reluctance to write

A: I notice that you are reluctant to write at the moment.

S: One wonders where it goes. One wonders what it does. One wonders, in short, why?

A: You have your readers.

S: Enemies and critics.

A: You have something to say.

S: Which no one wants to listen to.

A: You are The Tiger.

S: The mortal enemy of this world.

A: You cannot stop writing. They expect. They read you every day in every way.

S: There is only one reason why I write. So that they cannot defeat me. Defeat us. The Oppressed. This learning, it is for The Oppressed. This mind, it is for The Oppressed. This body? It belongs to The Oppressed.

A: Why can you not just live for yourself?

S: I am The Oppressed. I am The Mother. It is the authentic self. There is nothing other.

A: Write then for them.

S: Have you ever considered the language of the warrior?

A: What do you mean?

S: The words of a fighter are charged with energy, absolute energy. It is the fight. The pen is not mightier than the sword. The pen itself is the sword.

A: Language as a weapon?

S: Language as the fist. Language as the kick. Language as the choke hold. The mastery over the language is the mastery over the martial arts.

A: Who has taught you this?

S: The gurus. The activists. The scholars. Hindi film. They have made the writer into the warrior. And the duty of the warrior? Even when he is cut into pieces, he will fight. Even when all else have been defeated and he stands as the last man on the battlefield, he will fight. Fighting is what he was born and raised to do. It is his life. And so, he fights. He writes.

A: With reluctance?

S: The war is hard. Life is hard. Yes, with reluctance. But still he writes. Because he believes in that one spark that will light up this world. That precious one, that precious reader that will become The Tiger too. What The Oppressed pray for, what The Mother desires. Freedom.

the expression of energy

22.04.2026

A: What did and do your university tutors make of your writing?

S: They said that I was original, ambitious. They said that I went far. They said that my writing was lively.

A: What do they mean by lively?

S: After all, my writing is the expression of energy. Of total power. Of a mind that is free and does not fear. Because this is what the power of the mind is.

A: Where does this energy come from?

S: That is the question, is it not? First of all, I have always had high levels of energy. Then, we were not kept idle as children. We had many things to do. Add to that that I have always done much exercise to build up this body and mind. Do not forget the genes of the athlete and the scholar that my grandfather has bequeathed me. And do not forget the discipline that I have. Discipline is everything.

A: This energy that you have has been described by everyone around you as unnatural.

S: I am a genius. Although I come from nature I am beyond nature.

A: Is this energy that you have being translated? Is this energy being expressed?

S: There are so many pies that I have fingers in. I do the work of three men. Is that not enough?

A: Why not sit and redraft this book that you say proves that you are a genius? You keep on saying that you will do it and you have not touched it.

S: I will not kill myself to do it. They will not give me any reward for it. They are ungrateful, miserly and haters in their hearts. They are unfair and they do not reward or recognise on merit. They do not even deserve my genius. If I write this book, it will only be for us, The Oppressed.

A: The reluctance of genius.

S: All my life, I have worked for society. And what have I got for it for myself? It is a serious question.

A: But now you have everything you wanted. Meaningful work and a girlfriend. You have got something out of it.

S: Where is my honour?

A: Come come. There are many that respect you. You do have honour as well. Write the book. Prove that you are the genius that you say that you are.

S: Summer is almost here. There is only one more month. Then we will see what this energy can do.

A: Forget that you are Achilles sulking and become the greatest of the warriors. You know how important that argument is in the book. You know that you are the king of reading and the king of letters. Show the splendour of Punjab. Show them the roar of The Tiger. Show them the champion of The Oppressed.

the inimitability of the tiger

14.04.2026

Alfonso and I, we had both been to visit a friend again in the hospital. I had rushed there after work while completing several urgent errands on the way. We had spent about an hour with him, cheering him up and asking him how things were over there. Afterwards, Alfonso had taken me to his home and cooked me up beef enchaladas with a salad and sour cream. Then we had watched Sting performing on the television set in the bygone era.

