the front and the face of the punjabis

30.08.2026

For an outsider, Punjabis are just farmers. The poor. One thing is not apparent. That Punjab is the warrior culture. We are known as warriors.

But what is it that makes us warriors? What is that special quality that sets us apart?

I believe everything revolves around the concepts of the front and the face of the Punjabis. These are terms that are used in fighting. You have a front in fighting, a public face. You have face in fighting, which is courage and fight.

This front or this face is based on honour. We are not just the warrior society, we are also the honour society. The most honourable thing is to be a warrior. We worship the gurus who were warriors. That fought for us against invaders, against oppression, against injustice. Sikhism has been forged in this fight. We are forged in the claims of honour.

What does front mean? What does face mean? We won’t let anyone change our traditions. We won’t let anyone touch us or our rights. When the government wanted to take the rights away from our farmers, we protested for one year and four months. The protest of the farmers was treated like a war. The protestors were hailed as heroes.

Front or face means that we will not bend. We will not submit. It doesn’t matter how powerful anyone else is. We will always fight. It is our honour to fight. And to die fighting.

The difference between the warrior and the coward is front or face. The coward does not have front or face. The coward has nothing. Because in our culture, the coward is a non-man. The coward does not have it in them to fight. They have no substance, values, morality or anything.

Our front is our morals. Our face is our morals. In a film that I watched, it was said that the world is won not through arrogance, but through morals. Front or face is not arrogance. It is self belief and confidence. It is knowing that we are warriors and it is our duty to fight. We know that we are men. We are called Singh, which means Tiger. The beast that is known for its fight. We are the community of Tigers.

Where does front come from? It does not come from the patriarchy. It comes from the matriarchy. From the mother. In the film Batwara 1947, Sunny Deol, my favourite actor, his fight and resistance against hate and oppresion comes from defending the mother from exclusion and injustice. And the mother? She is the one with the front and the face. She will not leave her family home. She is unyielding and unbending. She will not listen to anyone that tries to take her away from her home, whether this is India or Pakistan. She is the one that is substance, value, morals and honour. In Punjab, our mother is our honour. That is where front or face comes from. That is where the warrior comes from. The front or the face evolves from The Mother.

There is a saying in India when you call someone out for a fight. You say to them, ‘If you have drank your mother’s milk, come’. Because power, front and face, all of these come from The Mother.

Travel Diary: Burnham on Crouch (32,000 steps)

25.08.2026

In the morning, I woke up raring to go. It was a beautiful day outside and we were off somewhere, my friend Mark and me. It was going to be a surprise. I managed to fit in meditation, chi building, light weights, push ups and stomach crunches. As well as a crossword, a jigsaw puzzle and scrabble online as well as a light breakfast.

After breakfast, most of the morning was taken up with last minute packing (in which I forgot some hand sanitiser) and also playing around with my new pocket microscope that I had gotten from Hamleys. I just couldn’t figure out where the battery was and how to switch on the light. I looked at it from every angle, I searched the internet for a solution. I had a suspicion that you could pull the microscope out of its cradle and that’s how you used it but I didn’t want to break it by pulling it too hard. It later turned out I was right when Mark looked over it too and we got the LED light working. But that didn’t stop me wasting all the time in the morning looking at the thing.

Mark turned up and told me that we were going to Burnham on Crouch and the coast again. During the car journey there, we stopped at a graveyard along the road which had a good view of the Essex plain, which was a picture of complete flatness.

We parked the car at Burnham next to a stately Napoleonic manor from 1815. And then we wended our way down to the coastal path next to the town. We watched a boat being lifted and then lowered into the sea which was called Ophelia which led to us ranking the best of the plays of Shakespeare and commenting on Ophelia being in the water. We also walked into an area that had been devastated by wildfire. It was massive although had been controlled in the end. Next, Mark and I were looking at leaves and feathers through the pocket microscope, amazing views, learning how to use the thing. There were a few excursions into charity shops where we gawped at books and I had to force myself not to pick up one, a paper back on how the earth had shaped human civilisations over time. We ended up having, respectively, a cappucino and a strawberry and chocolate gelato ice cream in the pub. It was tastefully decorated, with a vivid blue paint on the walls and classy portrait paintings of animals in clothes. The table that we sat on had a mass of fake cherry blossoms towering over us as well as a large gilt mirror behind us.

