goes out of fashion because he does not pander to the herd and its acceptances. History is the witness.

the writer does not know what the reader reads

31.03.2026

S: The writer does not know what the reader reads.

A: How so?

S: The fact is, that the reader hardly ever shares what they experience of the text. I am lucky. I am in research and write academic non-fiction. Therefore, I eventually hear what others have made of my work. And it is always positive. Because I work hard and I am extraordinarily intelligent.

A: The usual modesty.

S: Other people have said it. I merely echo their sentiments. You are allowed to be justifiably proud of your accomplishments. Because I am intelligent, I know my place in the world of thought. My best friend goes around telling his family and friends that I am an original thinker. I get good reviews for what I write. If I said it were the case and others didn’t agree with me, then that would be out of place. I’m not going to hide my genius under a bush. It is what other people want to be. I am it.

A: To get back to the topic and not your infernal vanity, why does it fascinate you so much what other people think about what you write.

S: There are those that hate it. They are not worth considering. There will always be haters. What is more interesting is those that read regularly. They are fascinated by what I write. They have been there for years and years reading. But what are they finding in this writing? Things have changed so much. Yet these people are reading and reading and reading. They want to be flooded by these words of mine. What emotions do they feel? What thoughts do they have? What is the identity of the author that they have built up in their minds?

A: You will never know. Because they will never tell you.

S: A villain to some, a hero to many. The author can only say what is in his heart. He stays true to his own heart. This is not a performance. This is life. Whatever reaction it arouses, envy, disdain, fear, contempt, adulation, praise. The author lives in a world that he considers vile, in a sickening climate of hate and conformity that he is too good for, in a world that he is much too good for but denies him his worth. Even though this world tells him to stop writing, that there is nothing for him, he writes. He is a writer. The writer is one that will defy this world and all of its rules, that will defy all for the sake of his voice. I am the real writer. I am what brings freedom into this world, the expression of the self. I am the one that retrieves the lost sense from this world, the lost self from this world. Whatever any reader thinks, I am the hero of this tale. The reader hears the voice of the hero and sees the deeds of the hero.

all before eight thirty in the morning

31.03.2026

A: You like listing things that you have done. Go ahead.

S: I’ll tell you what I did in the morning before 8.30 am.

A: Let’s see how much you were capable of.

S: On the train, I did language learning in German, Spanish, French, Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi. Reading poetry, dialogues and news stories. I also read the Metro newspaper, particularly on the Iran war which is affecting my friends. Then, I did the quick crossword and the anagrams on the puzzle page. Finally, I read a poem on the way up the escalator at Holborn, a woman’s poem about the body and its relationship to various metals.

A: Then?

S: First I bought a chicken and mushroom slice from Sainsbury’s, then I walked over to Ole and Steen and bought a £2 offer, which was a berry and pistachio treat. I got in to work then ate that with some tea in milk. Which was followed by working on my fashion photography and charity work by uploading some photographs to my social media after messaging my girlfriend.

A: More and more.

S: There is still more. Then, I wrote letters. I told my mentors in my academic discipline about the book review that I got for my first book and also thanked the academic that had taken his time to write such a glowing review.

A: I hesitate to ask. But is there more?

S: I haven’t even included everything. But there is more. Then I did some writing. And now, I am about to do some reading. Stendhal’s ‘The Red and the Black’. It is about love and power.

A: The work day has not even begun.

S: All hours of the day are work. Even play. Because I work to make that play happen and often the play is itself work. If we were not busy, then we would be dead. And then there would be quiet. That is the difference between the quick and the dead.

the time after work

30.03.2026

A: How was your evening?

S: Rushed. Everything is always rushed. There is a lot to do and no time to do it.

A: Have you not heard that phrase? If there is something to do, get a busy person to do it.

S: It is true.

A: So what were you up to?

S: I went to the gym where I did heavy weights, got some Rosemary and Mint oil for my hair at Superdrug as well as some Rosemary and Mint conditioner, did some window shopping in M & S, had dinner with my parents, wrote pen pal letters to two friends and applied for a management job. Messaged my girlfriend and two friends, including one who I’m discussing Shakespeare quotes with at the moment. Then, I played Scrabble, anagrams, a crossword and a jigsaw online. The last thing was writing.

