Category: Uncategorised

your life is quite funny (microfiction)

26.08.2025

In that beautiful suit of his that was from some fine and expensive haberdasher, Alfonso was chortling away to himself in the corner. The smiles were radiant, but so also was that hair of his, that full, thick hair of which I was so envious at my age. I used to have hair like that. He smelt wonderful. Some guy on the street had given him an armful of perfume samples and he was wearing the sample apparently. He had given me one just yesterday.

‘Your life is quite funny.’

‘I’m glad you find it amusing.’

‘Look at all the places that you have gone to find love. Cultural institutions. Acting and improvisation workshops. Volunteering in a play with six hundred volunteers. Clubs for learning. Events all around London. Flower shows. Even a floristry course. You’ve been doing it for three years. All that time, effort, distance, investment. Anywhere but a pub or a bar where you would actually find someone. It is laughable. You are undateable. Nobody cares if you have anything in common with them.’

‘It looks like it.’ What was the point of arguing? He was right. I was going to be alone forever. I had given up. There was no one in my life. I was living in a loveless world. At least he was finding some enjoyment out of my situation.

‘So I guess,’ Alfonso continued, in his casual and cruel manner, ‘that you are going to tell me about how everyone is against you, how everyone devalues you, how much you are suffering and how you do not fit into this world?’

‘It is my usual repertoire.’

‘What do you think went wrong in your life?’

‘Do you know,’ I asked Alfonso, ‘how many medicines I am on? It is a lot. And all those medical problems come from rejection. That is what started everything off. Yet despite the pain and the things I go through, I am carrying on, working and volunteering in all these places. I have a finger in almost every pie. Because I am strength and will. I am named after a god and The Tiger. They look to me for protection and inspiration. The people expect.’

‘You were rejected, so you are sick.’

‘Those problems are going to plague me all my life. Yet it doesn’t stop anyone from rejecting me. They cannot face the brutality of the rejection that I have had to face. When you are rejected by someone you love so much, it is a dagger into your brain and into your heart. That ‘no’ has wrecked me.’

Suddenly, Alfonso stopped smiling. He had actually winced. ‘To be alone is not so bad. You cannot be like them. Therefore they do not like you. Forget about it.’

‘What else is there to do? I am trying to forget. From a mind that remembers much.’

‘You have not tried dancing. Dance. Meet someone there.’

‘The leg…’

‘After the doctor looks at it, dance. You will be fine. Come on, let us talk about something happy and hopeful.’

‘Hopefully I will die soon.’

Alfonso shook his head at me. ‘Don’t be naughty. A warrior hopes for a glorious death in battle. Not to ease his problems.’

‘You want hope? University will start again soon. It will be time to work on a dissertation. The voice of the people.’

‘Yes, the voice of the people. You say that you are it. What do they say?’

‘They say ‘inquilaab zindabaad! Inquilaab saada zindabaad!’ (Long Live the Revolution! May the Revolution Live Forever!’)

‘You believe it?’

‘It is always the time for the Revolution. There will be justice. I cling to life because I cling to that hope.’

‘Hope is a dangerous thing. You hoped for someone for years. What did it get you? Grief. Disappointment. Failure. This Revolution…’

I interrupted him. ‘The tyrant rules. But he will fall. The liar controls communication. But he will be caught out. The idiot teaches. He will be exposed. Corruption and filth saturate the universe. It will be cleansed. The cockroach is the ideal. The ideal will be torn down. Against the say of the rich and powerful, there are the words of the community of the dalits, the community of the oppressed. I am the prayer of my mother, the prayer of the people. It is my destiny. And if I cannot do this work, it shall be done by one in whom the spark is lit. Live for the Revolution. Die for the Revolution. Writhe in torture in hell for the Revolution.’

‘Has anyone told you that you are the Indian Don Quixote? You are tilting at the windmill.’

‘Not so ludicrous as you think. The windmill took away jobs from men. It was the awfulness of technology which made humanity expendable. Quixote was right to protect the people from it, just as I am right to fight against this society.’

