14.12.2025

A: You are the fighter. What is the worst beating you have taken?

S: The beating from the stone.

A: Meaning?

S: Telling them what I felt about them to be burnt alive.

A: Surely you exaggerate. After all, they did nothing to you.

S: They put a wall of ice around me which pierced my heart with shivers of ice.

A: That is what it is like when love is not returned?

S: You have never felt it? The pain. The nausea. The disappointment. The disbelief. The trauma, the shock, the nightmares…

A: Nightmares?

S: Let us not speak of those.

A: Real pain?

S: Much worse than getting a beating. Fire in the mind. That is what you get from loving the stone.

A: The stone rolls through the world. Everywhere, the stone crushes its lovers. That is the way of the stone.

S: The stone can crush an insect. I am a man, a lover, a warrior. The heart of the Punjabi is brave. However remorseless this life and the stone, we live through it. Love triumphs.

A: But you talk often of the stone…

S: My anger at the stone is irredeemable. That is our final connection. Anger without words or bounds.

13.12.2025

A: You are inappropriate sometimes.

S: So?

A: You get into trouble for it.

S: I apologize. I don’t want to hurt my friends.

A: They think you have crossed the boundaries.

S: I believe in discussion and in exploring issues. I believe in honesty. I believe in free speech. And I believe in joking.

A: That’s why they think you’re inappropriate. Because you don’t follow the rules of communication.

S: What would you have me do? Follow rules that I don’t believe in? Not be myself?

A: Would you be hated?

S: They will hate whatever I say. They will reject whatever I say. They will exclude whatever I say. You would have me sew my lips together.

A: The laugh of The Tiger is madness. That, they cannot take.

S: We laughed at everything with our friends.

A: Some are not friends.

S: With their boundaries, they try to control.

A: You do not understand other people. Because you have no insecurities and fears, you will not understand them.

S: If I ever hurt my friends, I feel hell burning in my stomach, lungs and face.

A: A joke is a risk. You take too many risks. Why risk a friendship for a joke?

S: Because this world is the joke of the joker. And no one laughs.

A: That is your madness. That you laugh.

11.12.2025

S: After love has spilled over you. After you have kissed, held hands, put skin against skin. After all this, there comes the night of separation. In Hindi they call it ‘Shab-e-firaaq’.

A: Does there have to be the night of separation?

S: You cannot live in each other’s pockets.

A: Two that would become one. Then they become only two.

S: The moment that you become one is a miracle snatched from this world.

A: Does it have to be a miracle?

S: To live in love and in the body has become a miracle in a prosaic and hateful existence.

A: And what does the lover think about in the night of separation?

S: The body. The kisses. The hands. The hips. The words. The breaths mingling. How to see them again. When there will be the happy moments of love.

A: So the lover then lives in the past and the future. And not the present?

S: The heart of the lover cannot live in the night of separation. For the lover, the bliss of union is where the heart lies. For Krishna, there is Radha who enchants and she is the end of the journey.

A: And for Radha?

S: The road leads to Krishna. Against the night of separation, he is the dawn of a new day.

10.12.2025

S: One that is cold searches for the heat.

A: Can one that is cold become one that is warm?

S: It is not always possible. Some have ice in their hearts.

A: Do you not cultivate ice in your mind?

S: It has to be done. Otherwise the fire would consume all.

A: You talk of the rage.

S: I am wrath.

A: And the heat elsewhere?

S: That too searches for the heat of the other. To be united in the fire.

A: The Buddha has said that fire is all.

S: Ice is necessary. After all, revenge is a dish best served cold.

A: You lust after it?

S: I would burn the enemy alive.

A: No remorse?

S: The warrior does not question the way. He does. He is action. Not doubt. The warrior is fire. And fire must be fed or it dies.

A: You build pyres.

S: The fire only asks for a spark to reshape the world. The fire only asks for it’s fire to be returned. The fire only asks for the fire to be passed on. And ice is only necessary so that all is not lost in the flames.

09.12.2025

S: The mother of Moses saved his life. Even before he was born, his death was decreed. She hid him in a basket. She gave him up so that he could live. It was his mother that created the leader of the people, their champion. The honour is hers.

A: So?

S: When my mother was an Indian schoolgirl, the rich and powerful decided that us, the poor, that we could not breed. They were forcing sterilisation on the young girls. My mother heard the whispers. They were coming to her school. She was next. She hid in the bathroom. She escaped. She never went back to school. She chose to be the Mother. She chose us, the people.

A: She saved your life?

S: And then she named me after Sunil Dutt, the man that saved the life and honour of Mother India. The son that weds the Mother. She handed me my destiny. The mother gives birth to The Tiger. What am I? I am The Tiger.

A: You think you are Moses?

