a dream of sadness

07.11.2025

S. was woken up in the morning from a dream of sadness by the alarm clock.

He was at the context where everything had happened with the one that had broken his heart. And it was a lunch time. He had gone to a shopping mall outside with another friend. It wasn’t any friend. It was a friend with a tragic past whose mother had died as a child. His company was sadness. Someone who had been separated from a woman, a mother.

The shopping had been torturous. His friend had walked in front. S. was following him. But he couldn’t follow him. S. was so sad that he had lain there face down on the ground in front of everyone. S. wanted to give up. It had consumed a lot of time. So S. had to take a taxi back. He was running late.

The taxi driver, an Indian woman (S. was Indian) had charged him an extortionate amount of money on arrival back to the place where the breaker of his heart was. Twenty five pounds. And, on arrival at the place where the breaker of his heart was, because he had to go back, he saw the Indian women’s children there. She was the mother.

He had to pay. He fumbled around in his little plastic seethrough bag of things. He kept on looking but couldn’t find the card. The Indian mother’s daughter was approaching him, looking for a tip, demanding more money.

Suddenly two bouncers appeared. They were accusing S. of trying to get away without paying the Indian mother. And then, S. found the card. Finally, he could pay the mother.

That was when the alarm bell rang and S. woke up.

In his dreams, the sadness of heartbreak was being processed. And his duty to the Mother was being processed. His debt to the Mother. She was being processed in his dreams, the women in his life and in the realm of his ideas, India’s ideas. The words he couldn’t say out loud, the things he couldn’t say out loud in a world of judgement, enmity and hostility. His past. Who could understand? Only an Indian in England.

the stealer of sweets (microfiction)

02.11.2025

In that shared space, S. had a cupboard. And in the cupboard, along with his other food, S. used to keep chocolate. No longer, because there is a stealer of sweets at large.

They began by lifting packets of chocolate. S. thought it was just an exception to the general trust that he could extend to the group. So he had kept on storing his treasures there. But the thief was resolute and shameless. So S. hid the chocolate somewhere else, under lock and key.

But then, after a while, when S. thought that the thief would no longer root around in a place where there was nothing, he had put a few packets of sweets there for himself. A quick energy boost to get him through the busy day. The thief had returned.

At first, the thief was careful. They took what could not be noticed. But, after a while, the thief became brazen. And they would take all of the sweets and leave the packet entirely empty. A message.

What was the motivation of this thief? Why were they stealing the sweets in such a targeted way?

Was it just the case that they could see something there, knew there would be something there and it was an easy heist? Was it just shameless greed?

Or was it more the case that they were communicating something? Was it a personal rivalry? Payback for some mistake? Did this thief even know whose cupboard they were stealing from?

One day, the thief left something. A giant furry strawberry. Or was it the thief at all?

The thief chews S.’s sweets in their mouth. They feel happiness. S. has fed everyone there with sweet treats on many occasions. He is happy to share. But S. does not want to share with this thief. Because generosity is a choice and not a compulsion. And this thief is forcing things.

S. wonders whether the thief thinks of their thefts at all. Whether they are happy just to take and not give a second thought. Is the thief different from this world that just takes at all without giving?

Complaint (microfiction)

01.11.2025

‘Shikayat’ (from “Gangubai Kathiawadi” soundtrack)

I was writing to A. About a song.

In this song, there is complete understanding. The understanding of a woman. The story is that there is a man who is upset with her. And she understands that he is upset with her because he loves her.

He does not look at her.

He does not think about her.

She passes by him. He does not stop her.

He complains about her.

She even says that he hates her.

But yet, she still believes in his loyalty. She believes that they are not separated. That he complains is that he loves her.

The song plays with the concept of ‘roothna’ or ‘ruthna’, being sulky or sullen. It is ‘when someone close to you gets UPSET, OFFENDED or SLIGHTLY ANGRY and STOPS TALKING/COMMUNICATING for some period’. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-English-word-for-the-Hindi-word-ruthna

“Ruthna” implies a temporary emotional withdrawal often intended to prompt reconciliation; “to sulk” and “to pout” capture the behavioral aspect, while “to be offended” or “to take offense” capture the feeling. (Ibid.)