I started talking to the waitress in the pub, a young blonde lady. I asked her if there was anything to do in Burnham that we didn’t know about. There was something she suggested, but it turned out that that was next week. She actually wasn’t from Burnham, but from somewhere nearby. So she couldn’t really tell us. She did suggest seal watching though. I got the young lady to take a photo of Mark and I when we were leaving.

We ended up on a pontoon that shook and quivered with the sea as we walked along it. Kids were catching crabs with nets down there. One family had them in a see through bucket and they were all restless with movement. I asked the lady what they were going to do with them and she laughed and said that they would just throw them back.

We then went on the massive walk where the dry grass was brushing against my bare legs and in which I would eventually end up with a small blister on one of my toes, which was much better than the last blister that I had got on the sole of my foot last time which was exceptionally painful and had come once the interior of my trainers had deteriorated. We spotted Oystercatchers and I had a lunch of sausage rolls and Hula Hoops washed down with water while Mark feasted on corned beef and brown sauce sandwiches. There was an interesting pill box on the way as well as a solar farm and renewable energy windmills. We ended up at the North sea where we sat on a private beach, all to ourselves, again looking at a feather through the microscope and looking out over the sea with my binoculars. Mark thought he spotted some seals as this was seal country, but they might just have been some stones.

In about three hours, we had only seen one human being on that walk. It was a brown haired woman who was very friendly. She had a dog with her and the reason we started talking to her was because Mark threw her the ball that she had been throwing to her dog so that her dog would get back to her.

We walked back to the car to dump our stuff after the walk and had a quick orange juice and a tea in the pub, which had a picture of Dolly Parton which we discussed, before we walked over to the sea again and the pontoon from before. There, a German woman that was breastfeeding her kids started talking to us. She recommended that we go to the Ship Inn for dinner so that was what we did. I had fish and chips and Mark had the prawn spaghetti. I followed my meal with a white chocolate and raspberry cake with amoretto biscuit while Mark had a creme brulee with some biscuits. During dinner, we found out that Dolly Parton had died and we were struck by the coincidence that we’d just been talking about her.

Then it was the end of the journey, the car drive back home. We listened to Dolly Parton songs and about her life, as well as about an upcoming documentary about Wham! and how they had been the first Western act to perform in China (or something of that description). We talked about George Michael amongst other things, Mark not recognising the song ‘Fast Love’ which is my favourite one by him, even when I sang it.

Home and a call to my girlfriend. And then my diary. And now? Sleep. It is 23.15. I’ve been up since six in the morning and will be up at 6 am tomorrow.

writing beyond time

24.08.2026

There is never a chance to write. There is never time to write. Always, life is busy. Always, there is too much to do. And then? Where can one write? When can one write? But the writing calls out to be done. The community need to be expressed. So we wake up early in the morning for the words to come shooting out. We stay up beyond our bedtimes to stay up. Somehow, this writing, it happens.

This is the scenario in which writing takes place for the common man. The man that does not have a massive generational wealth so that he can concentrate on his writing and his ideas. The man that does not have connections that can help him to find work in writing. The man that is not of the right sort in society to write because he comes from the working class, is an ethnic minority and because he is a man.

So when you, the reader, when you read these words, you are reading a rush of thoughts. You are reading writing in which there has been no time. Writing that is beyond time. How does this writing work? How can anything be said at all? The reason is that this man, he types at over ninety words per minute. It is a flood that is unleashed. The reason is that this man, when he sits at the desk, he uses his unconscious to write. He does not plan anything. He does not think over things with his conscious mind. He uses the super genius that is the unconscious to make things work.

Already, you have read something that has taken him four minutes to write. This is the point at which this conversation is right now.

For this writer, his art and his writing is like calligraphy. He has five degrees. He has First Class Honours degrees in English Literature and also in Art History. All this learning, all this erudition and thought, it is being packed into this writing. That is what you are getting when you read all of this.