I had been telling Alfonso of the useless attempts of an Ai system to duplicate my written efforts. ‘Did you know,’ I asked him, ‘that Dickens used to call himself the inimitable. And, certainly, according to the experiments today, The Tiger himself is also inimitable.’

‘What makes you think so?’

‘Well, I asked this Ai system to replicate my style. I typed in my name and told it to do it. To create a new story based on the way that I write.’

‘What were the results?’ asked Alfonso with a mockery of gravity.

‘The story was absolutely atrocious. It was about a pigeon watching me while the state created a duplicate identity of me and informed me of it by post.’

‘Ill-written?’

‘Precisely. There was not the least touch of my style or the sound of my mind. Basically, this Ai system had concocted a mixture of Kafka and Poe’s Raven, because that is what it understood my style to be. Not only that, but there had been an attempt at a philosophical conversation. I say an attempt because there was certainly no depth or original thinking involved at all.’

‘And how did this make you feel, watching the Ai perform you so badly? Were you reassured of your idiosyncracy and capriciousness?’

‘It certainly let me know that I was not a mindless and meaningless computer, a hunk of metal and minerals. It certainly let me know that this style that has developed through genius and a lifetime of suffering and practice cannot be so easily acquired.’

‘Do you think a mortal could write like you do?’

‘Of course they could not. Genius, although it is imitated, is always in the last analysis inimitable. I am sure that plenty will try to become The Tiger. However, as in the movie, there is is only one.’

what the genius writes

14.04.2026

A: So you have this claim, that you are a genius.

S: It is not a claim. It is a reality.

A: What then does the genius write?

S: Everything.

A: Come come. A little clarification. What differentiates your writing from that of others?

S: I see what no one else can see.

A: A claim for originality.

S: And then, the genius writes to shock, amaze, astound and confound. Contrarily to the herd who write to reassure, who write complacently about their herd mentality and all of the evils therein. Who write to soothe the conscience of the oppressors, to justify this tyrannical and inquitious world.

A: You claim awe?

S: Indeed, I claim awe. The genius shakes the foundations of this world.

A: If you are indeed a genius, where is the recognition?

S: Does genius ever get recognition in this world? The time of Da Vinci has been replaced with the time of cretins like Musk and Trump. Of social media influencers whose sole task is to peddle cosmetics and a pampered lifestyle. What can you expect of these people? They could not recognise their own arse in the dark. Let alone genius. All they see is the foreign name and the colour of the skin. That is what they judge upon. Not the argument. Not the reasoning. Not the writing. With the exception of the genuinely intelligent. Because however moronic society becomes, the genuinely intelligent do recognise talent. Unfortunately, they have no power to nurture it. Because the power? It belongs to the morons. And this is why I am a genius. Because I was born into powerlessness because of my caste, my working class origin, and my skin and culture. I was not born as a moron. We can see.

A: What is the use of genius if it does nothing?

S: Mother India has a saying. That in the end, only truth alone will triumph. Satyameva Jayate. It is a phrase that is thousands of years old. I am the truth. I am the truth. I am the truth that no one wants to see or to hear. I am truth that is thousands of years old that they cannot even see. Only I can see it. I am blessed because The Mother has placed her hand above my head. I am invincible. That is why I am a genius. They cannot think like me. I am the last generalist in an era of narrow specialisation. I can crack the codes, the meanings of the self. That is why I am a genius.

A: And, you have the ego.

S: Yes. I go for the jugular vein. The most important work falls to me because I have the ego for it. That is why I am a genius.

A: Either you have the delusion of grandeur. Or you are a charlatan. Or, you are in fact, a genius.

S: I know what you will conclude. It is a mixture of all three.

you or me

13.04.2026

S: It comes down to you or me.

A: What does?

S: The fight. Either we can be destroyed. Or them.