So, in the song, she understands that he complains because he loves her. And she loves him too. The complaint is evidence of their love. It brings them together instead of breaking them apart.

Obsessively, I listened to this song. In it was the mystery of love. Of an Indian man’s love. I have not watched the film. However, the form of the song is important. It is a qawwali. This was originally a song form in Sufi Islam designed to be hypnotic and to inspire religious ecstasy and love. Hindi films use the form to convey earthly love. The divinity of love is being expressed in ‘Shikayat’ (Complaint).

How different, I thought, the Hindi film is from life. The understanding of this song, does it happen in real life? Real life is full of misunderstanding and confusion. As we know it, real life is full of misguided assumptions, tangle and confusion, mind games that meander and go nowhere.

The song has inspired me to watch the film. Perhaps in the film, there is the reconciliation of the lovers. A happy love story for a change. Instead of another witnessing of the death of love. And the death of the lover. Who is reviled for being in love.

the contest of difference (microfiction)

19.10.2025

Their culture was based on the mirror. Conformism. Emulation. Mimicry. They were all clones of each other. Whoever the original had been, that had been lost to time. Their uniforms? Black or sombre. Camouflage to become invisible. Their philosophy? Money and the self, individualism. The worship of the rich. Consumerism. Their knowledge? Pretence and arrogance. Ignorance, distortion. Lies.

Where did he begin with this? He had been imported into their land. His origin had rejected them. At first, the combined strength of their indoctrinations had proven too heavy. He dressed like them. He thought like them. But he was not one of them. Because he was brown. And because, at home, he was raised in a different version of being. Those teachings from the old world, they were slowly taking root in the cosmos of the self.

When he discovered that they would never accept him, when he found that all the important things they would keep from him, the home in him erupted into the public. He wore what was extraordinarily bright, the rainbow robes that his mother wore. He would not hide. He would stand out. The colours were difference, diversity. Their philosophy he attacked. He had been given his own path. Family first. Service before self. The community and the People over everything. The Revolution…

They had made him into the foreign woman. He knew it. He was she. Poor, excluded, marginalised, degraded. Difference herself. And they thought that would make him weak. But he knew that she was power. She was the goddess. It had become the contest of difference. He modelled his speech on her. He modelled his dress on her. When they attacked her, he fought for her. Family first. Us over I. Our language. Our culture. Our thought. The community and the People. She was the mother of his self.

Not integration but independence. Real independence and not the selfish scam that passed for it in their lies. The authenticity and integrity of being, the freedom to be, the confidence of selfhood. Honour. Love. Unrivalled power. The mother goddess who stands triumphant. The way that had lasted through eternity. However much he lost in the world, in the contest of difference, he had chosen the play of the winner: What the judge does not consider/because he has been corrupted by the highest bidder.

Escaping the Labyrinth: Equality and Diversity

(Editor Welcome written for an Equality and Diversity newsletter)

An ancient religious and spiritual metaphor, the labyrinth signifies that we are in the midst of confusion. That we have no clear path, no clear destination, that we don’t know where we are going. And therefore, that we do not know who we are. Because without purpose, we cannot find our destiny and identity.

But what is significant is that the labyrinth is an ordered structure. It is just the order of the other. That is why it is confusion. And remember, there is a solution to the labyrinth. There is an escape.

This is why I believe the idea of the labyrinth resonates with the struggle to find true equality and diversity in this world, true unity. Sometimes, we all look at the world around us that has been created by others and ask ourselves, amidst this entanglement and disorientation, can we ever find our way? Against the order of the other, how can we create an order of our own? Can we escape from this order into freedom? It is a daunting task to even begin.

Personally, I always put the example of India before me. And I think of our freedom fighters. These brave men and women were up against the greatest superpower the world had ever known. This superpower was the law. It was the government. It was the country.

But they did not shirk from the colossal challenge that was before them. They knew that they had to carve out their own path in these convoluted bureaucratic and legal structures, their own destination and their own identity from the entanglement that was presented to them.