And now? It is coming up to six minutes of writing. And that is all that this writer has. In six minutes, when he can write, he tries to change the world. He has criticised this oppressive world that only gives him six minutes in which to perform. And that is why this writer writes. To change the world. That is why he will find those six minutes. That is why his writing is beyond time.

Richard Dadd – Beyond Bedlam. The Royal Academy

22.08.2026

Named ‘Beyond Bedlam’, the irony of this exhibition is that the most interesting works from Dadd actually date from the Bedlam period. A period when Dadd really becomes Dadd. Before, he had technical accomplishment and hard work. After, he became an interesting painter and artist. Perhaps this shift and renewal or remaking is reflected in the infamous deed that Dadd did, which was to kill his father during a psychotic outbreak. ‘Dad’ was a word used to refer to the father in Victorian times, so perhaps Dadd killing his father was a killing of himself. A self destruction and self making.

The background to the parricide was that Dadd had been exploring Syria and Egypt, or the Orient and had then become overwhelmed with the sights he had seen. One speculates that he was overcome by the Orient, by difference from the West. Traumatically so. He began to believe that he was the god Osiris, with the over-identification with the East. This trauma of the imagery of the East and of difference would inform his works when he was confined to mental institutions for the rest of his life. So, perhaps one should see Dadd’s works as the traumatic exploration of being different, of being other to the West.

An interesting painting in this regard is ‘Contradiction’, which is about Oberon and Titania fighting over the Indian boy in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, when the East inspires conflict and overturns the order of nature, as in Shakespeare’s play. The Indian boy seems to be pulling Oberon into nature and its world. Elsewhere, in the Bethlem period and beyond, nature similarly seems to be overtaking the male characters and their portraits too. Portrait of a Young Man, 1853 is enmeshed in nature, as are the figures in Bacchanalian Scene, 1862.

Why does madness make the art of Dadd interesting? Why does difference impose such a trauma on this Western artist? Why are we, the public, in love with the artist’s madness? Is any of us really beyond Bedlam?

being removed

20.08.2026

Humans crave connection. They crave the feeling of oneness with someone. The feelings of intimacy. At the same time, we are removed from one another. Social status removes us from one another. How close do you feel to the senior management at work? To your university professor? To the Prime Minister? Ethnicity and race remove us from one another. How close do you feel to refugees, to immigrants, to ethnic minorities?

In fact, disconnection and removal are active processes that are being constructed all around us. Currently, we are seeing disconnection and removal being implanted between men and women. The rise of incels and misogyny and their equivalents on the side of the women, these are now all familiar aspects of the terrain. The attendant consequences are that fewer people are dating and having babies.

The Indian view of this disconnection and removal is quite clear. It is a process that is implanted by political elites to separate and divide us. It is easier to rule over those that are divided. It is easier to rule over those that are not united. Because unity is strength. The big example is the partition and how it separated the might of India into fragments. Fragments which favoured the West and its power structure.

My grandfather used to tell me stories when I was a child, wisdom stories from all over the world. There were us three brothers. The story was for us. Here is the story. There was an old man with three sons. The sons would bicker and fight. He decided to teach them a lesson. One day, he gave them all a single stick. He told them to snap it, which they did easily. The next day, it was two sticks tied together. Again, relatively easy to snap. More and more every day. Eventually, there were two many sticks joined together to snap. The lesson? Unity is strength.

A recent film I watched was about this message. Batwara 1947, by my favourite director Rajkumar Santoshi and my favourite actor Sunny Deol. The forces of disconnection and removal utilised by unscrupulous politicians were rendered powerless in the face of a show of unity across the divides of religion. The message was clear: the Indian way is syncretism. The joining of perceived opposites. The merging. All in the name of one thing: humanity is the greatest religion. Connection to each other is the greatest good. The lessons that my grandfather taught me.

The activist and the good human wishes and hopes for this connection. For the people to be one and to be one with the people. It is connection that the good person seeks out. And when you find those that seek out disconnection and removal, isolation and marginalisation, that is when you know that their politics are corrupt. Reform UK, the Conservatives, Donald Trump and his stooges in America. This is what absolute corruption looks like. It is anti-human and inhuman.

Theatre Review: Who Killed Marilyn?