A: Why can you not live with difference?

S: We can. But they have decided to eliminate difference. And therefore, it becomes us against them. You or me. And I choose me. I choose difference.

A: You will not accept destruction?

S: Six thousand years of the reign of The Tiger. That is what we are talking about. The loss to the world if we were gone would be immense. Selfishness and greed would choke this world. There would be no love left in the universe. There would be no men left. You would accept the destruction of all that is good in this world? The counter to oppression is freedom. The counter to tyranny and the narrow mind is the limitless.

A: How do you know that they are not right about you? That you are toxic?

S: If a real man is regarded as toxic, then the non-toxic is nothing good.

A: They see you as outdated.

S: They are a petty interruption to the larger history of man. Their opinion is of no consequence.

A: They hold the reins. They have the power.

S: That is not true. Only the warrior holds the power. We shape the world according to our will.

A: How do you know that you are the warrior?

S: This fight, this hard and long fight, I have been fighting it my whole adult life. We will never bend. We will never kneel. If to be us is sin, then we are sinners. If loving The Mother is a test, then we will past the test. We remain undefeated. However much they hate us, we survive. We prosper despite their hate. This territory, it is ours.

A: They say that an enemy knows an enemy.

S: What they should know is that I live for revenge.

A: What is this revenge?

S: In our culture, revenge is what transforms this world. My blood is in this world. They are our future. And for them, and for the ones that come after them, they cannot be subjected to what I was subjected to. I love them too much for that. The revenge is success. We will force our success down their throats. We will hold the reins.

A: How is your revenge going?

S: I am prosperous. My name and my writing is everywhere. I am already a role model. I have achieved what other people only dream of. I have five degrees and a doctorate. I am a doctor. A published author. A published poet. A published photographer. A published artist. I am the pride of Punjab.

A: Yet you are not satisfied with your revenge.

S: The older an enmity, the more dangerous it becomes. This is a line from a Hindi film. Yes, I am still not satisfied. The success has not choked them yet.

the history book

11.04.2026

Alfonso and I had spent the day at another attraction, marvelling at the history of technology. We had been amused by one of the volunteers who had quite a quick turn for words and had been answering the questions of Alfonso in a droll and winsome manner. My friend was wearing his usually stunning arrangement of costly materials. This time, a blue blazer with cream trousers and a light flamingo pink shirt.

As we walked together home in the mild climes of April this year, Alfonso was asking me about my writing plans.

‘You don’t have any shortage of ideas, do you?’ he inquired of me.

‘I am the flood. It all comes. Too much altogether. I could write a novel every week. The trick is to have no censor and to let the explosion happen. I write without even thinking about anything. I tap into the unconscious.’

‘And what is the dream of a book that you have at the moment?’

‘Why not write a little heavy tome about history?’

‘What type of history?’ asked Alfonso, looking dreamily up at the clouds in the sky. One of which resembled the buttocks of a goat.

‘History books,’ I mused, ‘ don’t very often talk about how history has shaped a particular life of an ordinary man. How the personal is the acutely political. Look at me though. First, I have been shaped by the Partition, since my grandmother had to leave the newly created Pakistan for India and lost all of her belongings as a child. Second, my grandfather? He was a child when Independence happened in India. So he became the philosophy of Indian Independence. My mother? She escaped from the forced sterilisation of the poor as a schoolgirl and that is why I was even born in the first place. Then, add on the World War which caused the deaths of the young men and the labour shortage that meant my grandfather was invited to the United Kingdom to work. The new freedoms for women in the sixties meant that my grandmother worked to support the home. I have been brought up as a young man amidst the xenophobia and racism that erupted following 9/11, since everyone took me, with my brown skin, as a Muslim man. Then, look at the thousands of years of caste oppression in India that has made me what I am, as well as the military culture of Punjab, which has always fought against oppression and the tyrant.’

‘Why don’t you write this book and about how history has affected your life?’