‘They ignore you. Therefore they have slain you.’

‘There are still the words I write. In my mind I am free. In my mind I love freedom. In my mind I am difference. And in my mind I love difference. Amongst the sheep, there is The Tiger. Amongst the people, there is god. Amongst the weak, there is supreme power. The life spirit amongst the dead.’

‘It is not quite clear whether you are dead or not,’ Alfonso remarked. ‘But time will tell. Let us hope it is not too long into the future.’

gifts (microfiction)

25.08.2025

‘I spent yesterday and the whole day today giving out gifts,’ I was telling Alfonso. The first time I had met Alfonso, I had been utterly charmed. But I had also thought there was something dangerous about the man. I thought so now as well, but I was less wary now. I embraced the danger. After all, I was fearless. And he was a man that you could follow.

‘You have always been generous,’ remarked Alfonso.

‘And yet, I receive gifts very seldom,’ I told him. It was true. Nobody wanted to give me anything. Nobody thought enough of me to give me anything. I wasn’t worth it to other people. It didn’t surprise me. Nobody that I loved had ever loved me back. People that I thought were friends were not reliable. Just a thank you for helping or listening – you didn’t even get that. Even family… Everyone always liked everyone else more than me. There was no point talking to other people.

‘Don’t worry,’ Alfonso assured me, ‘they are only material possessions. They mean nothing.’

It was easy for him to say. Although I couldn’t make anybody be my friend or make them love me, I could do one thing. Which was that I would not talk to the fake people. There was no point saying anything to them or listening to their fake words when they did not regard you as a friend or a lover or anything. Whatever the delusional mind constructed about the history of me and them, it had all been a mirage of connection and communication. All that happened there was disconnection and miscommunication. I had just thought them better than they were. They were not good enough to be with me. That was the end of the story.

Alfonso persisted. He asked me what I wanted as a present.

‘The whole point is the unexpected nature of the thing. If you only got what you asked for, that would not make you happy.’

‘You do not look happy,’ Alfonso remarked.

‘I am not happy.’ I said. In fact, I was tired of living. I was tired almost of everyone. I didn’t want to be where I was any more. The good good friends were what kept me going. How rare kindness and fellowship was in this world.

‘And your leg, why has it started hurting again?’

‘Oedipus walked on his lame legs. I am Oedipus. I killed my father and married my mother. You cannot escape from your fate and the stories. The one that is born to fight for the revolution has to be Oedipus. In mind and in body.’

‘Oedipus, Krishna, The Tiger, god himself. You have to choose who you are.’

‘I am all and more. In the old legends they sing about me. I am the hero of this tale.’

Alfonso laughed. ‘We are heroes, all of us. But where is our heroine?’’

‘Where indeed? If any of us knew the answer to that, we would be merry.’

Instead, we sigh winds and stop the tears rolling down our cheeks. We jest without mirth and laugh without enjoyment. Everyone says we are fine.

people that don’t give you what you want (microfiction)

24.08.2025

‘How does it feel not speaking to people that don’t give you what you want?’ Alfonso asked me. He was reading over something I had given him and he looked over at me from the tablet in his hand. It suited him well, the look of a reader. My handsome, kind reader who gave me whatever I wanted. Unlike other readers in this world.

‘It is well.’

Alfonso laughed. He clapped his hands with the tablet in it. ‘Such a terse and cogent answer! And why is it well?’

‘Everyone talks to someone because they want something from them.’

‘Typical cynicism from one known for cynicism. Can you not be positive in life?’

‘Who has proved me wrong?’

‘Many people are kind to you.’

‘Except for the ones that I care about the most and that I wanted to be kind to me.’

‘You have an answer for everything.’

‘I am Punjabi. What do you expect?’

Alfonso laughed again. ‘And how does it feel now that you no longer make art any more?’

‘They say that art is worthwhile. But it is not worthwhile when you have brown skin. That is this culture. Nothing is worthwhile from you if you have brown skin. And then they talk about diversity, equality and fairness. Their culture is a joke and they are a joke.’

