Echoes of the Blitz: Underground shelters in Ukraine and London

London Transport Museum in Covent Garden

Dr. Suneel Mehmi

01.04.2024

All views in this article represent my personal views as a private and political individual and do not represent the views of any of the organisations I work at. My expertise? My PhD involved the early history and reception of photography in its political and legal contexts.

‘Don’t survive it. Live it.’ These were the words that someone said to me recently. Survival is the most important thing for us as a species. In the field of psychology, they tell us that the human mind is geared towards survival. That’s where we get our intelligence from: evolutionary adaptations for surviving. But with survival, you have to live it too. You have to experience the fight.

The new photographic display ‘Echoes of the Blitz’ shows how we have to live through our survival. The exhibition ‘explores how Underground stations and metro systems provide shelter to citizens during periods of war – now and in the past’ [1]. How, when you are confronted with death and mortality, when you look death in the eyes, you fight for breath, sense and security. How you find shelter in unexpected places in extreme circumstances and still make a life for yourself. How throughout history and its rivers of blood, throughout the modern period and the supposedly ‘civilised’ Western world, people have hidden in fear to preserve their life, children, culture and heritage.

In total, the photography gallery displays:

‘70 striking images, including historical images from the Museum collection alongside 38 contemporary photographs by six renowned, mainly Ukrainian, documentary photographers.’ [2]

Some of the most recognisable images of the war have been of people sheltering in the London Underground shelters and these icons of memory are given an update and a new relevance through a juxtaposition of the scenes in the Underground shelters in Ukraine.

According to the London Transport Museum, what we are seeing is:

recent photography of ordinary Ukrainian citizens in extraordinary circumstances. They are shown sleeping, waiting, cooking, washing clothes, caring for their pets and creating temporary make-shift homes in Metro stations in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and its second largest city Kharkiv. These scenes are ‘echoed’ in the black and white archive images of Londoners taking refuge in Tube stations during the Second World War. [3]

The aim of the exhibition is to:

present strong parallels of human experience across different locations and conflicts. This exhibition documents the resilience of people in Ukraine and London during times of war and the reality of having to escape from aerial bombardment. [4]

Other comments have been made about the aims of the exhibition. Matt Brosnan, Head Curator, London Transport Museum, said that the photographs ‘show the resilience and tragic reality of war’ [5]. Stefan Günther, Project Manager, Photo, n-ost, said that the exhibition is ‘an opportunity to perceive the current war in Ukraine on a very personal level, away from the wider political and media glare’. [6]

I think that the exhibit makes concrete the idea of Ukrainians rather than Ukraine. All nations are fictions. It is the people there that are real. And in these photographs, we see the people directly and how they are having to live. And it is photography and its truth that allows us to see the reality behind the abstractions of the newspapers. It is photography that allows us to see them face to face and come directly into their lives. As a matter of fact, the frames of the exhibition invite us to do this. The black and white World War photographs have black frames. These photographs are framed and closed off to us – because as we know, the past is a foreign country. However, the photographs of the Ukrainians are not framed. We are in direct contact with them through our eyes and our perspectives. We are immersed into their world. There is no separation from us through the device of the frame. What is happening there is spilling out into our world, including us. Asking us to contemplate, sympathise.

Some historical details taken from the London Transport Museum website allow us to see the facts behind what is being portrayed:

London’s air raid sirens sounded almost every day for eight months from September 1940 to May 1941 and again between June 1944 and March 1945. Sheltering in Tube stations overnight became a routine. There were special admission tickets, bunk beds on the platforms, refreshments and, at some stations, libraries, music and live entertainment.

In Kyiv, sheltering in the Metro peaked at around 40,000 people at the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022. Some stayed overnight, others for days or weeks, returning to the surface only for groceries or to wash. Those who lost their homes lived underground for months.

Kharkiv, close to the border with Russia, experiences more frequent shelling. People spent more time in the Metro there, creating comfortable homely spaces with bedding, tents, carpets, decorations and toys. [7]

After you have read the blurb of the exhibition, the first photograph that dominates is ‘Woman in tent at Dorohozhychi station’ by Maxim Dondyuk, 2 March 2022. The woman defensively has her hand held to her shoulder, covering her chest: a striking image of someone in need of protection, someone that has to defend themselves from an unjust attack. She has to comfort herself with that hand on her shoulder. The woman stands out isolated from the crowd behind her that is not visible, vulnerable and isolated, perhaps like the situation of Ukraine itself – a country that has been left to fend for itself by the ‘civilised’ world of modernity which has disappeared when it is needed. She looks directly at the camera: she implores us to look upon her as the fate of her people, the innocent civilians subjected to the imperialism of the modern day state and its brutality, to their unjust greed and their uncontrolled and obscene desire for control, domination, land and resources. She asks us to acknowledge our role, the roles of our countries that have left her in this position. Does she ask us why? Her face is touched with sadness and suffering. She is in – through the connotations of the opening of the tent – in the dark den of despair, half-eaten by the hole, the absence.

In terms of its historical importance, the exhibition features one of the first ever photographs that were taken when the war broke out and the Ukranians sheltered in the underground stations. Viacheslav Ratynkyi, that on the very first day of the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022 he went down into the Metro and brought a camera so that he could document the situation. [8] The people have used the edges of the stairs along the walls as seats to create a clearing in the middle so that others can move up and down. They have been resourceful to give themselves make-shift seats that would be extremely uncomfortable to sit upon for long periods of time. They have had to adapt for survival and protection as a group, a group and species bound together by necessity and the cruel games of the politicians and the modern day states that are supposed to serve and protect them, the states that are supposed to be bound by the laws and justice. In response to the unjust throne of the state and its modern day king, who cannot sit as he should, the people sit heroically and patiently, in solidarity and suffering. They begin the long wait for peace, the desire of every thinking and feeling human being. These people are the human contrast to the inhuman face of power and brutality, the fascism of the modern-day state.

When I say I am Indian and come from India, it is the India of the people, not the India of the politicians or the intolerant and oppressive citizenship that they want to create. The state that they create is not India. What they create is corruption. We, we the people, we are India. And here, in this photography exhibit, we have the Ukrainians and Ukraine. These people are not defined by the war. In this exhibit, we see them doing the things that we all do every day: listening to music, learning, reading, dying their hair. Holding each other for comfort. They are victims of the state and the politicians. But they have organised themselves. They have created a space away from the brutal games of the state and its quest for total domination. Across world history, across the suffering that man has created, we look at the victims of the politicians and how they have tried to carve out another space and another reality beyond what the unimaginative and corrupt state has imagined. People who live through their struggle for survival. With resilience. As I look at these photographs, I know that one day, the modern-day state with its evils will fall. It has to. Because the spirit of the people will one day overcome the absurd egotistical limitations of geographical and racial boundaries. You can see this in the people and the photographs. You can feel the power of pure being. The desire to move out of the control of others. The spirit of resistance. The spirit of overcoming. Because these people are not trying to create a nation state down there in the underground shelters. They are trying to create a human community: a sphere of protection and life. It is a world meant to foster life – the world that we are trying to create by countering domination with the philosophy of live and let live, by countering selfishness with the desire for preservation, by countering the desire for destruction and death with the desire for life and the future.