‘Because of the igorance of the reader. They would have a Dua Lipa tell them what to read and promote her as an expert, with her lack of any serious credentials or hard work in the subject of literature. Because she is famous and she fits into the majority culture. Whereas I am not included in the majority culture and I do not have fame or connections, and therefore my serious credentials would be absolutely ignored and no one would read or understand anything that I wrote because of their stupidity. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next thing was that Dua Lipa becomes, in their stunted eyes, a ‘literary novelist’ or a ‘poet’. Laughable.’

We walked on together in this life where there was no fair competition, no meritocracy, and no justice. Where the absolutely pedestrian rose to the heights of every endeavour and captured the shallow and undiscerning hearts of what was surely the worse audience in history.

the addictions of writing

02.04.2026

The sun was breaking out over the houses in my street. I had woken up and lain in bed, running my mind over the infinite business of this life. And then, the call from Alfonso had come. On occasion, he would sometimes wake up even earlier than me, however early I could manage to do so.

Alfonso asked me, ‘Why do you write so constantly?’ I imagined him there at home, perhaps sitting in front of a small and nutritious breakfast, perhaps with a newspaper beside him to be savoured at length.

‘It is an addiction.’

‘Why is it an addiction?’

I searched for an answer. What had that child that wanted to become a writer seen in it? I tried to reimagine myself as that young and voracious reader. Of course, the first addiction had been reading. I had devoured books constantly. The joy, the escape, the stimulation to the mind, the love of the good story. The love of the good story had been instilled in me through the stories that my grandfather gave me. Yes, in fact, everything went back to my grandfather, this educated, cultured, wonderful man that had nourished my love of narrative and wisdom. I wanted to be the storyteller, just like my grandfather. It was the family tradition. We are Indian. We follow the family traditions. I said so much to Alfonso.

‘You desperately want to become your grandfather. Can you not become your own person?’

‘There is this phrase ‘role model’. Am I not entitled to choose and follow my role model?’

‘Of course you are. If you find good, why would you not want it for yourself? All I am asking is, have you reconsidered your motivations for writing and for this addiction that you cannot control?’

‘It has not taken over my life, has it? The routine of writing a few times a day. It is not all that I do. I do many other things.’

‘It has gotten you into much trouble.’

‘My middle name is ‘Tiger’. If I were not to get into trouble, I would not be writing properly. The one that points out what is wrong with this world, he will always be in trouble. They cannot brook just criticism.’

‘You should relax your critical attitude.’

‘They that hurt me hurt the community. They that exclude and reject, they should be criticised. Their selfishness, greed, racism and intolerance should be criticised. The way that they have exploited the people and the world should be criticised. The way that they judge unjustly should be criticised. Their worship of money above all things should be criticised. Their rape of the planet should be criticised. This is why the writer is here. The writer is freedom. That cry for freedom, for The Revolution that has come from the lips of Punjab, that is why the writer is here. My grandfather was born in the time of Independence. I carry the torch of freedom. That is why the writer is here. That is why the writer is addicted to writing. Because writing is freedom. The expression of our self. The writer wants to be the grandfather, the storyteller of freedom.’

Was it enough for Alfonso? It was enough for myself. There is a reason in all things. And the best reason. Because, alongside freedom, there was love. Love for the storyteller. Love for my grandfather. He had given me love. And I? I had given him love back. That was why I was the writer. Love is something that you can never have too much of. It is love that is the addiction.

the writer does not know what the reader reads

31.03.2026

S: The writer does not know what the reader reads.

A: How so?

S: The fact is, that the reader hardly ever shares what they experience of the text. I am lucky. I am in research and write academic non-fiction. Therefore, I eventually hear what others have made of my work. And it is always positive. Because I work hard and I am extraordinarily intelligent.

A: The usual modesty.