‘Be careful,’ Alfonso warned me. ‘You are in the position of least power.’

‘Yet I am the most powerful’, I said. ‘Because I am The Tiger’.

‘Let us return to the earlier question. Do you not feel awkward not talking to people, avoiding them, blanking them?’

‘Why? That is how they treated me. Like I was nothing. I’m merely showing them the mirror of themselves.’

‘No you’re not. They talked to you.’

‘Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words.’

‘They have done nothing to you.’

‘Precisely. They have made no investment in me. Therefore they should feel no loss.’

‘It is not good to use a cost benefit analysis on other people.’

‘Why not? It is what they have done to me. I was not worth their while. So they are not worth my while. I am merely reciprocating the sentiment. If I am not on their wavelength, they are not on mine. They are not worth wasting time and thought over.’

Alfonso rolled his eyes but held his tongue. It is useless to argue. No one ever changes their opinion. The Right fight against the Left. The Libertine fights against the Repressed. The Anarchist fights against the slaves to the state. The evil fight against the good. The enmities that have been set stand in stone. And The Tiger will fight forever. Because he was born to fight. He is loved because he fights. He is hated. Because he fights.

something happy (microfiction)

21.08.2025

‘For once, why don’t you write about something happy?’ Alfonso looked at me kindly. At heart, he was soft. Despite the sneering, the taunting and the criticism. He had a heart of pure gold and he looked after me. He would spend time with me and always give me advice because he cared about me.

‘Is it only what is happy that is beautiful?’ I asked him.

‘For your persistent reader, why don’t you try and give them joy instead of the pain?’

‘Do you want a moment of sheer joy? I have always been the lover of music. And one time, my father went abroad to work. He asked me what I wanted from there when he came back several months later. More than anything else, I wanted my own personal music player. He brought me the top model – at the time it was a Sony. It was black with gold writing on it and shaped like a little box. It played my Hindi film cassettes and, even better, it had a radio inside. That was happiness. Because music is happiness and family is happiness.’

‘You got what you wanted. Is that what you think happiness is?’

‘Is it not? What else could it be?

‘Things that are unwanted can be happiness. You have told me often enough in life that your life has not gone exactly to plan.’

‘Do you want another moment? A good book.’

‘But were the thoughts of another happiness, or were your own thoughts about the book happpiness? It is harder to arrive at a supposition.’

‘What does it matter what causes the joy?’

‘Because you want to replicate the result.’

‘Happiness was a relationship.’

‘Of course. Get another one.’ Alfonso smiled at me. ‘See, it is not so difficult to have happiness. Just good company, a good book or good music.’

‘In the moment, I am happy. In a film. In a book. In a play. Acting. Singing. Dancing. Making art. Talking to people’. I frowned. ‘It is when I go home and sit in my empty room and then lie in my empty bed…’

Alfonso frowned back at me. He shook his head. ‘We are talking about happiness. We are not talking about sadness or loneliness or emptiness.’

‘Happiness cannot exist without sadness, loneliness or emptiness. You would not feel it. Only the loser knows that it is to win.’

‘Do you think that only you are sad? Do you think that these people here enjoy lying in their beds at night all alone?’

‘Yes. Otherwise they would have someone.’

‘Life is not as simple as you make it.’

‘All it is is hanging out with someone that you like. That is not difficult.’

‘Says who? Perhaps it is the most difficult thing in the world.’

‘Alfonso,’ I said. ‘It is time for the lonely night. Let us sleep. Sleep might not be happiness but it is at least a break from this tired life.’

let us not talk about love (microfiction)

20.08.2025

‘Let us not talk about love,’ I said. ‘It is too dangerous.’

‘To love someone is dangerous. It is a danger to give someone your heart. But to talk about love? Why is that dangerous?’ asked Alfonso.

I had just come back from a comedy club. I was the only one that had sat there by himself. And I was the only one that could not laugh at much. A rare laugh. That is what this life gives you.