If you want to see what a real hero looks like, don’t look at the soldier with blood on his hands, the killer for the state. Look at the everyday hero that fights for survival in an oppressive world and the games of control around them by trying to create another reality – the reality of peace and life. Freedom from death, envy, killing, exploitation. Freedom from the state and its obscenity and blood lust. The people that have created history, tradition and culture by surviving – by fighting to survive and live through that survival – and not by dying and killing in war.

[1] https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/news/new-echoes-blitz-underground-shelters-ukraine-and-london-photography-exhibition-now-open#:~:text=A%20new%20photography%20exhibition%3A%20Echoes,now%20and%20in%20the%20past.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

Review of Tsunagu/Connect: Uncovering the Lives of Japanese Women in the UK. (Barbican Centre)

18.02.2024

My mother is a migrant from India. Many of my relatives and friends are migrant women. I volunteered for years teaching migrant and refugee women English. Although I have heard my mother talk about why she came to the UK, I haven’t heard in much detail about what these women think of their arrival here, their journey in becoming British – even when I have asked them about it. You get snips and pieces: women that feel the hostility of this environment and the judgement of the people here over them. You get a sense of the insecurity and loneliness, the lack of belonging, when you watch them orchestrate their lives around phone calls and video calls back home, when you see that their closest friends are other migrant women from their home country. You sense their confusion about life here in London and the people here from the comments that they make. Tsunagu/Connect was a chance to hear what they wanted to be heard said about all of these topics.

Addressing the neglect of the topic, this exhibition is about the personal experiences and memories of migrant Japanese women that have come to the UK since the end of the Second World War. Over 30 Japanese women were interviewed to provide the oral histories for the exhibition on a one to one basis.

One of the stated aims of the exhibition is to overturn the ‘myths about Japanese women as passive and obedient housewives and provide an insight into the complexity, diversity, and agency of Japanese women in the UK’.

I picked out a few of the exhibits that caught my interest. I didn’t have time to listen to the audio descriptions. Masayo Aizawa chose to talk about her father through a strange object which she remembered him through, a calculator. She spoke about his harshness and the fact that he was traditional, that she could never express her gratitude to her father and that she only understood him late in life. This exhibit was interesting to me because it is often arbitrary objects that we associate with people. Because this was an example of a migrant woman reflecting on the people that she left behind, that she couldn’t get to know as well as she wanted to, that she had to separate herself from. And at the end of the exhibit, she says that she is like her father – it is just the illusion of separation. Perhaps this is what these migrant women feel – that their connection with the people around them in their countries of birth is unbreakable, one of the greatest influences on their lives. Perhaps this is what gives them stability and belonging, their identities.

Elizabeth Fusae Thurley spoke about what has been the astounding fact that I have witnessed throughout my life – that someone can come into a new country without knowing anything about it and at the greatest risk of precarity. Sometimes, they don’t even know the language. Elizabeth had come with a man with no job, no house and whose parents were against the marriage. She astonished herself with her bravery. You have to have courage to leave everything behind for a hope. She reminded me of my grandfather who came to this country from India and left everything behind him for the hope – the future for the children. Elizabeth came here in the hope of love: she got it.

Atsuko kamura spoke about how strange the people seemed here when she came: ‘The people sitting on the tube looked like as soon as they got off the train they would go and kill themselves’. That quote conveys the radical sense of defamiliarisation that these women experienced when they came to this country. But it carries a sadder tone for me – she came here for her happiness. But what she found when she first came here was sadness. What you think will make you happy in life often makes you sad. It is the way of the world.

This is conveyed most vividly in the story of Haruka Kuroda: ‘soon after I arrived in the UK, I was extremely homesick. I didn’t speak a word of English and for about 3 months, I called home every day using collect calls – remember those?! – costing my parents over £1000 on the phone bill each month!’

The dual kinship of the women here to their home countries and to the UK was apparent in the desire of Miyuki Tanaka to have her ashes floating in the air around Japan and the UK. After all, when they are here, the UK becomes their home. But it doesn’t always supersede their original home for all these women. Home is home is home. You can have more than one home – and what could be better than to have many places to call a home?

I reflected on the exhibition for a good while. Was it a success? Was it a failure? Some of the stories were about the bravery of these women, their pioneering entry into art school. Some of them were about their bravery in love, like I have mentioned above. Some of them were about the sadness, the struggle. The narrative of the exhibition is to present these women as heroes in the traditional mould – someone brave that faces adversity, that overcomes, that achieves, that finds a place in the world. The exhibition wants us to think of these women as strong. As strength. But I have a question. When the whole world is dominated by the West, when this country has a superiority complex, when the whole world is being Westernised, when people in this country think that every other country is misogynistic and a restriction on women’s freedom, how innocent is this narrative? Isn’t it just part of the problem? Is the only way a woman can be seen as a hero is to embrace the West? The Indian watches. The Indian judges. The Indian finds the exhibition wanting. What strikes the Indian is the sadness of coming to this land. To endure here. The disappointment. The defeat of the dream. That is what I found in this exhibition.

The Indian Vocabulary of Love and its Meaning

14.01.2024

I’ve been watching Hindi films since I was a child. It is how I learnt to speak Hindi (my language at home – my mother tongue – is Punjabi, not Hindi). Hindi speakers have many words for love. Not like English speakers. Here are some – Ishq, Aashiqi, Mohabbat, Pyaar, Prem, Lagan, Chaahat… There’s probably more. Hindi is a rich language.

Here are some more metaphorical ones, which touch on some of the ways that love is experienced and conceptualised in Indian culture:

Ibaadat – Worship. When you love someone, you love them like a god or a goddess. They are important, powerful, masterful over you. They rule over your heart. They take the place of a god or a goddess, commanding all your loyalty and faith. You trust them without question. You hope everything from them.

Aetbaar – Belief. When you trust them with your heart. You can rely on them without question. They are the one person in the whole world that you can count on the most to stay with you through thick and thin. You expect everything from them, total commitment.

Wafaa – They hold your loyalty. You will never stray from them. The trust and the bond between you is unshakeable.