A: Is that all you did out of work today?

S: No, I also listened to my Hindi music and visited the Oxfam bookshop.

A: You like to keep active and connected.

S: I wonder what it is all for. I am living life at a ferocious pace. It is all rush, rush, rush. I’m trying to fit many lives into one life. And still, there is never enough that is done. I have so many different writing projects, so many ideas in this head, so many secret knowledges that have not seen the light of day.

A: You often say that Faust got into heaven because he strove for it.

S: All of these things. Someone will look back at this one day. Wondering why this life was so busy and unrewarded. All that attempt at self-improvement which really comes to nothing in this cold and hostile world. All that genius that was wasted when I could have been extending the boundaries of human knowledge, when I could have been focusing on writing exclusively and on thinking and thinking.

A: Can you not relax?

S: Who would do all of my things for me then? How would I have a life outside of work and study and volunteering? It all has to be crammed together. Just cramming and cramming and cramming with no rest. The desire to have a good work and life balance, to have a gym routine, to fit in everyone that I know into things. The desire to keep this brain stimulated.

A: This energy that you have, it is like you are on cocaine.

S: Whatever it is, it is what my brain naturally produces. All on about six hours sleep every night.

fake friendship training

30.03.2026

S: These people around you that impede your progress, stop you doing anything, that will never give you what you have earnt…

A: Yes?

S: They expect you to be friendly to them.

A: You are not?

S: Why? I am real. They can keep their fakeness to themselves. I don’t have a heart full of jealousy and hate.

A: You are not jealous?

S: To be jealous I would have to want to be like them. I don’t. I only want to be The Tiger. We are gods. They are only men. Why would the god want to be a man?

A: Be nice.

S: There is no fruit for niceness with the enemy. Have you watched the film Dhurandhar (‘The Master of the Field’)? He has to befriend his enemies. He has to become their greatest friend. Even to love and marry their daughter. He has to be trained to be fake. That is how he achieves revenge.

A: You will not do so?

S: It is loathsome. He is the pawn of the state. I am not. I am free. I am the village. I am Punjab. I am The Tiger. I treat the enemy like the enemy. That is what they deserve. All that they deserve.

the survey of love between the oranges and purples

29.03.2026

S: Have you heard the story of the survey of love between the oranges and purples?

A: No.

S: Of course you haven’t. I just made it up in my head.

A: Do tell.

S: There were more purples than oranges. The purples dominated everything and had the most of everything. But one day, the purples decided that they would ask the oranges how loved they felt in their community. But at the same time, they cheated. Because the purples would ask the question to themselves as well and dominate the answer.

A: Why?

S: To pretend that they loved them better. To pretend that they cared if the oranges felt loved. It was pure lip service.

A: And?

S: There were about a fifth of oranges in this community. And four fifths were purple.

A: The results of this survey?

S: It was completely predictable. Four fifths of the community thought that the oranges were adequately loved. And one fifth did not think that the oranges were adequately loved. So, going by the majority decision, they decided that they did not need to love the oranges any more or show them any more love.

A: Quelle surprise! The mathematics of the abomination of ‘democracy’, the plaything of the majority.

S: Now you know what counts for truth in this society. It is a pack of lies, hypocrisy and lip service.

Farthing Downs and Happy Valley – 27.03.2026

39,000 steps/17.31 miles (equivalent to 66.6 circuits of a soccer pitch)

Birds seen: parakeets, crows, possibly a raven, blue tits, pigeons, goldfinch, starlings

Highlights

The Flint Game

Strewn about all over this area, there were pieces of flint. We are hypothesising that the area might have been a major hub for prehistoric man. We were talking about the craftsmanship required to make the flints into weapons and then, suddenly, I had the idea that we should each of us have a go at doing it.

So my friend and I picked up two pieces of flint, one piece smaller and one piece larger and we placed the smaller piece onto a piece of flint that was embedded in the ground. Then, we struck at the corners and edges of the smaller piece of flint with the bigger. Unlike in cinema, there were no sparks. We were both wearing our glasses as eye protection. My friend went first and he struck out a piece quite quickly. I put it into my pocket and felt it. It was incredibly sharp. I did my piece next. It took a few goes to get going as I wasn’t firmly onto the embedded flint bed but then a satisfying sharp tooth came off. We had both reconnected with our prehistoric past. I kept both the pieces and now they are on my bookshelf in my bedroom. A reminder of what? Our ancestry? The trip? Friendship?