S: The mother of Krishna saves his life from the evil oppressor Kans. The tales of the god and Moses are the tales of my life. I have been born under the star of destiny. The mother gives birth to the Revolution. I am the Revolution. The mother gives birth to the hero at great personal cost. I am the hero. The mother gives birth to destiny. I am destiny.

A: Analysis?

S: The Mother is life over death. She is protection. She is resistance. She is the champion of the people. A warrior goddess gives birth to a warrior.

A: You worship your mother?

S: She is me and what I hope to be. She is power. She is hope. And she is love. She is my religion and my meaning in this life.

08.12.2025

S: The whole world might not value you. The whole world might devalue you. But the one that loves you? They give you your due. To them, you are priceless. You are a diamond, a star upon the earth. And for you, that is what they are.

A: Is that how it feels to be with someone?

S: If they were not special to you, why would you be with them?

A: How does the contrast with this heartless world and those without hearts feel then?

S: It heightens their worth. It shows you what genuine acceptance means and not the fakeries of the heartless. From hell we step into heaven. We find belonging, light in a dark place. Those that we thought were ours, they made us believe that we would never have anyone ever again.

A: The villains smile and smile and smile. Yet they are villains.

S: They think themselves everything. And us nothing. But in fact, they showed their quality.

A: So now you belong. What is the feeling?

S: What else could there be? Happiness and union. A rosy future.

A: Remember the thorns from before and make much of the rose.

S: In this garden, the rose is the queen of the flowers. It is the garden of the king so only the queen will do.

08.12.2025

S: You can’t defend yourself from the hurts of love. Even if you prepare yourself.

A: Too true.

S: Nothing can be too true. The other thing about the hurts of love is that you cannot avenge them.

A: What do you mean?

S: This one, they broke my heart. They tricked me. And there is nothing I can do about it.

A: Rage away. There is no harm in it.

S: I do rage. I am still angry.

A: The beloved can get away with deceit, lie upon lie, indifference, betrayal…

S: If they do that, you remove yourself from them.

A: By then, they have trapped you.

S: I am free from the trap.

A: Are you?

S: There is always another for a heart full of bravery and love.

A: The one you have freed yourself from?

S: Some other will suffer from them. I have had a lucky escape. They do not have a heart. History will  know their evil. Because in this story, I am the hero. I write the story and therefore I am the victor. I won the game. I did not submit to their demands. I set the conditions. I returned their rejection with interest. They know. They lost.

A: Was it just a game?

S: Not a game, THE Game. The most serious one. The one where you stake everything. And I won.

07.12.2025

S: Andy had to crawl through a tunnel of shit to get to freedom in ‘The Shawshank Redemption’.

A: So?

S: That’s exactly what you have to do. Crawl through a tunnel of shit for it.

A: You know, context is everything. I know you mean something specific.

S: I am talking not just about politics. But love. And even love is politics. Because the personal is the political. Love in this country is incest and narcissism for the most part. Not love but sin. Bondage and not freedom.

A: The sneering starts.

S: I spit upon what passes as love here.

A: You spare none. But yourself.

S: I have freed myself from the Siren. I didn’t stuff my ears with wax. I listened to another’s song.

A: She did nothing to hurt you.

S: Except break my heart. The world can forgive her. The world can adore her. I cannot. I know what happened. The innocent one is me.

A: And the tunnel of shit?

S: Inch by inch I crawled in that claustrophobic, suffocating and stinking hell. I was all alone. But love is freedom. I knew that love was waiting for me at the end of the tunnel. The fresh air. In love as in politics. At the end of the tunnel is the Revolution of love. We endure for tomorrow. We die for tomorrow. Everything hurts. But it is for tomorrow.

06.11.2025

S: Achilles is angry. He will not fight. He will not be included or involved in this machine of war unless he is given the highest honour. He is a warrior from the honour society. Not the degraded present.

A: And you are Achilles.

S: Over twenty years ago they rejected me from Cambridge even though I passed the interview. I am still sore. They did not give me my professor’s role at university after my PhD, book and articles. Can you imagine my wrath? They should be throwing every top position into my lap.

A: Don’t become ego.

S: I am ego and I am rage. I deserve the honour. They have been unjust to me. They are racists.

A. You believe in yourself so much?

S: If someone who is as intelligent and well read as me tells you that he is a genius, it is because he knows his own place in the world of thought. There is no one like me. Because I am Punjab. I am India. I am The Tiger.

A: One day, even Achilles fights.

S: Achilles enters the field for his love. The warrior only fights for honour or love. They do not deserve Achilles. The Greeks do not deserve him. Helen does not deserve him.

A: You were not lying when you said your ego was monstrous.

S: I am the greatest. I believe. And if they will not give me what is mine because of my greatness, why should I kill myself for them? Who the fuck are they? Haters and low lifes. They only recognise greatness to exclude it. Fuck them and theirs.