Behosh/Mere hosh udhgayee – Unconscious/My senses have flown – How love is experienced. Your mind goes on a holiday when you see them, think about them, are around them. They command all your attention. You can’t focus on anything else.

Amaanat – They say that your lover (usually a woman) is your ‘amaanat’ (‘thing or property committed to the trust and care of a person or group of persons’ – https://rekhtadictionary.com/meaning-of-amaanat?lang=hi ) A red flag for Western feminists, but indicates the possessiveness that a lover will have over their sweetheart – and even in English, you still say to someone ‘You are mine’ or ‘You are my girlfriend’.

Here are some terms of endearment which further indicate what love means in Indian culture:

Jaanu/Janaam/Jaaneman – ‘My Life’. Love is for life. Your lover is your life. They are everything for you and they are for you forever, like your own life. They are precious like your life.

Mitwa/Yaar – ‘Friend’. Indian culture does not make a distinction between friendship and love between a man and a woman in this term. Which perhaps indicates the truth – that your lover is your best friend.

Humraaz – Someone who has the same secrets as you – you share your secrets with them. You trust them. They are the only ones you can share your most personal thoughts with.

Humnava/Humsafar – Someone who is a fellow traveller through life’s journey with you (the ‘ride or die’ chick). You are committed to the same journey. You have the same mission in life.

Humdum – Someone who has the same life force/breath (‘dum’) as you, your soulmate, someone who is the other part of yourself. The sense of connection, of seeing yourself in them.

Humdard – Someone who shares the same pain as you, because you are so connected. What you feel, they feel. They are the mirrors of you and you are the mirror of them (love’s mirror).

Huzoor – Master – they rule over you because you love them. And you accept their sovereignty over you.

Deewana – Crazy one – because you go crazy in love for someone.

See more terms of endearment from the Hindi movies here:

150 Urdu-Hindi Terms of Endearment To Call Your Lover This Valentine’s Day

Being Forced to Pay Extortion for Love: An Analysis of the Threshold Raise to £38,700 to bring a foreign family partner to the UK

Dr. Suneel Mehmi – LLB Honours in Laws, LLM in Law and Society, PhD in the Law and English Literature

JAI MAA KAALI!

13.01.2023

The Legal Change (FACTS)

From April 2024, the minimum salary requirement for people who want to bring a foreign family member or partner to the UK will rise to £38,700. This is a jump from the current threshold of £18,600.

Comparative Law (FACTS)

Where countries do express the requirement as a minimum income, such as in Belgium or Norway, Library research has so far not found any examples of the threshold being set above or close to £38,700 (the level the UK Government ultimately intends to reach).

Changes to legal migration rules for family and work visas in 2024

SUNEEL’S ANALYSIS: Comparative law shows that this government has to be seen as extorting a price on love compared to every other supposedly civilised Western country in the world. They have deliberately set an unrealistic threshold to counter what they see as the threat of immigration. So, the UK is a pioneer in racism and paranoia over immigration compared to every other country.

The Rationale (SUNEEL’S ANALYSIS)

Obviously, the aim is to cut immigration. However, the unspoken secondary rationale is to construct immigrants as ‘burdens’ on the system who might claim benefits from British people by emphasising that families have to support themselves without any help from the government:

‘Ministers hope the move will cut immigration levels, which have reached record highs in recent years, and ensure families can support themselves’.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-67637504

The ministers are constructing immigration as illegal, attaching the label of illegal to the immigrants that have come into the country, as though this is a violation of fairness, ‘the rules’, the law and order. Again, there is the perception that the immigrants are taking over the country, that their entry is ‘unsustainable’, as though this country with all its wealth and resources couldn’t accommodate them:

In a statement to MPs, the home secretary said migration to the UK “needs to come down” and there had been “abuse” of health and care visas for years.

“Enough is enough,” Mr Cleverly said. “Immigration policy must be fair, legal, and sustainable.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67612106

The government is using its own failure in providing infrastructure and services to the communities to justify the action it is taking, pitting us against them to cover up its own failure of duty:

‘People are understandably worried about housing, GP appointments, school places and access to other public services when they can see their communities growing quickly in numbers.’

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-12-04/debates/921A08A2-F615-48F2-8C56-423A29556F9F/LegalMigration

Conclusion and Suneel’s Personal Comment

While seeming to apply to everyone in a false pretension of ‘universality’, the policy is deliberately targeted at ethnic minority men who are the most likely to marry abroad and to bring a partner from abroad. As such, this legislation has to be seen as an attack on the ethnic minority men and their ability to marry and to reproduce in this country. This is a deliberately racist and sexist policy.

Yes, white British men and white British women can meet people from abroad or that are not UK citizens and marry them. No one is saying that is not the case. However, what is the bigger likelihood about who this will happen to – someone who has deep connections with the people of another country, or people that most likely don’t?

The policy asks the ethnic minority man to become wealthier than the average worker. What is the average wage in this country? The threshold is above it –

According to the ONS, the average salary in the UK in 2023 for all employees was £29,669, a 6.8% increase from 2022. For full-time workers, the average UK salary in 2023 was £34,963, a 5.8% increase YoY. https://standout-cv.com/pages/average-uk-salary

Why should ethnic minority men (or men that want to marry someone from abroad) have to be wealthier than all of the other men in this country to bring someone over? Why do they have to work harder than everyone else? There is no reason for it, except to discourage people from marrying someone from abroad. And to make anyone that can’t earn enough feel like a man that cannot even provide for his family and afford to love someone from a community in a different country, to render them financially powerless and devalue them and their ties and roots.

The ethics of the legislation are horrible. How disgusting is it to put a price on love? How disgusting is it to put up walls around love so that people cannot move within the channels of love? Are other people from other countries – who haven’t been brought up in the privilege and wealth that we have – whose financial problems have probably been caused by us in this country and the Western world – aren’t they loveable? Can they not be the wives and mothers, or husbands and fathers in this country?

The government’s financial control of the family unit – the original economy – is unethical, unfair, unjust and, I would argue, illegal. They are acting ultra vires – everyone has the right to a family irrespective of money. Someone here can marry someone and then claim benefits because they have married a UK citizen. Someone from here can have kids if they can’t afford them and then rely on the government for help. And they do. This ‘problem’ that legislates love is a false problem because the government only sees immigrants as a burden on the system out of racism.