19.08.2026

A play that was about love and its absurdity. We had the most desirable woman of her time that was absolutely beloved by the public. But the irony? She could not find love in her relationships. Marilyn was presented as the victim of love. She was presented as one that was oppressed by that which masqueraded as love but which was not love. The idea of love that was being used to mask oppressive power.

The question that kept occuring to me throughout the play was why did these super desirable women appear to choose men that would beat them, desert them, never really love them? When there were so many good men about. It is an extraordinary fact that such women will often choose the man that is completely wrong.

Part confessional, part therapy session, and mostly in monologue form interspersed with narrative action, Pixie Lot’s performance as Marilyn was engaging, even mesmerising. The focus was on Marilyn’s relationships with men, mostly her romantic relationships. The idea seemed to be to expose the conspiracy of love. How it favours the men that were in power. How its victims are seduced.

I myself have written about the conspiracy of love. And how it affects Asian men such as myself. In a play like ‘Who Killed Marilyn’, the thought is acceptable. Because of feminism. Is the thought acceptable when it comes from the pen of an Asian man? I would suggest not. Yet we see these conspiracies of love. We feel them and orientate our life around them. As in ‘Who Killed Marilyn?’, it is a power play.

How did Marilyn come across in this play? She is presented as a woman of talent who is not taken seriously by others because of her beauty. She is keenly sensitive to slight, to disrespect. She has horrors of being taken into mental institutions like her mother and her grandmother. She is presented as a voracious reader. As an intellect. And? Also as a writer that keeps a diary with secrets that could shake and take down the world and its system of power. The play is about Marilyn the writer and her power. The divine feminine energy of the writer that writes the truth. And the play is about truth. What is being said, whatever happened, this is a counter narrative that aims to expose power and mechanisms. Not the individualising narrative that lays the blame for the death of the writer and the actress on Marilyn herself, conveniently hushing up the context in which eradication takes place and death is formed.

Batwara 1947: Sunny Deol and The Religion of The Mother

Film Review by Dr. Suneel Mehmi BA., LLB, LLM, PhD

18.08.2026

Often, I bore my readers by telling them about the origin of my name. My mother named me after Sunil Dutt because he saved the life of the actress that played Mother India, the woman that was playing Sunil’s mother in the film. He protected The Mother. A fire had broken out on set. He was her saviour. She fell in love with Sunil at the hospital while she cared for him with his severe burns. The couple married. Sunil had protected Mother India. And Sunil had married Mother India. His own mother. Here, in Batwara 1947, Sunny Deol was playing the man that protected Mother India. And this time, he was Muslim. What I was seeing on screen was the destiny that my mother had chosen for me. Not least, because Sunil Dutt was Hindu/Sikh and had married a Muslim woman.

The movie has not done good business at the box office. But is this because Sunny Deol, known for his patriotic movies, is playing a Muslim man in a film that criticises the Partition and the separation imposed on us by the Colonisers and the West? The director said that it was difficult to get funding for the movie because of this fact. Without a doubt, there is a strong current of Islamophobia in India at the moment. And this is the reason that films like Batwara 1947 should be made. Because society needs to be changed so that it accords with the Indian ideals of harmony and acceptance. These films are the education that society needs. The message that it needs.

In Indian style, the movie is about syncretism or mixing over discrete boundaries of religion. This is evident in the cast. In the movie, the Hindu mother is played by a Muslim woman. The Sikh and Hindu actors play Muslims. The content of the film is the same. Preity Zinta’s character will cook for The Mother in utensils that have never been used for cooking meat as the mother is a vegetarian by religion for instance. The message is that humanity is greater than religion. Connection is greater than the politics of hate and difference. This was the lesson that my grandfather taught me when I was a child. He would greet each in their own religion’s greeting. Celebrate all religious events despite the fact that he was himself Guru Ravidasia. It is a teaching that is familiar for us from the older generation – a lesson that those who thrive on hate have never learnt, let alone forgotten.

Above everything, the movie is about the religion of the mother. The religion of Durga, the Invincible, The Mother Queen. The one I bowed my head to as a child. It is about the love for Durga. The love for The Mother. The purest relationship and the most natural, as the movie says. The love that comes before organised religion is the love for The Mother. The love that comes before the love of the state – which the movie also criticises – is the love for The Mother. It is the love for The Mother that can achieve harmony and love in this world away from religion and statehood.