They did it. India is free. And because she is free, she gives me hope. And I trust that she will also give the world hope. There is a legend around that either Zhou Enlai or Mao Tse-tung replied to a question about the influence of the French Revolution by saying it was too early to say. Whether or not this is true of the French Revolution, it is certainly true of the Indian Revolution. And I look forward to seeing how much of an impact this can make for all of us in this world.

burnt (microfiction)

15.10.2025

Diljale. Which means ‘burnt at heart’. It describes a cynical, distressed or disappointed person.

It was the word that came to mind to him when he passed by the restaurant and looked into the window. There she was. And then, there he was. The two of them. Together. She was smiling and laughing. She was happy.

And he was out alone in the street.

It was cold, dark and windy. Specks of rain flew into his eyes. The beautiful warm light from within was closed off to him and nobody inside was giving him the slightest notice.

This was what it felt like to be a cliche of the pathetic fallacy. He should tell the story to his colleagues in the literature departments. It would be good for a laugh or two.

He had made a desperate effort not to look into the man’s face. Because he did not want to inflict any further traumas upon himself. That was a memory that he would have to return to time and time again. Why did she choose him over me? Why did he have to see them before him?

He walked off. He tried to forget. He tried to ignore the dirty hungry invisible rats that were gnawing away at his insides and eating their way up to his throat and that horrible feeling of nausea.

You are alone. You came into this world alone. You are going to go out of this world alone.

It was not fair. It was not fair that this happiness was their’s for the taking whenever they wanted it. And never his.

Diljale. The burnt heart. It was really going up in flames. A doctor would deny it, but it was burning. He was a corpse on fire. In India, they cremated their dead. He really was dead. He was burning in the rain. The rain could not douse these flames.

What was funny that they criticised him for being cynical and pessimistic. So many disappointments in this life. All he had was disappointment to look in the face.

And what was there to walk towards in the rain? But he would walk in the rain by himself. He would have to keep on going. And he would never be sitting in that restaurant with her. That smile was going to burn in his dreams of terror.

a dream of heartbreak (microfiction)

14.10.2025

The night before, he had watched a play. And unexpectedly within the performance, the players had begun talking about heartbreak. It was a complete departure from what had been taking place and an absolute surprise. It was an outpouring of mourning.

He had watched uncomfortably, trying to forget their words as they spoke. He had thought that he had succeeded. That he had diverted his attention.

In other words, he had fooled himself.

Because in the morning, he woke up from a dream of heartbreak. He could see her face, more clearly than in a photograph, the face in life. Someone was telling a story about her. Her face was sad. They were saying that she was to marry someone else.

The mourning was not over. It had been years and he was still mourning her. She was alive and he was mourning her. It was never going to end.

He could not cry. He could not let it out. So his stomach churned with nausea and his thoughts kept on returning to her. His dreams cried for him.

He wanted to be free of her. He wanted his freedom. If he couldn’t have love, could he at least have freedom? He wanted her out of his mind. That mind was his. If she could not be his, she was not wanted in his mind.

Recently a fantasy had begun to take hold. To drink himself to death. It would be so easy, complete oblivion. Like the Indian film ‘Devdas’. Which was surprising. Because he abhorred drinking. But it was just an alteration of the usual fantasies of extinction aroused by his romantic failure. He was going to be haunted by the ghosts of the living dead forever. And there was never going to be any consolation in his life.

microfiction 1

11.10.2025

An unaccountable loss this, the ability to write purely imaginative work. Reality was pushing its sharp corners into my mind and my body. This life of suffering… How long was it that you could endure suffering for? It had been a sustained assault, a laboured siege, a ravenous feasting upon me that had taken place over years without end…

So what story could I write? That was different from my life? That was not an interminable quest? That was not a tragedy of heartbreak? A lament of loneliness and unbelonging? A fight against all that there was? A doomed resistance of difference in the face of the great evil of the One?

The public wanted a glimmer of light. That glimmer of light gave them hope. That was what sold. An orphan magician that defeats evil. A misfit that finds love. An underdog that achieves some kind of victory, whether real or imaginary. A problem that is resolved. Justice achieved.