Can I ask you, do you have to buy the right to be a citizen in a country, or to become a wife, husband, father or mother? Do you have to buy these things? Since when? Why do you have to be a wallet to love someone? Is money everything in this world, the only condition for love and the family? How disgusting do you have to be to think this? Isn’t the government supposed to support love and the family? Why is nobody challenging these laws? This law is the mark of a government that only cares about money and keeping its money to itself, that literally sees citizenship and love as expenditure that is not worth having – unless you keep to your own in this country. Endogamy is the practice of only marrying within your own community, clan or tribe. This is the legislation of endogamy which bears striking similarity to those people that make their children marry their cousins so that they can keep the money in the family – a practice only concerned with resources, ownership and a financial distrust of any outsider who will come in and take a portion of the share for themselves.

PAUL COCKSEDGE – The Creator of ‘Coalescence’ in the Painted Hall, Old Royal Naval College (Notes)

08.01.2023

QUOTATIONS FROM WEB SOURCES ARE GIVEN IN ITALICS – ALL QUOTES ARE REFERENCED AND USED AS ‘FAIR USE’ FOR NON-COMMERCIAL RESEARCH PURPOSES FOR THIS BLOG TO SPREAD EDUCATION AND KNOWLEDGE.

Biography

He says that he has Greek and Welsh blood and that he wanted to be a pilot when he was a child, his favourite TV show is Scooby Doo and that his favourite author was Roald Dahl (who was an inventor himself – he invented a medical device and things like his own desk – Charlie and the Chocolate factory is about invention – Suneel). The artist’s favourite film is ‘The Dark Knight’. His favourite sandwich filling is Cheese and pickle.

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/20-questions-with-paul-cocksedge

Born in 1978, raised in North London, Paul Cocksedge lives and works in Hackney, East London.

His works encompass public art, sculpture and architectural installation. The artist has an interest in science, with ‘a forensic investigation into the limitations of processes, materials, and the human body’ and attention given to ‘our relationship to the Earth

The artist believes that he ‘came to art on his own terms’ which brings a ‘freshness in perspective’.

https://www.paulcocksedgestudio.com/bio

What interests me as a designer is to be open to ideas coming from any direction. I’m also always sort of interested in like, the invisible things such as electricity, and gravity and magnetism, these types of energies.

https://www.moooi.com/uk/story/meet-paul-cocksedge

The artist was once evicted from his Hackney studio which he occupied for 12 years (which was once a Victorian stable) to make way for a new property development. He created a work called ‘Eviction’ by excavating material from the floor to make furniture:

Cocksedge hopes the work will cause people to reflect on the uncertainty affecting creative centres around the world, caused by rising property prices and socio-political upheavals.

https://www.dezeen.com/2017/03/22/paul-cocksedge-mines-floor-hackney-studio-furniture-excavation-evicted-milan-design-week-2017/

How Paul Cocksedge’s Art has been Described

For Paul Cocksedge, each body of work is a vehicle for narrative, drawing inspiration from and abstracting the physical process of making. Cocksedge’s practice can be defined by a search for hidden values and properties in order to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.

https://www.friedmanbenda.com/artists/paul-cocksedge/

Selected Notable Works Besides ‘Coalescence’ with Suneel’s Analysis (see links for photographs)

If you look at his works, they are each remarkable. The artist has frozen metal furniture together to join it. He has’ completed a spiral staircase featuring a garden, a library and a tea bar’ https://www.dezeen.com/tag/paul-cocksedge . He has created a table solely from a single sheet of folded metal paper. These are a few of the artworks which I found interesting and related to the themes of ‘Coalescence’

‘Please be Seated’

A rippling wave rises up to form arches for people to pass beneath, and curves under to create spaces to sit, lie and relax in Please Be Seated.

“This piece was an instinctive response to the space and the rhythm of people through it. It fills a public square and engages passersby, without obstructing the space.” – Paul Cocksedge

https://www.paulcocksedgestudio.com/please-be-seated

Suneel’s Comment – Innovation in seating and the space that it encloses, so that the area can be used for multiple purposes of leisure interaction. The design is effective because it uses shade as a resource – you can sit or lie underneath the seating. This shows the artist’s attention to changing conditions, the influence of outside influences on space and art, the play with previous structures and forms to build new dimensions in the art. The rippling wave looks like an opening flower from above – it is beautiful to behold.

‘Bourrasque Dior’

Inspired by nature and the morphology of paper, Bourrasque – which means “flurry”, or “gust” – is a free-flowing sculpture that harnesses the magic of light and electricity.

The piece conceived to mimic pages scattered by a gust of wind is illuminated and bathes the surrounding environment with light.

“Bourrasque is the representation of the power of new technology, creating a magical fleeting moment. This is an effortless yet detailed gesture, capturing electricity floating in the air. The iconic Dior boutique was the perfect environment to install Bourrasque as a permanent piece.” – Paul Cocksedge.

https://www.paulcocksedgestudio.com/bourrasque-dior

Suneel’s Comment: As with seating in ‘Please be Seated’ and the coal in ‘Coalescence’, Cocksedge takes an old form – paper – and makes it into something new with new technology. The technology casts the material in a new light, gives it a new purchase on the imagination. As with ‘Coalescence’, the piece is about the ‘power of new technology’: the new forms that it can create, the new experiences and vision (the new sculpting of the wind). Similarly, ‘Coalescence’ has to be seen as a meditation on the superseding of fossil fuel by newer, cleaner, renewable fuels and the power and the experiences that they will generate to shape the world.

‘Living Watercolour Pavilion’

Thousands of translucent glass discs are overlaid to create a three-dimensional chromatic experience that changes according to shifting sun and shade.

Each of the colours chosen for the Expo 2020 Dubai UK Pavilion comes from the flag of an exhibiting nation, expressing unity, partnership and possibility.

A sculptural centrepiece envelops visitors in colour and light, giving the sense of an ‘impossible’ structure.

“We were drawn to the idea of looking outwards for inspiration. This informed the entire architecture of the pavilion, which we designed as a sculptural watercolour that plays with the natural environment to connect with people.” – Paul Cocksedge.

https://www.paulcocksedgestudio.com/living-watercolour-pavilion

Suneel’s Comment: This beautiful and multi-coloured design which represents the unity of the nations of the world in the aegis of art explores the themes of togetherness and union that are evident in ‘Coalescence’ from its very title (which means a joining together to make a greater whole). As with ‘Coalescence’, the artist has taken single units and combined them to form something greater and impactful as art.

‘Poised’

Poised embodies the elegance and amenability of paper. Half a ton in weight, the steel table appears improbable upon investigation.

Intensive calculations into gravity, mass, and equilibrium mean the work is perfectly weighted and stable in spite of appearing ready to topple.

https://www.paulcocksedgestudio.com/poised

Suneel’s Comment: An investigation of fragility and resilience, just like the message of ‘Coalescence’ which is that the world is fragile at the moment but we can come together to make a new world of light which is resilient against any threats – even though it seems ‘impossible’ at the moment. A message of hope and the defeat of adversity – the enduring message of ‘Coalescence’. A tribute to the power of design and the artist’s imagination – the basic building block of design is the blank piece of paper, the strongest force in the human universe to create the world anew.