I looked at Alfonso who was always ready to question, argue, inspire. ‘We live in a world where it is wrong to say you love someone. Because we live in a world full of hate. We live in a world where you can spout hate and become a President or become a serious contender to become a Prime Minister, like with those evil, ignorant privileged motherfuckers Trump and Farage. When that hate is called ‘free speech’ – what a fucking joke’.

‘Well then, don’t talk about love. Your exploration of topics has become too repetitive. All you talk about is how the world is against you. It might be true. But do you really think that anyone cares? After all, the world is what reads. They will not judge themselves and find themselves wanting.’

‘My subject is that I do not accept this world’s valuation of me. I object to their processes of valuation and devaluation.’

‘Tell us a story instead. Stories are safe. Because no one can pin you down to anything in a story.’

‘There once was a flower. He wanted to grow. To shine. So badly. But they put this flower inside a box with no light. The flower had a fierce desire to live. He battered his being against the sides of the box. He screamed with a silent fury. Inside, there were no other flowers. There was only him. And the desire to live and to grow. He had to learn to grow by himself with no help from anyone, no resources, nothing. And there he is in the box, growing and growing, hidden away from the world. The tumult in the box cannot go outside into the open.’

‘It would be very simple to say that the flower is you’, remarked Alfonso. ‘But sometimes the elegant solution is the one that is the best.’

‘Assume, presume, resume,’ I intoned. ‘The writer that says what he thinks is crucified. The one that remains silent – he is worshipped.’

game theory and genius (microfiction)

18.08.2025

‘You know, game theory is the truth. It’s how humans behave.’ As usual, it was me and Alfonso. It would always be just me and Alfonso. Because there was no one else in my life. We had our own little world, our little kingdom together. Yes, we were both kings together. And I, a solitary king.

‘Of course, you must go on,’ said Alfonso. He was wearing exquisite jewellery today, bedecked like a Hellenic dream of Persian magnificence and luxury. For him, fashion was everything. Style and substance. It suited him well, gold. He was a golden man.

‘Game theory says that no one will change the brute stupidity that they run their lives by, because they have set it down as the rule.’

‘Is this the usual rant about stupidity and conformity and the stupid conformists?’

‘You know me well. Could a genius say anything different?’

‘And what would a genius say about game theory?’

‘Game theory also applies to genius. Look at myself. My research was revolutionary and interdisciplinary. I am the last generalist in a world of pedantic specialists with their disciplines and their tunnel vision. They could not take it. The brute stupidity of their rules in a putative academia could not take real intelligence. They insist upon their stupidity as their rule. The way I can put things together into new combinations and innovative formulations. It is the same wherever I go. No one can keep up with me and therefore they try to marginalise me and throw a shade upon my magnificence.’

‘You are all ego.’

‘I deserve the recognition. You know it yourself.’

‘I do know it!’ Alfonso slapped his thigh and laughed. ‘Only you know things. But remember, the stupid hate the clever. It is in the Greek tragedies with Medea. The foreign woman…’

‘I am the foreign woman.’

‘Yes. And therefore your cleverness is abhorrent. It will get you nowhere. It does not matter if you achieve, educate, learn, do.’

‘And that is something that I know. I am the genius that suffers from game theory. I am cleverness against stupidity and limited perception.’

‘Dont worry’. Alfonso sighed. He often did so when we spoke. Alfonso believed in me. No one else could but he could. And he believed in me because he knew my talent. He had recognised something in me. Others recognised and still they shunned and still they sinned with their unfairness. But yet, truth exists. Philosophers thought the whole world was a lie. That all learning was a lie. It was not so. I had discovered the truth. I knew truths about justice, injustice and human nature as it had been corrupted. However anyone tried to keep me down, I knew. I was wise.

‘The inventor of game theory,’ continued Alfonso, ‘descended into madness. Be careful what you know and how it affects your mind. Remain a genius. Do not forget yourself in insanity. Pride yourself on sobriety and avoid intoxication. Cling to the truth while others drown around you. And voice what is rather than what is not. In the Gita, work is done for the sake of work, not for the reward. For neither love nor money. And money…’ Alfonso smiled, ‘is something that you have.’