The old lessons. The women in the film are the fountains of morality just like in the Indian films of the past. They tell us that one cannot abandon one’s integrity for one’s life. They tell their husbands what to do to uphold right. In feminist thought, the angel conception of womanhood is often criticised. Surely, the Indian says, heroism is known for its morality. The women are being presented as heroines. Why would this be wrong? The hero, Sunny Deol, his fight is what we believe in because it is based on morality. Is this wrong too?

The message of the story is simple. Love triumphs over hate. Hate is peddled by politicians and not the people. Humanity is our greatest strength and virtue. Those who believe in hate are not human. They are not defenders of the faith because all they believe in is themselves and their selfish greed.

The dialogues in the movie were brilliant. It was well written. The music was good too. It was very emotional hearing the hymn of Rama and his mother. The acting in the movie was superb. It combined all of the classic elements of Indian cinema. The second half I found particularly powerful. These were the teachings I had been raised upon as a child. They were the teachings of my grandfather who had married a woman that had had to flee what become known as Pakistan in the Partition. Without making Sunny Deol purely into an action hero and typecasting him – although he still packed a punch in the fight scenes – the film raised him in my estimation as an actor with range and depth. Preity Zinta was also amazing and Karan Deol also surprised me as a talent.

love and the reasons not to die

17.08.2026

It is with sadness that we read of the death of Jason Arday. Such a senseless death from a media witchunt, whatever the reality of the claims of plagiarism. One understands suicide. But one is against it.

Camus wrote that there was only one philosophical question. Whether or not one should live. Whether or not one should commit suicide. Camus said that to kill oneself is to accept and become defeated by the meaninglessness of life. Whereas one should learn to accept that life is meaningless but to make meaning from it. To persist despite everything.

The Indian answer to whether life is worth living comes in many forms. But what is emphasised is love and duty. Whatever thoughts come, dark thoughts, there is always the mother that gave birth to us that would be devastated by our loss. There is the duty that we owe to our parents and family to look after them.

This idea of love and duty is thousands of years old. In the epic, The Mahabharata, the character Bhisma can choose the time of his own death. The reason he does not die is because of love and duty. He had to preserve the dynasty, the kingdom and teach and educate those that he loved and cared for. The children and the future.

Bhishma’s story is all about triumphing over death and suicide. His mother came from heaven and killed all of her babies except for Bhisma to liberate them from the suffering in the world. The reason he survives against his own will and his mother’s will is because of love, that his father the king wished him to live (and for the dynasty). He himself wants to die to escape the world and its pain but does not.

Then, Bhisma was a warrior. We come from the warrior culture. It is regarded as cowardice to kill oneself. And also shameful. The family would have to live in dishonour afterwards and one’s name would be tarnished. One has to live to fight. Life is a war. The duty is to live.

Bhisma’s story unravels another strand of the philosophy and duty to live. The thoughts of suicide come when one is all alone. Suicide happens when one is alone. However, Bhisma exemplifies that we are never alone. He is wrapped up in the web of others. His duty is to the dynasty, the kingdom and the people. He does not think of himself as a lone man. Bhisma wanted to die. He did not because of human relationships and what the Buddhists would call attachment.

One can add to this that Bhisma waits for the right ending, the auspicious time to die. He doesn’t let failure create the ending. Jason Arday let failure create the ending. The idea that everything is finished. One cannot accept the bad ending. One has to look for the right ending, keep on picking oneself up after failure.

In Indian philosophy, to fight against death, one takes up the warrior mantle of Bhisma. Even when one dreams of death, one forces oneself to live. The dream of suicide? When one is all alone, when one is truly free. And the answer to this dream? To remember that we are attached to others. One is bound by others. One has duties. One has to create the right ending. Because of love.

the choice of a hero

08.08.2026

S: We choose our heroes. And the choice shows us who we are.

A: What is your choice?

S: You know my choice. My choice is the man that fights for The Mother. The man that fights for the Oppressed, for the People. The man that fights for the Revolution. The man that fights for honour and justice.