The Chaldon Doom Painting

After getting slightly lost, we entered Chaldon Church which was a pretty construction to do the art part of our walk. We were going to see the Chaldon Doom painting. This had been created by a monk that fancied himself as an artist and was about the sins, a bit like Hieronymous Bosch’s masterpiece, ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’.

As we entered, we came across two friends, R. and A. One was a young woman with dyed blonde hair who was the very picture of silence. The other was a stout man with black hair that chatted to us amiably about the mural because he was a local. His first words to me was that we are all a part of god so that we are all gods, a statement fit for a church. He had watched a video on YouTube about it and chatted to my friend about what he knew while I studiously read the labelled diagram of the mural and read the extended curator label about it.

The mural was reddish and quite ugly, although interesting to look at at the same time. The church was not particularly impressive but it was a novel experience to go to look at art and actually find a stranger that you could talk to about it. It never happens in London.

The View from Farthing Down

At the top of Farthing Down, there was this stone compass which pointed out all of the things on the wonderful view that you could get from this vantage point. We were looking at the mast for Crystal Palace, at Canary Wharf and also trying to see what else we could get our eyes onto. After you struggle up a hill, the view is the reward. And the rest and the sense of accomplishment that goes with it.

The Hive Garden in Coulsdon South Library

Noticing that there was a library around when we got into Coulsdon South, we decided to go in and check out the Ordinance Survey maps for our walk. Then, when we circled back to it to get on track onto our walk and were walking past, I noticed a charming little garden to its side. It was a delightful little construction, with little statuettes of fairies strewn about for the children. There was a wonderful yellow bench and it was wondderfully organised. Such a pleasant place for reading in the summer. We only spent a few minutes there but it was a lovely experience.

The Beauty of the Woods

We walked past decaying logs overlaid with green, green moss, past Yew trees and also delightful looking fungal growths on the ground. It was much warmer in the woods than in the outside world and also there was no rain like there was in the exposed elements. It was the usual but always relaxing and soothing immersion in nature. The birdsong was particularly beautiful, incredibly loud too. Like a concert that nature had put on for us specially.

Coffee in the morning

When we were drinking in Caffe Nero, we had a conversation with the Irish barrista. It turned out that the owner of the cafe was actually a Londoner and that he had only gone to Milan for university.

The Museum in the Pub

When we stopped for a drink at about two o’clock, the table where we sat in the pub had a framed document from the king at the end of the war, thanking the schoolchildren for their share in the hardship and struggles of the war. It told the children that they were worthy members of the sacrifices and the grit of the nation. This was an insight into that momentous time and the lives of the schoolchildren who lived then.

the worship of anger and the master of the field

27.03.2026

S: Recently, Imran Khan, a failed actor with no good films of his own and, really, a non-entity in Hindi film who was there because of his famous uncle, criticised Ranveer Singh, the hero of Dhurandhar 2 (‘The Master of the Field’). Khan said that he didn’t want to do any films portraying an angry man and this version of masculinity.

A: Thoughts? Are we preparing for another diatribe?

S: The thought is that we get all these people that are against anger. It is their culture. They want to kill anger. They think they are better than other people because they don’t have anger. They act like anger is a false emotion. In fact, anger is the most real of the emotions.

A: Proof?

S: Look at the Christian idea that you should turn the other cheek. And I remember reading a summary of a book that said the ancient writers all talked about expelling anger from the collective psyche. There is a conspiracy against anger.

A: People do not worship anger like you do.

S: I do worship anger. I worship the Dark Mother, Maa Kaali. Whose bloodlust is uncontrollable.

A: Why?

S: Do you know why The Mother has four arms? Because she is strength personified. Anger gives you energy. In the film that Imran Khan mocked, Ranveer Singh (a fellow Punjabi) says that not everyone can attain revenge. For revenge you have to have courage and energy. That’s what the film says. It is anger that gives you energy.