Suneel’s Favourites in Astronomy Photographer of the Year – National Maritime Museum

05.01.2024

https://www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/astronomy-photographer-year/exhibition

Since I work in the area, it is quite convenient for me to see the Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition during my lunch breaks. So I often go down to see it. I love looking into the sky of stars and look at the universe which envelops us, the larger world that gives us perspective and power. Because we are all part of something larger. We are the consciousness of the universe, if it has one. We are its only known intelligent life forms. And she is our mother.

This is a universe that has been taken away from us through the narrow mindedness of the world, through light pollution, urbanisation and industrialisation. That view of the skies which was us for thousands of years and millions of years when we were not yet quite human has been taken away from us by Them. This exhibition gives us back our continuous inheritance. That is why it is important to me and why I love it.

Here are some of my favourite images from the exhibit and why:

Filip Hrebenda ‘Green Snakes’

A photograph of green aurorae, the coloured lights in the sky. Amongst reflections of water and and stark black lava-esque mountains and ridges. Green is one of my favourite colours and you can see the hazy greens here melting into the skies. The leading lines of the reflecting water lead the eye towards the peak of the mountain, giving an effect of the sublime – overwhelming power that engulfs us. It is a truly awesome and epic shot which leaves us in awe at the beauty and the mystery of nature.

Peter Hoszang ‘The Green Glow’

The same subject as before – the coloured lights in the sky and the mountains. This one has less of a warm feel because there are more blues. And there is also ice in the waters. It is a different vibe, but with the same sublime feeling, since the lights in the sky dwarf the snow-capped mountains.

Monika Deviat ‘Brushstroke’

The aurora – the coloured lights – again green, look more abstract here because they are only seen against the night sky and the stars. The aurora is divorced from the setting. The artist says it looks like a brush stroke. The image is effective because we concentrate on the lights without any distractions in the background. Simple and focused, isolated. The beauty of light, pure and simple.

Vincent Beudez ‘Butterfly’

Purple, white and green aurora in the shape of a butterfly. Amazingly poetic and beautiful. The word butterfly is associated through tradition with the ancient Greek word ‘psyche’, which means soul. Wouldn’t a soul – if such a thing existed – come in the form of a butterfly of light? Radiant, ravishing, roaring.

Katie McGuinness ‘Close Encounters of the Haslingden Kind’

A stunning view of Haslingden’s Halo – a panopticon sculpture – amidst the night sky. The shining structure pictured against the movements of the night sky through a time lapse capture really caught my imagination with the blue and the white hues. It was a moment where you realise that the future that they imagined, the technological future, has actually become a reality for us now. The technology, the art, the structures that we make, seem like something that has come almost from an alien intelligence that is years ahead of us in thought and technology. But it is us that did it. We are the alien intelligence.

Angel An ‘Grand Cosmic Fireworks’
Dancing, fluorescent lights above the Himalaya mountains (atmospheric luminescence made of plasma and electric discharge). What is there not to like? There is something like seaweed about the lights that are almost immersed in the clear water of the skies. It is a scene which I could never have imagined and this is what gives it its power. Things like this are happening beyond our eyes, our comprehension, our ken. They enlarge us when we see them.

Chunlin Liu ‘Autumn Milky Way Arc and an Orion Bolide’

There is something so exceptionally Chinese about this image of the Milky Way arc, something so emblematic of the art. The horizontality of the image for one thing, the delicacy of the skies that have been rendered, the mountain scene which we associate with Chinese ink brush drawings. Amazingly beautiful, delicate and wonderful. A loving homage to the perspective of a culture which has been fostered carefully through thousands of years of an art tradition.

Vikas Chander ‘The Dancing Trees of Sumba’

These mangrove trees are shaped in such a way that people call them the dancing trees. They look as though they are frozen in a dance posture. Against the beautiful sky reflecting in the water which is like a mirror, they are incredibly elegant, a reminder that nature thrives in the universe, it dances in the dance of creation.

Mehmet Ergun ‘The Great Solar Flare’

I think of myself as the Sun (my name is Sun-eel). This amazingly detailed, textured view of the sun and its awesome power is really an iconic image. So bold. The sun fills the frame, giving that air of dominance as the ruler of our galaxy.

Alex Savenok ‘C/2021 A1 (Leonard) in the Sky of Israel’

Above the Negev desert and its picturesque ridges, we see ‘a celestial visitor in the night sky’. The image looks like the covers of science fiction books. It doesn’t seem real. Yet this is our earth at night time, if only we had the opportunity to see it. A taste of what we have had to miss because of the industrialised world and urban living. A taste of what we have had to lose, that connection with the skies and the reality of this planet, this universe, our mother.

Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau ‘Crescent Moon in a Magical Sunset’

A beautiful crescent moon in an orange, yellow and white sky. A sense of the crescent swirling in the clouds, full of movement and dance.

James Baguley ‘The Dark Wolf – Fenrir’

A homage to Norse mythology – Fenrir the wolf caught in red (a molecular cloud surrounded by red hydrogen gas). A reminder of the phrase that ‘Nature is red in tooth and claw’ – a lesson to be learnt from a perusal of this image. If anyone knows the mythology of Fenrir – I used to read mythology books as a child and was obssessed with the myths – this picture would become pregnant with meaning. With the themes of fatherhood, destruction, trickery, imprisonment, the animality of the human…

Steeve Body ‘The Majestic Tarantula Nebula’
Runwei X and Binyu Wang ‘The Running Chicken Nebula’

Both of these are a ‘cosmic ballet’ in glorious and awe-inspiring colour. Showing that human made abstract art can’t rival the play of forces in the universe to create patterns in the universe on a colossal scale as works of art. Full of fire and life.

Suneel’s Review: Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize – National Portrait Gallery

30.12.2023

General Information:

https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2023/taylor-wessing-photo-portrait-prize-2023/prize-winners

Some of the Photographs:

https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2023/taylor-wessing-photo-portrait-prize-2023/exhibitors

In this short piece of writing (I write such pieces to share art and culture and to keep in practice), I want to focus on some of the photographs I found interesting in the exhibition. Why the photographic portrait? I did my doctoral thesis on the relationship between the law and the photographic portrait in Victorian fiction. I have spent years thinking about photography and because my thesis was published as an academically successful book, I guess that makes me an expert. So, onto the list, in no particular order. And the reasons why I thought the images were interesting and worth talking about.