A: And what about others? Surely they choose a just man?

S: What makes you think this? This world is still caught in the clutches of colonialism and in the sweating palms of the atrocious rich. It is a world plagued by racism and hate. And in this world, do you think that they will choose a just hero? Their hero is defined by the colour of their skin. Their hero is defined by the exploitation that gives them power, privilege, and wealth. Their hero is not a hero at all. Their hero is the villain. Far from being for The Revolution, their hero is for the continuation of this evil.

A: Are you not unjust to these people?

S: Where is the evidence that they have chosen a just hero? The entire problem is their process of selection, their so-called ‘choice’ that they are so proud of boasting about. In reality, they have no choice. They are slaves. And they follow the herd and the rich that rule over them.

A: You yourself have had little choice in who you have chosen as a hero. It is a culture that gives us a hero.

S: The culture of Punjab is beautiful because we have produced hero after hero. We have fought against oppression and injustice. And then, I am one of the Untouchables, the lowest castes. Our heroes are those that embody The Revolution. The Independence. We are the warriors from the warrior culture.

A: Some think that the warrior is evil.

S: Good is won through war. There is no other way. We bring the goodness into the world. That is why we are heroes. Even now, I fight against the Empire. Even now. Even now I fight against racism and oppression. Even now. That is the heroism that I have chosen. That is the heroism that you read when I write, when I think. We go up against a world that wishes to erase difference and diversity. And when you judge the words, it is our words that have the greatest weight. It is our words that win. Because we are the truth in a universe of lies.

a break in writing

03.08.2026

A: Why have you taken this break in writing? Your readers are missing you.

S: I do not owe anyone anything.

A: In some sense, you do. They come to your writing time and time again. They trust you to write something.

S: In any case, what changes with my writing? The world is corrupt when I am writing. It is corrupt when I am not writing. There is no transformation. There is no Revolution.

A: You have lost faith in humanity? You have lost faith in making a difference?

S: If you want to see how much notice people take of you, try pursuing writing, art, poetry and photography for a number of years. And see what it all comes to when you do not come from the dominant culture and you have no connections.

A: I thought you told me that you do not give up.

S: You will merely have to see whether I continue writing or not, won’t you?

A: Do you think that you can give up writing. I would say that is not possible. We all know you. Come, what is happening in your life? You have the most eventful life out of anyone that I know.

S: It is a round of concerts, friendships, romance, reading and rushing. Rushing, rushing, rushing. To fit everything in. To keep everything and everyone going. And then, stepping in where I am needed in this society. Helping old ladies with things in a restaurant. Breaking up fights on the street in the night time. Asking after elderly friends that are sick. Visiting old friends that are not doing so well.

A: You are still waiting for the golden opportunity? You are still waiting to transform this world? Remember what they said in Dhurandhar, ‘The Master of the Field’. To have one’s revenge, one needs energy. Do you have enough? Are you tired and old yet? Have you given up the fight?

S: You ask this of one from whom The Mother expects? You ask this of one that Punjab expects. That India expects. That the People, the Oppressed, that they expect? Do you know why Vishnu came to earth in every age, as in the form of my namesake Krishna? He came to expel sin from the world every time. To soothe the tears of humanity. I have been born for them. That is the destiny that has been picked out for me. You would have me fight against my destiny?

A: What have you done to right the world?

S: Everything. I have taught refugees and migrants English. I have volunteered in after school home work clubs for underprivileged children. I have tackled social isolation through reading as a volunteer. I have written and written and written for charities to spread education. I send money abroad to the poor for education. I give money to the temple so that they can feed everyone and build a community. I give money to charity. I give food to the homeless. I have coached my friends with their ambitions and dreams of advancement, helped them get jobs, supported them. I look after people in public whenever there is any issue, no matter how dangerous it is. I look after my friends and my family, nursing the sick, preparing them for university, teaching them. I have educated myself without mercy to right this world. I write to politicians to right things. Everyone looks to me to be the man and I act like the man. And I do all these things while I have been in a rigorous study for a doctorate or while I work sixty or seventy hour weeks in volunteering and working. No one can say that I do nothing. And the ones that do say I do not do anything? What do they do?