A: Proof?

S: Look at me. I am motivated by rage. Absolute rage. A rage that is unthinkable in this society. I got up after three or so years of debilitating illness because the Mother Goddess, Maa Kaali came to me. To get my revenge. I do seven paid jobs, more volunteering work on top of that, university study, a girlfriend, family commitments including mentoring and teaching my nephew. It is driven by absolute rage. The energy of anger. The energy of the Revolutionary.

A: You are Dhurandhar? The Master of the Field?

S: If it is not the Punjabi Tiger, who is it then? Certainly not Imran Khan. He can go back to his non-existence as an actor. India has rejected him. Me? They have accepted. I am their hero.

the days of great sadness

25.03.2026

We had just finished some ice cream topped with chocolate buds, chocolate sweets and then both chocolate and raspberry sauce. Alfonso shone with the shine of a satiated stomach. I was telling him about Dhurandar 2 (The Brave Hero 2), which I had watched last night.

‘The film finished at about quarter past midnight.’

‘What time did you get home?’

‘Almost one. I went to sleep at about half past one in the morning.’

‘Why do you watch these action films? It is just violence and revenge.’

‘You are wrong. They are about honour. They are about protecting the family. They are about the duty of being a man and a hero, about attaining your revenge. They are about sacrifice and true grit. They are about energy and power. They are the films that relay our culture, the warrior culture. The hero is Punjabi. It is always about us. We are the superheroes of India and this world.’

‘Well I hope you indulged your bloodlust. You are going about London doing everything there is to do in this city. I hope you are happy.’

‘I have met my girlfriend many times recently. But despite this happiness, these are the days of absolute sadness. The days of great sadness. We look at his world. This wretched world. The real peace and happiness would be in death. This struggle that has gone on forever, this struggle for status and honour, for a just reward, for true diversity and equality, for the community, this endless striving. Then and finally then, it would be over. It is the days of death. We remember the ones that have died, our most beloved.’

‘And what philosophy is there to counter sadness?’

‘There is nothing that can counter sadness. There is nothing that can counter the suffering that The Oppressed have to face in this world. We fight our hardest against a cowardly and dishonourable foe. The whole world is our enemy.’

‘One man cannot fight the entire world.’

‘From birth, you contend with the fairness of the allocation of resources. Milk, love, food, money, recognition, power and status. If I had ever been content with the share that I received, that we have received, then I would lay down my arms. Then I would forget my sadness, our sadness. But this resource allocation has always been unfair. It is unfair. And therefore, The Tiger bares his teeth. He shows his claws. In the essence of The Tiger there is this great gaping wound, sadness.’

‘You who have chased every happiness, you have everything noble and great in this world, everything, how can you be sad? You are the most fortunate. You are the one they envy. Hindu philosophy says sadness and happiness are unreal. Emotion is a cloud.

‘Humne apnein shakaal ke dorh dikhai gaheen aini ke gum mein

Chahein hai humnein uske tudkhrein ekh mudat sein’.

‘We have seen the run of our shape in the sadness of the mirror

We have wanted its shards for an age’.

the masala film

24.03.2026

S: Have you heard of this phrase, the masala film? The spice film.

A: What does it mean?

S: This film has everything in it. Tragedy, melodrama, comedy, action, music, dance and songs. It has been the typical Indian film.

A: How can something be everything?

S: This is an Indian tradition. It is also said that The Mahabharata, the ancient Indian epic, that it also has everything in it.

A: Why everything? How can you bear it?

S: It is the temperament of India. Instead of narrow focus, everything is included. Instead of discrete categories, we have an overlap. We are alive with all life’s richness and nuance. They fight. We clap. They love. We laugh. They cry. We are sad.

A: And your writing?

S: It is also limitless rather than limited. It is also wide rather than narrow. It is also life and not shrinking. There is more and more, never less.

A: This pride in India, can it be justified?

S: Yes. Not the state, which we hate. But the people, the spirit of the Indian artist. The one that is the true Indian, the philosopher, the lover and the poet. No one knows the oppression but us the people that have been oppressed. Yet still, there is the love of freedom which is the mark of freedom, the connection with life and the cosmos. The more of India.