The Wrestlers by Prarthna Singh (from the series Champion)

A female wrestler holding up another wrestler across her shoulders so we see buttocks next to her face. It is like one of those old hunting photographs displaying the prize. Formally, there is the repetition of red between the two women on their clothing, so we are looking at similarities and patterning. The woman wrestler stares into the camera intensely. The earth is barren, like a traditional Indian wrestling site. But the woman wrestler’s face is between the trees in the background, suggesting a connection with nature and growth or even that nature and womanhood can flourish despite adversity.

The context is that these women wrestlers are fighting in Indian states known for high rates of crimes against women, female infanticide and child-marriage. As the curator label says, they are becoming what we call ‘strong women’ in traditionally male dominated spaces and challenging accepted representations of femininity with their powerful bodies.

My comment: What the curator label doesn’t mention is the Hindi smash hit film ‘Dangal’ which preceded these images. This was about how a man who had to give up wrestling to make money trained his two daughters to become wrestling champions with a pro-feminist message thrown in. However, Dangal was about the Father and patriarchy – it was the father’s wish that his daughters became wrestling champions and like men (traditional male wrestlers). Here, although the photograph is powerful as the representation of a woman fighter, can we really see these images as resistance against the patriarchy? Such photographs are probably inspired by the ethos of Dangal and, actually, the patriarchal Indian state is hell-bent on destroying the traditional, rural Indian way of life so that women join the economy as earners and India can compete on the global economic stage. When you forget the money situation, you forget everything. Interesting merely as an exposure of the fictions of ‘independence’ and ‘feminism’ in the Western mindset and which pander to the Western lip-service of these themes without looking at the actual reality behind what is being portrayed here and why.

Mum’s Engagement Dress by Cara Price from the series Her Possessions

A woman lies face down on a bed in a blue dress. Her face is angled into the corner of the room, her back is exposed, we can only see one eye. A bedside drawer frames the head. Light falls across her arm.

The context is that the woman lost her mother to breast cancer as a fifteen year old and wears her mother’s clothes so that she can explore the feelings of ‘absence and longing, revisiting memories and seeking closure’.

My comment: F-ing weird. Wearing a dress so that, in some sense, you become the woman that your father proposed to. Oedipal. And why is half of the face hidden? What is there to hide? Is it the Oedipal side of things? If sexuality isn’t the theme, why is the woman on a bed? That’s where the act happens. As Freud observed, the Oedipal aspects of the self are everywhere in Western culture in a very obvious kind of way. Could you get more obvious than this? And yet, no one is going to notice it. The beautiful observations of the people in this culture that can never see anything, know anything, recognise anything, analyse anything, say anything…

Ibu by Byron Mohammad Hamzah from the series Yang Tinggal Hanya Kita (All That Is Left Is Us)

A woman with an enigmatic, serious face stands in a full figure shot, encased in a cream gown with a cream head covering in a proud assertion of Muslim identity and womanhood. The arms seem to be – underneath the clothes, folded across the chest in a classic posture of rejection, defence.

The context is that the photographer abandoned his mother to move into a Western country despite her wishes. She knew that his values would change, that he would abandon his culture, that he would no longer be her real son.

My comment: Pretty shameless and exploitative shot of this mother by the son that betrayed her love and abandoned his culture (for what? Money? ‘Independence’?). However, in the shot, despite the photographer, the mother becomes iconic, powerful, beautiful. The figure of resistance against everything that Western modernity and its seduction of the power-hungry becomes. The more you look at her, the more you are impressed by her. It reminds me of the story of Sri Devi and Jurassic Park. Sri Devi was the Queen of Indian cinema. Steven Spielberg – the top director at the time – the most famous – approached her to be in the movie. He offered her a piddling little role. She refused. Because why would the Queen condescend to have a little bit part in a Western movie when at home in India, she ruled? She had self-respect. This is what the Queen is chosen for – self-respect and honour. The photographer’s mother in this photograph has self-respect and honour. And so much of it that she is an inspiration for difference against power. Jai Mata Di! (Praise the Mother [Goddess]!)

Grandad Sups his Tea by Thomas Duffield

An old man whose eyes we can’t see is against a dark background drinking tea from which steam curls up. There is a subtle power in the way that he is represented, something kingly about him. Perhaps it is the perfect ease, the perfect repose.

The context is that the photographer was raised by his grandfather, like I was raised by my grandfather too, as he was at home.

My comment: It was my grandfather that I looked up to and that I wanted to be like more than anything, the wise man, the community man, the pioneer, the athlete. Something of that emotion of looking up is caught here by the photographer.

Roy and Josef with their daughter Jude by Rona Bar and Ofek Avshalom from the series Us

A beautiful shot of a cute baby amongst a homosexual couple in Israel. They are heavily tatooed, so the appearance of the unmarked child’s body forms a strong contrast with the suggestion of being ‘a blank slate’. Black and white dominate the colour scheme, the black of the man-made and the white of the natural body.

The context is that the photographer photographed couples in their homes that had been overlooked by the mainstream media.

My comment: If you come from my culture and background, a blank slate is precisely what you see children as. Someone to begin with afresh, someone full of potential, someone who is going to learn and become filled with writing and images. Without those blank slates, there would no longer be any reason to live. They are the future. The most beautiful thing about the photograph is those eyes of the baby Jude, full of life and the keenness of curiosity, the wish to learn…

A moment’s pause by Frankie Mills from the series Good Evening We Are From Ukraine

A child in the liminal space between water and land – almost in a swimming pool. An air of uncertainty, the body caught between two differing spaces and states. He is on the stairs (Freud says this would suggest something about sex – but he often says that…) The stairs introduce the idea of up and down: will he go down into the water? Or will he stay up (does this suggest something about the trajectory of life and success?) The boy is framed by beautiful flowers in the background, a big bush of them. He appears against the beauty of nature, a reminder that the apparently serene state and stillness of of nature is contrasting with his uncertain stillness in this moment trapped in time and hesitation…

The context is that the photographer photographed the people of Ukraine that had fled the country for refuge after the Russian invasion. He writes: ‘Artem’s hesitation made me think of every other moment his family had stopped to make impossible decisions during their journey from Ukraine’.

My comment: Swimming is my favourite activity in the whole world (aside from one other…) One of the most beautiful experiences imaginable. However, every time, just before I would get into the pool, I would hesitate. Because I hate cold water. Here, when this teenager looks unusually apprehensive, it becomes about the plight of refugees across the whole world. However, what if he is just apprehensive about getting cold and wet in the water? The photograph makes me think of the difference between an internal state of mind that we experience and what the world understands about it, how it makes it into the Symbolic (Jacques Lacan – the symbolic and the real, etc.) This is not to say that the apprehension does not have a link to the refugee status of the teenager – it is merely to suggest the gulf between inner experience and its expression in the world, a world with its own rules of meaning and politics…

Titles in the Mehmi Press – Free Download

The Mehmi Press is an online Open Access publishing company which I founded in 2023. It is completely free to download, read and share my creative work. I hope you enjoy reading these titles which include microfiction and an artbook. Self-publishing gives you a freedom you cannot enjoy anywhere else and a sense of achievement which is hard to find in this world.

