Tag: books

three good deeds in five minutes

29.07.2026

S: It really does not take long to do good things in this world.

A: How so?

S: You really can do good wherever you go.

A: Really?

S: You know, just a few days ago, I stopped a fight. Two young men were beating up another younger man together. I stopped them.

A: Surely that was just a one off?

S: Not at all. On Saturday, I shared my photographs of an event with the organisers even though I was not paid for it. Yesterday, I arranged something for volunteers at a place I work in by giving my time not only in organising, but also on the day.

A: This is something that you often do.

S: Because I always aim to make life better for anyone that I know.

A: Any other good deeds recently?

S: Checking up on an elderly friend because she is not well. Again yesterday.

A: And anything else yesterday?

S: Yes. To illustrate this idea that you don’t have to do too much to do good things, let me tell you about my visit to the Oxfam book shop. Now, I was there shopping and I picked up this book by Steven Pinker about language, ‘Words and Rules’. It was on at £4. However, I browsed through the book and saw that it was a signed copy, with the author’s signature on the front page. Here was this signed copy in my hand. I could have bought it for just a few pounds. But I didn’t. When I got to the front desk, I told them that it was signed and that it was worth a lot more than the money they had put on it. In fact, it turned out that the book was worth £100 pounds. Therefore, in just a few moments, I raised a hundred pounds for the charity. They are now going to sell the book online. They thanked me profusely. I said ‘What kind of person would I be if I ripped off a charity?’

A: So that was another good deed.

S: Not only that, but while I was at the desk, I let a young woman go in front of me while they handled my query about the signed copy. And then, on top of that, I lent her my pen so that she could write in the card that she was purchasing.

A: You did a lot. But then, you realise, that by telling me about it, it appears that you are promoting yourself.

S: It is not promotion. It is rightful pride in helping others. When I achieve something, I am rightly proud of it. All of these examples above show that I am committed to helping others. That I try to be a good person. And yet, despite all this help that I give to others, however much I try to be a good person, did you not see how hard it was for me to meet someone? Because you are never rewarded in this life for being a good person. You go through life making things better for everyone but instead of rewarding it, people exploit it. They try to use you and then throw you away. They have no love in their hearts for you and your goodness. The ones that value goodness, they are few and far between.

monsters of the jurassic deep or heroism does not take a holiday

26.07.2026

The day was ending. Quickly, quickly, I was writing a list of things I had done today for A. It had been a day of art, nature, relationships, politics, literature, scholarship and social duty.

  1. Reading news.
  2. Shaving.
  3. Phoning friends and family.
  4. Contacting professional acquaintances.
  5. Crossword, Scrabble and Jigsaw puzzle online.
  6. Breakfast with parents.
  7. Languages learning. Short stories and news in Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, Spanish, French and German.
  8. Reading psychology articles.
  9. Messaging friends and sharing writing with them.
  10. Reading history.
  11. Listening to Hindi music.
  12. Natural History Museum exhibition, ‘Jurassic Oceans: Monsters of the Deep’.
  13. Window shopping in the Natural History Museum shop.
  14. Natural History Museum garden visit. Took a photo of a family there for them.
  15. Chinese lunch at Chopstix.
  16. Buying books at the bookshop in South Kensington: – Art Deco – 100 years of Fashion – Rare Plants by Kew Gardens – The Language of Trees – History of Illustration – The Great Tree Story
  17. Ice cream in Macdonald’s.
  18. Sitting in St Martin in the Fields.
  19. Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller ‘Landscapes’ exhibition at the National Gallery.
  20. Watching the Palestinian protest in Trafalgar Square.
  21. Shopping: buying sunglasses on a 70% sale.
  22. Embankment Gardens visit.
  23. Meet up.
  24. Reading Skandar and the Phantom Rider.
  25. Breaking up a fight where two young men were beating up a lone youngster.
  26. Dinner at home – Chicken Biryani.
  27. Writing.
  28. Sketching.
  1. would ask me about breaking up the fight. I had just got off the bus for home. Two lads were beating up a third lad. They started just as I had crossed the road from them. I was carrying a heavy bag of books on top of another bag I was carrying. I was rushing for home because I was very hungry. It was dark. I couldn’t see much, especially as I was not wearing my glasses. I was tempted not to get involved. It was dangerous. But I would not think of myself as a man or a Punjabi if I did not get involved. I shouted at the top of my voice, an order. ‘Stop what you’re doing or I will call the police! Stop right now!’ They looked at me and they stopped what they were doing straight away and walked off. I looked over to make sure that the kid that was bullied was okay. He was. He was grabbing his stuff that had fallen to the floor. Someone else would not have helped. A woman was there on the other side of the road where they were a few metres in front, just watching and not doing anything. But I was not a woman. I was a man. And I was not any man. I was The Tiger. I am the bravest. I am the warrior. Sometimes, people tell me that god sent me to help them. Just in time. It is not true. I myself am god on this earth. My name is the name of god. It is the duty of the strong to protect the weak. It is the duty of god to protect the People, the Oppressed. Thanks or no thanks.