Magic. Love. Victory. Justice. Where was any of this in my life? Where were they in my world?

And so, the need for a new story. Fiction is not the unreal. Fiction is not the false. It is an old chestnut that fiction is another reality. Perhaps more real. Perhaps braver than this reality. An alternative imagining of reality.

Perhaps I should imagine myself as a villain. I write myself into my characters. I could pretend to be the villain. But this would serve the false narrative in place. I am not the villain. I am the hero.

I live in the dystopia. What is this world if it is not dystopian? Perhaps I should invent a Utopia. Where talent is rewarded. Where genius is recognised. Where there is true equality, fairness and inclusion. But would the mind of this society and this reality be able to take it? Would they even be able to begin to comprehend it?

Perhaps this is the great barrier. Perhaps this is the cause of my pen’s impotence.

But tomorrow we pick up the pen again. And tomorrow, we imagine a new tomorrow. That is what the artist creates. From the swamp, the lotus is born. And from the breast of the slave and the faithful, there comes the rebel and the freedom fighter. Just like the devil comes out from the mind of god.

other people (microfiction)

07.10.2025

A: Why do you spend so much time expending your bile on other people?

Me: Because they are intolerable.

A: To you perhaps. You are highly strung. Admit it.

Me: Not at all. Do you know, when I came home from work and an evening somewhere, there was just one person in front of me on the street. Just one person. And despite that, this miscreant was walking in a zigzag across the street, in my way everywhere that I turned. They were glued to their smart phone. That is what people are.

A: What do you mean, that’s what people are?

Me: Inconsiderate. Deliberately in your way.

A: How was this person deliberately in your way? They were just going about their business unaware that you were in the background.

Me: Not at all. Anyone could have been trying to walk past them. They acted like the whole street was theirs. They didn’t have one single thought that there might be someone trying to walk past them.

A: The incapability to walk in a straight line is not a personal failing. They must have got out of your way when they realised that you were there.

Me: After getting in my way. The point is that these people will never let anyone past them. Even at their pathetic rate. Even with their meandering nonsense. That is why this world is like it is. These gatekeepers are everywhere. They won’t let you do anything.

A: You have achieved plenty despite them. They couldn’t keep you out of letters.

Me: I did it by myself. By enduring poverty. By having nothing. With no connections. By being a dependent. Despite their racism and prejudice, their hostility. Because of my genius.

A: I am not disagreeing. I know that they are full of hate. But don’t import their gatekeeping into everything.

Me: Why not? It is everywhere.

A: Let us change the topic. What did you do outside of work today?

Me: An acting workshop. Reading a book about reading. Reading The New Scientist. Shopping. Eating sushi for dinner. Contacting friends. Watching videos. Reading the news. I met a new person somewhere outside of work.

A: You meet new people every single day and nothing ever comes of it.

Me: That is London and its racism. That is this country.

A: Once again, we come onto the topic of other people.

Me: All there are are other people to make life sour.

A: What is your concept of other people?

Me: Despite hearing racism all around me, I have always believed we are all one. When you are all one, you are us. However, it has become apparent that they are not us. I live with the they. None of them are us. None of them are me. They are other people. They want to reject us. And because they reject us, they are them and I am me. They are other people.

A: Do you not believe that we are all one?

Me: It is them that have made the division between us. Not me. That is all that they can do. Divide and fragment. They do not know the meaning of harmony and unity. Their unity is to pit themselves against someone like me.

A: The whole world is not against you.

Me: Yes it is. I am what they want to vanquish and to rule. The ungovernable wild beast. The Tiger. But they cannot rule me. Because no one has ever ruled me. I do what I want. I have the resources of a millionaire. I have the brain of a genius. I have the body of a god. I have the energy of the sun. There is one that is born that cannot be caged. There is the bird that flies high in the blue. Freud said that the paranoic is not entirely without suspicion. They would kill freedom. They would kill anarchy. They would kill real independence and freedom and honour. They would kill me. They would kill my mother. They are murderers of thought and difference, of equality and diversity. But you cannot kill Oedipus. However much you try to protect yourself from Oedipus, it is him that will be King and that will have the Queen. You think that you can kill The Tiger. Come at him in a real fight, see what happens to you. You can’t outsmart Tiger. You can’t out talk Tiger. The man with the heart is the one that will always win. Because the man with the heart is the only real man on this earth. Not these little cowards with their lies and the shrivelled things inside their heads that pump their bastard blood through their bodies.