Stay on the lookout for more titles in the future!

By Dr Suneel Mehmi

SELECTED NOTES ON RACISM

PUBLISHED 2024

With a focus on the British Asian or Anglo-Indian experience, these are writings about the subtle strategies of racism in western culture which shape everyday life and also the cultural imagination through fiction and films. The aim of the book is to expose what is concealed but which orders life in Western culture for the ethnic minority and the majority culture.

selected-notes-on-racism-2024-suneel-mehmi Download

SEVEN DAYDREAMS

PUBLISHED 2023

Seven daydreams which I have been immersed in constantly. From dreams of freedom, to dreams of imprisonment, from dreams of knowledge to dreams of the body beautiful.

seven-daydreams Download

STORIES FOR MY CHILDREN

Published 2024

These stories are lessons, adventures, a means to share life and my experience with the little ones. An attempt to replicate the wonder of stories which my grandfather introduced me to, the ultimate storyteller. Written in 2015. The first collection of many to come!

stories-for-my-children-2024-suneel-mehmi-1 Download

MICROFICTION 2022

Published 2023

Microfiction self-published on social media amidst the Covid pandemic, job search status after a PhD and the onset of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

microfiction-2022-2023-suneel-mehmi Download

JUVENALIA: Stories for the University Newspaper

Published 2023

Microfiction published in various student newspapers with a twist in the tail – sometimes quite nastily.

juvenalia-stories-for-the-university-newspaper-2023-suneel-mehmi Download

PAISLEY ART BOOK

Published 2023

An exploration of what the Paisley symbol means to me as a digital artist and how it signifies the tears of India for me as they are appropriated by the West.

paisley-artbook-2023-suneel-mehmi Download

POETRY TO THE IMPOSSIBLE WOMAN

Published 2023

Poetry sent in an Impossible Way to the Impossible Woman.

poetry-to-the-impossible-woman Download

MEHMI’S Introduction to Hindi Film (10 Favourites)

Published 2023

An introduction to some of the most iconic, historically significant and popular Hindi films through an exploration of ten of my most favourite films.

10-hindi-films Download

My interpretation of ‘Coalescence’ in the Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich (2023-2024) – Notes

19.12.2023

NB: This is a personal interpretation and is not endorsed by the organisation.

In recent years, the Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College – ‘the Sistine Chapel of England’ – has become a contemporary art gallery in a fusion of new and old. Juxtaposed against the beautiful paintings on the walls and ceilings influenced by the classical tradition – artwork which is about 300 years old – we have had art in other, more contemporary media such as enormous three dimensional models done to the scale of the earth and the moon. Each time, the installation fits and expands the themes on the ceilings. So for the appearance of the moon, the Painted Hall had already figured astronomy on the ceiling, including a representation of the moon in the figure of Diana or Artemis with the crescent in her hair. There was an interesting comparison between scientific advances, the relative merits of photography and painting, the mythological depiction of celestial bodies and the accurate topography of the surface of the moon from a ‘literalist’ point of view.

The newest art installation is ‘Coalescence’ by Paul Cocksedge (supported by Carpenters Workshop Gallery) since, in one detail, the ceiling depicts a figure pouring a sack of coal into a bowl made out of gold. Historically, the Painted Hall derived some funding from the coal tax too as a component of the Royal Hospital for Seamen, the immense and royally sponsored charity of its time. The one ‘naval pensioner’ that we know is depicted on the ceiling – John Worley – also appears to have worked in the coal industry (which perhaps dirtied the soul of this rogue since he figures in the records of the Hospital for Seamen as a master of profanity, drunkenness and unlawful wenching since he is said to have smuggled women into the exclusively male space of the architecture by Christopher Wren).

Trumpeted as questioning ‘our relationship with, and dependence on, fossil fuels’, Coalescence is a construction in a type of coal called ‘anthracite’ which shines brightly in the light (I asked a Greek woman if it was a Greek word and she told me that I pronounced it incorrectly in a typically English way in a complete laceration and ruination of the Greek tongue. However, after that, I was informed that ‘anthracite’ literally just means ‘coal’ in Greek). Here is what is touted as the absolute point of Coalescence:

‘A single 200W light bulb, turned on for a year, would consume over half a tonne of coal – Coalescence represents that same amount. This sculpture is made up of 2, 500 pieces of anthracite, which is a form of high carbon coal that has a lustrous quality when illuminated’.

As the artist says ‘It’s easy to forget the origins of the energy that’s required in almost every aspect of our lives’.

Coalescence is exhibited alongside 20 Trees, also in anthracite. The point that is made is that if this sculpture were to be burned, ‘it would take 20 trees an entire year to offset the carbon emissions produced’.

How do we analyse these artworks? We are told that they are a blend of ‘mathematics with environmental awareness’. As mathematics, they lack the important quality of precision. For example, 20 Trees demands more details. What type of trees? How tall? How old are the trees? What exactly is the equation that we are talking about?

But let us not be pedantic. What the artworks do is to make the abstract and incomprehensible realm of mathematics and figures (for some) become concrete and visible. So we can see just how many objects it takes to produce the energy that we can consume mindlessly. We can see the resources that we are using up. In short, we are substituting the real for the notional and therefore understanding the effect that we have on the planet and the carbon that is locked up in things like coal. It is the nakedness of the numbers that we are seeing and that hit our eyes. When I was younger, my history teacher (the most boring teacher in the world, a great feat in a grammar school full of the most boring teachers I have ever encountered) told me that it was literally unimaginable how many people died in the World Wars. The human mind is not capable of envisioning that many bodies with personalities of their own. So the value of Coalescence is that it allows us to literally see what is destroyed for us and our energy needs, how we are destroying the planet and its treasures. The coal is literally burnt and destroyed to become pollution and dirt. It is absolute destruction.