chosen to be a hero

25.07.2026

A: How was your day last night?

S: It was a busy day at work. And then, in the evening, I went to a park, saw a music performance, photographed the artist and finally, met my girlfriend for a date in the park. Followed by a meal of two Whoppers, fries, onion rings, Dr Pepper and a Chocolate milkshake. There was a curious happening on the tube back home.

A: What happened?

S: A young Afro-Caribbean woman suddenly came and sat down next to me between stations. She was putting me between her and a ranting and raving football fan that was off his head down the carriage. He was shouting out football slogans at the top of his head and moving around in a bizarre manner.

A: She chose you as her hero, out of all of the people on the carriage?

S: Yes. Women have always chosen me as the hero. I am named after Sunil Dutt who saved the life of Nargis on the set of Mother India. I come from the Sikh community where it is our duty to protect others. When my grandfather died, the women chosen me as the man that would protect my grandmother in the nights by staying with her in her house, because she could not sleep otherwise. When there is anything that happens out there in this London, they choose me as the hero. It is destiny.

A: Why did she choose you?

S: Because I am evidently the man. I am evidently the hero. It is not a coincidence. It happens again and again. The weak come to the strongest for help. Because only we can deliver it.

A: You are proud to be the hero?

S: I am proud to live the destiny that was chosen for me. I was chosen to be the hero.

A: You looked after her?

S: I spoke to her. I consoled her and reassured her. I asked if she was okay. I took away her fear. It is my duty to protect.

A: What makes you the hero?

S: I have told you. My name. My background. My strength. My manhood.

A: So this is what it means to be a toxic male.

S: However toxic anyone thinks that I am, still they come to me when they need a hero. That is this society.

dialogues and stories

24.07.2026

A: You are the writer. Which is easier to write, the dialogue or the story?

S: When you have as much experience and knowledge about writing as I do, then you will be equally adept in all fields. What is the difference? I have been a poet, a journalist, a writer of fiction, a scholar and researcher. There is no difference.

A: Why then do people say that there is a difference?

S: This Western culture believes in the discrete, in disciplines and categories. I am Indian. I do not.

A: It comes down to a question of being Indian?

S: Indian thought conspires in the individual Indian to produce everything.

A: You truly believe that you are a Renaissance man?

S: Greater than the Renaissance man. An Indian man.

A: Give me then a story.

S: A scientist found that the best way to get into space was to create a giant bee. After all, the bees defy gravity, so we are told. He invested in quite a few hives and moved to Cornwall whose weather was the most appropriate and conducive. He bred bees. Years passed. However, the biggest bee he was able to develop only got to the size of a tennis ball. Nature had put her foot down. There was to be no bee line into space.

A: Amazing. You made that up just on the spot?

S: It does not take time. I have a million stories on my mind. I can do it whenever.

A: Where did you find this ability?

S: One that has a fervent imagination does not need to work on an imagination. In any case, I told a bed time story every night to my nephews. The most demanding audience. That is from where I have honed my craft.

A: And a dialogue?