A: You take the idea that you are a god and a hero far too seriously.

Me: If you model yourself on a god you are a god. You have been called a god after the prayer of the people, after the prayer of your mother. They have asked god to come down upon earth to protect the Mother. There is no other aim in my life. Against the Mother, they are all standing. They want to destroy the Mother. They have seduced all into their evil. But the Mother, she is invincible. That is her name, ‘The Invincible’, Durga. Shakti is what they call her, power itself. And she is triumphant because she sits upon the tiger. I am The Tiger. I am her vehicle. She gave birth to me so I would prostrate myself before her and carry her through this world. So I speak the words of The Tiger. I speak the legend of The Tiger. For six thousand years, The Tiger has dwelt in Punjab. Now he is in London. This era will be like every other era. It will be the era of The Tiger. I am the past. I am the present. I am the future. There is only one way. That is the way of The Tiger. The warrior culture. There is an Indian film. I have changed the last line:

Death before dishonour.

Service before Self.

The Mother before everything.

praise (microfiction)

25.09.2025

‘You have perked up,’ commented Alfonso.

‘Over my wounds, he poured his praise. The recognition of my talent. As a writer. As a scholar. As a fighter for justice.’

‘The praise healed you? What is praise?’

‘This praise comes from the wise,’ I said. ‘It comes from those in the same game that I have played. They are masters at the game. They have dedicated their lives to the game. And now, they have themselves called me a master.’

‘What is the subject of this praise?’

‘The book which will proclaim my genius to the world.’ I said. I knew the true value of that book and how it would transform thought. I, the genius, I knew what the gift of my genius would mean. What it would mean for the People. And for the Revolution. Whoever had read it had gasped with admiration. There were four of us that knew the secret workings of this world from me now. The heart of the Revolution.

And this genius had meant a price. A heavy price. I stood completely alone in the world. Because genius stands completely alone. I was not a mortal man. I was not like them. I stood apart. Like a god. It was my destiny. This mind had been forged by six thousand years of India. This thought had been crafted by the ideal of The Tiger. How much had I done to become the one that solved the riddle of the Sphinx? No one else was capable of this ambition, this drive, this persistence, this discipline, this work, this born talent. That was why I was a genius. And they were not.

And what did this genius want? This genius had vowed revenge upon this society. Upon the law of the unjust. In my mind I kept on seeing myself in a boxing match with the law. We would circle each other. And I would sink the fatal blow. In my mind I kept on saying the phrase in Hindi, ‘I will break your face/mouth otherwise my name is not Love.’ [agar mainein tera mooh na todhdeya to mera naam mohabbat nahein hai].

On the walls of my heart, there were the photographs of the freedom fighters. In my dreams, there was the Revolution. And them? On the walls of their hearts were the bastards that had raped and pillaged the world and made it into a hell. Their leaders? Criminals. Nazis. Their love? Injustice. Selfishness and ego were their creed. They were my enemies.

And against my enemies, my millions of enemies, I had my voice. The voice of The Tiger. The roar of The Tiger. I am the Truth. I am Justice. I am god that has been born on the earth to rid it of sin. I am the one that loves Mother India and is beloved by her, the son that protects her honour.

The praise had confirmed the intent. I was going to do what it took to get this book published now. Now was the time to strike the hammer against the iron. The process had already started. The book had been accepted in all but formality.

There was one that stood against all. There was one that never bowed his head to anyone but The Mother. There was one that never fell. There was the one that was born to be the seer and the leader. Once there was one whose ego was invincible, whose stubborness was legendary and who was the ungovernable, wild beast, FREEDOM.

Jai Maa Kaali! Inquilaab zindabaad! Inquilaab saada zindabaad! [Hail the Dark Mother! Long Live the Revolution! May the Revolution Live Forever!]