Let us reflect on the fact that we are looking at coal illuminated by light in Coalescence. The art exhibit is about light. It is equating itself to the light emitted by a light bulb. The coal itself becomes filled with light. Is this a glorification and transfiguration of the material world which becomes filled with illumination – what has traditionally been linked in the Western tradition to spiritual rapture and enlightenment, heaven and truth? Or is there a problematic ambiguity? Is this, despite itself, a celebration of the fossil fuels that we are trying to escape from but which are necessary to the conditions of an advanced, industrial, mechanised, captialist society? If Coalescence is an artefact of light which reflects on the transmission of light – which in many ways equates coal to diamonds that capture light – what is this saying about the value of light, its communication, its manipulation, its use? Light makes the show. We can’t see without light. But what if light is being used to talk about light itself and its construction? Surely this is the postmodernist twist, the meta-level: the exposure of processes, manufacture. The transparency of the making.

Let us reflect on the context of Coalescence in the Painted Hall. The Painted Hall is a piece of propaganda. Beautiful propaganda, but propaganda nonetheless. The paintings are a celebration of British power and the power of the monarchy. So, the fact that we have an exposure of the mechanics of power in the form of Coalescence – what it physically and realistically takes to create power – takes on a new connotation in the space. Intentionally or unintentionally – let us not forget the power of the unconscious – we are being made to compare and contrast the situation from 300 years ago to the one today but also to reflect on the exposures of the situation of power today. The Painted Hall is, in a sense, ‘powered’ by coal since it derives its funding from the Coal Tax. There is this idea that the fossil fuel economy is in the past which is – as we all know if we read our novels – a foreign country. And that power of the time was linked to colonialism, the slave trade, to all those exploitative economies which fuelled modern Western development. The fossil fuel economy today is politically and socially powered by exploitative economies which rape the earth through mining, which unfairly martial resources for developed countries at the expense of the developing in the main strategy to keep them developing and to keep them subservient. The artist is a very political man. I have met him. On the very first meeting, he started talking to me about politics. I don’t think it is unintentional that the installation is about power and that he wanted it to be exhibited in the Painted Hall. Unintentionally or intentionally, location determines the meaning of a work. There is an exposure of the old evils of power and its mechanics which continue into the present moment, poisoning the earth and making it unlivable, barren, arid, sterile.

Lastly, let us reflect on the name. Coalescence means ‘the process of coming or growing together to form one thing or a system’ (Cambridge Dictionary). On a literalist level, the artist has created art objects by lumping coal together. Obviously. However, there is more of a meaning if we consider the intention of the work. Surely, the artist is inviting the public and society to come together to make a transformation of the coal into something else – something as pure and luminous and beautiful like light. The artist is asking us to become the creators and the people of light. To become separated from the dirtiness of coal – for surely, who expects coal to glow like it does in the exhibition before they come to the Painted Hall? There is a drive to make us form a new society, a new revolutionary society. To bring the people together into a greater whole against the rich that control resources in the world.

What is my overall opinion of Coalescence? It looks beautiful and spectacular, much more so than I expected. It is thought provoking and sophisticated, not what I expected at all. It does capture something of the essence of light – it is illuminating. The artwork has substance and it has an appealing charm to it. The question is, however, is the art fit for purpose? Can you make beauty into a stone and fling it into the face of this wretched world and its mechanisms of power – its control by the rich in the service of the exploitation of the world and all that are in it? Will the people – who never understand anything – that misunderstand everything – even make the first move towards appreciating the work? The attempt has to be applauded. The spirit has to be applauded. The real artist is a revolutionary. As the Hindi song title says we must have ‘Sarfaroshi ke tamana’ – the desire to have the revolutionary spirit. Without that, art is meaningless in a corrupt world. Because art is either the resistance, or it is not art. It would be propaganda for arrogance, insolence, sin and exploitation. As we reflect on the differing beauties in the Painted Hall – beauty without a conscience, beauty with a conscience – as we ponder on the unthinking and selfish and inconsiderate atrocities of the past and the atrocities of the present, what conclusion can we really come to? At the very least, there has to be the attempt at justice. At the very least, there had to be the attempt to crawl out of the gutter towards the stars and the light. At the very least, there has to be something said about what is happening, what is hidden, what we don’t want to know and feel. At the very least, some small, small ounce of ‘sarfaroshi ke tamana’ must be in the world. Otherwise, all you have is burning coal. And dirt that chokes.

Love’s Mirror – The Philosophy of Separation

24.09.2023

All relationships end in separation. Either through death or self-imposed and chosen separation.

What philosophical questions can we ask of chosen separation? How can what was one have become two? What was united have become fragmented? But, then again, is this true, is there a real fragmentation? Or just the illusion of one? The questions are important because unity is one of the great goals not only of love, but also of human civilisation, something yet to be achieved. And the question is also important because in the modern world we live fragmented lives – there are more single people now than ever, separated from each other and from love.

I want to focus on the type of relationship that ends in anger and the parties no longer remain on speaking terms. Let us focus on a scenario where the one in a rage tells the other never to communicate with them ever again. Here is a photograph I took years ago to illustrate this situation.

There is the person begging for forgiveness with the hands joined together. There is the person that tells them that they can’t talk any more. And there is the person that closes up their ears so that they can no longer listen to the one that appeals the judgement of hate.

Now, at first glance, it appears as though the angry one has imposed silence and separation onto the other person. This seems like an expression of power and autonomy. There doesn’t seem to be any reciprocity or mirroring of the other person involved. It seems like a command from above imposed on someone who has to adopt an inferior position.

But let’s think about it for a minute. Because, in fact, the one trying to impose the silence is also subject to this order. They cannot speak either. Otherwise this would break the silence. They also cannot listen to their former lover’s words, those lovers that are desperate to hear their voice.

The one that is supposedly in the powerful position is merely mirroring the position of the one in the supposedly inferior position. This follows the mirroring of love where one party mirrors the other one and they become mirrors for each other, which is what happens in love. There is no winner and loser in love. Love always wins.

And notice that separation creates a community bonded by love – a silent, deaf and dumb community. Each one exactly alike, a twin, a clone, a mirror-image. Which also shares that nauseating, devouring, colossal pain which is caused by rejection and which the final anger merely masks.

Again, it is noteworthy that the silence imposed, which seems spontaneous, and the product of free will and choice, merely mirrors the silence in the relationship before, when words were not exchanged about real feelings and so silent resentment would slowly erupt into being, modelled on the silence on the relationship and its implicit assumptions (and misunderstandings).

Today, when I was going to sit on the tube, I noticed a very attractive red headed woman staring at me. I didn’t look back – the periphery of my vision is very good. I didn’t need to. She kept on looking at me while I sat back listening to my headphones. I rubbed my nose. Suddenly, she rubbed her nose as well, right after I did. Attraction and love are based on mirroring. And so is separation.

Perhaps you’re thinking you can escape separation and love’s mirror? To do so would be to talk. And then the other, if they loved the other person, would talk back. But once again, we fall into the culture of mirroring and reciprocity. The mirror structures our relationships and our loves.