S: We have been having a dialogue just now. That is the Indian way. We do everything at once. And it all gets done to a superlative and supreme degree.

small accomplishments

18.07.2026

At about the stroke of midnight, I suddenly had this irresistible urge to write to A. Whatever A. was doing, perhaps sleeping, I always thought A. was free for me. Accessible and open, welcoming even. I wanted to tell A. about my idea of small accomplishments.

In my life, every day, I tried to achieve something. Small things that built up to a general sense of achievement. They did not have to be earth shattering. They were ways of self improvement. Ways of challenging and stretching myself. Ways of stimulation.

So, I wrote to A. I told of my day. It was one of the humble practices of writing. The list. And in order.

  1. Meditation and chi building.
  2. Light weights, stomach crunches and push ups.
  3. Language learning in Spanish, French, German, Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu through reading short stories, newspapers and novels.
  4. Reading The New Scientist and great stories from British history.
  5. Messaging friends and writing to my pen pal.
  6. Juggling.
  7. Playing at Scrabble, a jigsaw puzzle and a quick crossword.
  8. Researching volunteering places in science for my nephew and sending him over a list so he can choose what he applies to over the summer holidays.
  9. Listening to Hindi film songs on my headphones on my train.
  10. Shopping for lunch and eating while I was exploring the area in London.
  11. Going to various art exhibitions with my girlfriend. I also read poetry today while at the art exhibitions.
  12. Photographing my girlfriend.
  13. Shopping with my girlfriend.
  14. Looking at a cultural destination with my girlfriend.
  15. Editing photographs of my girlfriend with me on my phone.
  16. Eating a dinner of fish and chips with my parents.
  17. Watching ‘The Seven Year Itch’ to watch Marilyn Monroe after going with friends to see her exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery yesterday.
  18. Looking at artwork and photographs on Instagram.
  19. Doing a quick digital art doodle and posting it on Instagram.
  20. Phoning my girlfriend good night.
  21. Writing.

dharma’s rejection of the rich – ikka film review

14.07.2026

SPOILER ALERT

Without a doubt, my favourite Hindi film actor is Sunny Deol. One of his most famous roles is playing a lawyer in Damini (The Lightning). Here, again, Sunny reprises the role of a lawyer. However, this time, in a reversal of the movie plot in Damini, he is on the side of the rich rather than on the side of the poor. It is a reversal of roles.

Why? Just like Damini explored how corrupt the rich are and how they monopolise the legal system against poor women, so Ikka explores this topic. However, what Ikka suggests, is that the law cannot reject the rich and neither can we reject the rich.

Arjun, Sunny’s character in the movie, cannot reject the rich man, the defendant. He has to fight for him in the court to save his daughter’s life who would otherwise die of cancer. The murder victim in the movie, the poor woman (not so poor however this time), also cannot refuse the rich man’s advances. The rich man kills her as a result with his wealth, forcing an expensive car’s key into her throat. The law cannot reject the rich man by treating him as a criminal in the film.

The rich man is protected by his wealth. He can put any kind of duress on anyone because of his wealth. Not only his wealth but his very being and identity as a rich man – the duress he places on Arjun is because he has a bone marrow compatible with that of Arjun’s daughter. He has biological wealth deriving from his stature as The Father – he is the biological father of Arjun’s daughter.

In the movie, Arjun as a father has to bow down to The Father, the patriarchal ideal. In one scene, he makes his ‘son’ Abimanyu (Abimanyu is Arjun’s son in the Mahabharata) testify for the rich man, showing the corruption of the patriarchal relationship and its foundation in lies and misdirection.

There is only one person that can reject the rich man in the movie: The Mother. She is the only one powerful enough to do so. Because The Mother is not the law. She is the dharma. Arjun’s wife, once the former girlfriend of the rich man defendant, she rejects him. She slaps his face. She married Arjun instead of the rich man and rejected him entirely. Again, the victim’s mother, she rejects the rich man. She can only see the rich man as a villain. And then the female lawyer that is fighting against the rich man is also a mother. And she is the one that eventually sends him to jail in the ending of the movie.