But not love.

the world of the unbalanced elephants – ten minutes of story (microfiction)

17.08.2025

Alfonso had given me just ten minutes to write a story. He had odd whims. And he knew that I had a busy schedule, so he did not make inordinate demands.

So what could I write?

I thought about an elephant that was climbing a wire over a city. The elephant was making its way across the wire sedately and elegantly. It was definitely possible. However, then a child let off a balloon from the crowd, a red balloon that veered into the elephant’s delicate trunk. Instability had been introduced, and missteps. The elephant desperately tried to regain balance. Everyone thought that the elephant was done for. Then, either from a stroke of luck or from a generous and hopeful intention, a crow landed on the uneven side of the balance. The elephant was saved. However, the unscrupulous bookies and organisers of the event decided that this was cheating on the part of the elephant, notwithstanding the fact that the bird had actually saved the poor creature’s life. They disqualified the elephant straight away. Yet the elephant was a beast of dignity. The elephant finished the walk across the wire. The silly child who had let off the balloon kicked up a fuss for more ice cream and treats from its entitled parents and the world went back to doing what it was doing: destroying, killing and hating. It is the world of the ignorant, not the world of a balanced elephant. And for that reason, because of the mindless mob, it is the world of the unbalanced elephants.

Alfonso did not deign to comment on the story. He asked me why all the characters in it were genderless, nonetheless. I asked him what difference he thought it would make. He was silent and suggested that we both go out for a chocolate sundae.

life as a bus (microfiction)

14.08.2025

‘You don’t have a reason to complain. You have a good life.’

Alfonso wasn’t wrong. I did have a good life. A disposable income. Savings. Food and shelter. Nice things. An interesting job. Interesting friends. The best education that money could buy. My health was pretty good and I had high energy levels. But was I happy? There was something very important that was missing from my life. Not something but someone.

The loss of one person. When there are several billion people in the world. It was a marginal loss. I was stupid to feel it. I should be like them. Forget everyone. Have no one as special. Forget about caring about someone. They did it and they were happy doing it. Why couldn’t I be like them? Nobody really cared about losing me from their lives. I sincerely doubted whether I could get more than ten people to come to my funeral if something happened to me.

‘When you search for a metaphor for life,’ I told Alfonso, ‘you would think of a maze or a dark forest. That is the stereotype. However, something happened today which I think is the perfect metaphor for life.’

‘And?’ Alfonso sniffed peculiarly. His guard was up and he eyed me warily. He knew that I was going to say something cynical and suspicious.

‘As I was crossing the road, a bus came that would make my walk back home redundant and conserve my energy after I had been on my newly healed leg all day. I sprinted to catch it. I got there at the door. The bus driver was letting some passengers off. I waited patiently at that bus door for it to open. The bus driver didn’t even give me a look while I was standing at the bus door. He drove off. That situation explains my life. Not a portion of my life. But my whole life.’

‘How so?’ Alfonso looked scrupulously at his fingernails. It was good of him to always ask for elaboration, when no one else ever did and I often wondered if they ever listened to anything that I said.

‘I beat that driver who had an unfair advantage to me in a race and then he still would not pay up. He would not give my reward. I was faster than him, more courageous than him, more talented than him. Yet he had something and he would never give it to me. He did not care about fairness. He did not care if he upset me. He would not do the right thing.’

‘That is your life?’

‘Yes.’

‘You have a chip on your shoulder.’

‘You would have too if you were a genius and had to live with these people.’

Alfonso harumped. He knew that I was right. This was how they treated me. This was the treatment of our people. We were a threat to them so they tried to keep us down.

‘You have done well if that’s how you think you have been treated.’

‘I don’t think. I know.’

‘Life as a bus,’ continued Alfonso, pretending that he had not heard me, ‘is not very appealing. But it is moving.’ He smiled at me naughtily. I did love Alfonso. I smiled back at him. You do not have to agree on everything, not at all. It was about friendship. You could always listen even if you did not agree. It was sad that people had not learnt that lesson yet.