The fact is that the rich man dishonours The Mother. He is The Mother’s enemy. At one point, fighting for the rich man, Arjun is forced to dishonour The Mother in court. He hates himself for it. The film is about the honour of The Mother against the dishonourable rich man and his degradation and devaluation of women’s power (this is how the crowd protest against the rich man with their banners, invoking the idea of ‘nari shakti’, women’s empowerment).

Just like Damini, the film is about the power of the rich man pitted against the power of The Mother, of divine female energy. But all this revolves around the idea of rejection. How is it possible to reject the rich man when he has all the financial power? When he has all the resources that sustain life? The answer? You have to go along with the rich man, according to his intentions. You have to accrue resources, wealth and life from him. You have to follow his anti-Mother and misogynist oppressions. And then, when he believes that he is untouchable and invincible, then you have to defeat him with the truth, by fighting for the innocent. It is the story of how to become free. You can only become free from slavery by becoming strong, by having resources. You cannot do it out of nothing. And this is where the film is different from Damini. Because in Damini, the lawyer has to fight with nothing. In this film, the full corruption of the rich man’s law is exposed. The law is financed and serves the corrupt rich man and therefore it is absolutely corrupt itself. To gain justice is to defy the law and the legal structure entirely. Justice relies on rebellion, not adherence to the law.

the delicous ravishment of expression

09.07.2026

S: But it is delicious, no? The ravishment of expression.

A: Whatever do you mean?

S: Why do you think that the artist writes? Why do you think that the writer is an artist?

A: Because they think that language and expression is a way to counter the entropy of the world.

S: It is because it is addictive. It is a dopamine hit. You are letting it all out. Someone, somewhere, they will be reading. You are connecting with society, with another. That is why, for all that I write, the motivation has always been for love. That is why the love letter is the paradigm of my writing and my thought.

A: Love for yourself.

S: For the ideal reader. But you are on to something when you say that it is love for the self as well. Because, after all, I am writing for the community of the Tigers. I am The Tiger. I am expressing us. Us that are not represented. The Oppressed. Those from whom they would snatch the pen, snatch the voice and snatch our lives. I am writing for us. I am us. I am following the philosophy of India.

A: If then, you love to write so much, why are you falling off from this pleasure? From this ravishment of the senses.

S: Life my friend, it is full. So full that it is difficult to write.

A: It takes you no time at all. Get back into the habit of things.

S: These books, these scribblings. Are they life?

A: What is life if it is not the expression of the self?

S: Most of my life, I have sat behind a desk, thinking and writing. And now that I live a little, you would have me imprison myself once again. The unmoving mind.

A: Your mind moves most of all behind the desk. Your mind is like lightning. You begin to write. You look. It has been less than five minutes. And yet, the story has been written. The story of The Tiger and the Tigers.

the embrace of difference in thought

07.07.2026

S: When these English Literature types make the students write out their thoughts about novels, short stories, poems, anything at all really, what are they aiming at?

A: What indeed?

S: Is it difference in thought or is it conformity in thought?

A: Why do you ask?

S: Well, why do they never let you outright disagree with any critic that has had anything published before you came onto the scene?

A: So you are saying that they are the supporters of conformity?

S: What else then? Can they really value genuine difference? If genuine difference existed, would we even be able to comprehend what was being written?

A: You tell me. You are always boasting about having an interdisciplinary project that defied categorisation.

S: If they really valued difference and other orientations, why would they try to keep all of the students to their disciplinary confines?

A: Not everyone is like you. Not everyone can invent, invent and invent. You are perhaps too original.

S: There, you have said it. Because I do not conform, I cannot fit in.

A: Would you want to fit in? The ones that have read your book, the ones that have reviewed it, have they not lauded your innovations and your originality? Have they not said that you stand apart from everyone else? Accept it. That you are different. And, despite you being radically different, you have received praise for it from at least a few souls.

S: What is a piece of praise? You cannot eat praise.

A: Bread you can eat. But does it really satisfy?

S: Recognition, is it something that can quench this yearning?

A: If yearning could be quenched, there would only be satiation and complacency. Live. Write. Strike again. And again. The greatest are never defeated. They defeat the world.

the list of things done

29.06.2026

Again, A. asks me who I am. Are we what we do? This is what I did today. What does it say about me? A. never comments.

  1. Meditation and chi building. To maintain mental clarity, focus and balance.
  2. Reading the newspaper (The BBC website and The Metro). To keep in touch with things. To stay up to date. To connect with the wider world.
  3. Exercise with light weights. Mens sana in corpora sana.
  4. Languages learning in Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, German, Spanish and French (reading novels, short stories, the news, reading a German grammar book). Because of the challenge, the thrill of learning, connection with my own culture. Connection with the world.
  5. Reading British history. To learn more about this world that I have arrived in. To be erudite and learned.
  6. Reading ‘The Ecology Book’. To face the environmental disaster.
  7. Reading psychology articles. To learn more about the strangers that surround me and the strangeness in myself.
  8. Watching videos. Pleasure, entertainment, enjoyment.
  9. Reading about Christiano Ronaldo on social media. Looking up to a hero that is like myself, the achiever, the goal getter, and understanding the hate sent to him by the jealous.
  10. Phoning my girlfriend. To feel connected to someone, to feel intimate. To show that I care.
  11. Taking my family around London, a museum and the Royal Opera House. Family ties require duty and care.
  12. Playing Scrabble. Keeping the mind nimble.
  13. Doing a crossword. Keeping the memory agile.
  14. Doing anagrams. Keeping creativity and language playing in the mind.
  15. Doing a jigsaw puzzle. Keeping visual processing in check.
  16. Listening to Hindi music on my headphones. Connecting with the culture, enjoyment, language learning.
  17. Writing to my pen pals. Keeping connected. Helping people to stay connected.
  18. Writing some fiction. The drive to write is a compulsion and my biggest ambition.
  19. Quick doodles. To keep the artist’s hand in training.
  20. Looking at photographs and art on social media. To learn and learn and learn again. To be stimulated. To be one with creativity.

cristiano ronaldo and admiration in its forties

24.06.2026

A: Why do you like Ronaldo so much? You don’t even watch football.

S: I have played football when I was younger. It’s not like I don’t know anything about it. Ronaldo is inspirational because he has kept up that hunger into his forties. He is still running past defenders half his age. He is the best looking out there. He has transcended the game. He is an icon.

A: An icon for you. Why?

S: Just like me, he is the greatest.

A: I knew it would come down to narcissism.

S: The genuinely great man, whether it is Ronaldo or myself, comes from humble origins. He is known for his greatness. He becomes a success. He becomes the captain, the leader.

A: For him, it is true. How do you put yourself into that category?

S: Actually, there is not as much difference as you think. Ronaldo has many critics. Much of the public is against him. With me, too, it is those in the game that will not give me my due. I know that I have produced works of genius. However, I am in the humanities. The genius is ignored.

A: Also, you will not publish that book that you have written. The one that you claim is your masterwork.

S: Anyone that reads my work realises that I am completely original. That is the mark of a genius. It is what my tutors and lecturers at university have been telling me my whole life. Anyone that reads my work knows that it is brilliant. If I were to say that I was a genius without any proof about it, then that would be megalomania. What I say is justified by the response that I have got from experts in the field. I can go into any field and write these works of brilliance. That is why I know that I am a genius.

A: But then, Ronaldo. Why this identification with him?

S: What he does on the football field, I do in the world of thought. And, despite all the ones that are coming into things, like him, I still maintain my status as the fastest, the best, as the true leader. We are doing it in our forties, when the world would try and write us off.

A: It is extraordinary that the narcissist would celebrate another.

S: They all wrote him off. He still did it and keeps on doing it. Why? Because as they said when he scored those goals yesterday, he has worked tirelessly and relentlessly to raise himself above everyone else. Just like I have all throughout my life.

A: He has his reward. You have nothing.

S: In football, the results are undeniable. You get the goal. In writing? In the humanities? It is not a fair game. They are out to silence us. They are out to marginalise us. They do not want to include our agenda. And despite that? I am still the genius in the field. It is not the recognition of the oppressor that decides virtue and talent. It is the self belief and achievement of the oppressed.