S: Other people have said it. I merely echo their sentiments. You are allowed to be justifiably proud of your accomplishments. Because I am intelligent, I know my place in the world of thought. My best friend goes around telling his family and friends that I am an original thinker. I get good reviews for what I write. If I said it were the case and others didn’t agree with me, then that would be out of place. I’m not going to hide my genius under a bush. It is what other people want to be. I am it.

A: To get back to the topic and not your infernal vanity, why does it fascinate you so much what other people think about what you write.

S: There are those that hate it. They are not worth considering. There will always be haters. What is more interesting is those that read regularly. They are fascinated by what I write. They have been there for years and years reading. But what are they finding in this writing? Things have changed so much. Yet these people are reading and reading and reading. They want to be flooded by these words of mine. What emotions do they feel? What thoughts do they have? What is the identity of the author that they have built up in their minds?

A: You will never know. Because they will never tell you.

S: A villain to some, a hero to many. The author can only say what is in his heart. He stays true to his own heart. This is not a performance. This is life. Whatever reaction it arouses, envy, disdain, fear, contempt, adulation, praise. The author lives in a world that he considers vile, in a sickening climate of hate and conformity that he is too good for, in a world that he is much too good for but denies him his worth. Even though this world tells him to stop writing, that there is nothing for him, he writes. He is a writer. The writer is one that will defy this world and all of its rules, that will defy all for the sake of his voice. I am the real writer. I am what brings freedom into this world, the expression of the self. I am the one that retrieves the lost sense from this world, the lost self from this world. Whatever any reader thinks, I am the hero of this tale. The reader hears the voice of the hero and sees the deeds of the hero.

all before eight thirty in the morning

31.03.2026

A: You like listing things that you have done. Go ahead.

S: I’ll tell you what I did in the morning before 8.30 am.

A: Let’s see how much you were capable of.

S: On the train, I did language learning in German, Spanish, French, Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi. Reading poetry, dialogues and news stories. I also read the Metro newspaper, particularly on the Iran war which is affecting my friends. Then, I did the quick crossword and the anagrams on the puzzle page. Finally, I read a poem on the way up the escalator at Holborn, a woman’s poem about the body and its relationship to various metals.

A: Then?

S: First I bought a chicken and mushroom slice from Sainsbury’s, then I walked over to Ole and Steen and bought a £2 offer, which was a berry and pistachio treat. I got in to work then ate that with some tea in milk. Which was followed by working on my fashion photography and charity work by uploading some photographs to my social media after messaging my girlfriend.

A: More and more.

S: There is still more. Then, I wrote letters. I told my mentors in my academic discipline about the book review that I got for my first book and also thanked the academic that had taken his time to write such a glowing review.

A: I hesitate to ask. But is there more?

S: I haven’t even included everything. But there is more. Then I did some writing. And now, I am about to do some reading. Stendhal’s ‘The Red and the Black’. It is about love and power.

A: The work day has not even begun.

S: All hours of the day are work. Even play. Because I work to make that play happen and often the play is itself work. If we were not busy, then we would be dead. And then there would be quiet. That is the difference between the quick and the dead.

good grades

08.03.2026

A: How have you kept up motivation for four years of university study while you work seventy or more hours a week? How can you even be on for a Distinction?

S: Tiger is hunger. If Tiger was not hunger, he would not be The Tiger.

A: What is this hunger for learning?

S: The mind of The Tiger is the mind of a genius. The genius does not ask permission to be a genius. He just is. The Tiger does not need to work hard to be a genius, although this Tiger does work hard. Everything comes easily to a genius.

A: But hunger?

S: Stimulation. The ability to do the work and the thinking is sorely wanted. And there is another factor.

A: Which is?

S: In India, they would not let our people learn. They kept us down. By denying us an education. This hunger is for the people.

A: So you will take three different undergraduate degrees as well as your masters and your doctorate.

S: Do you know why I studied Art History at university level? Because Rishi Sunak told us not to do any degrees that he considered useless. I am culture. I am India. I am the eye of Punjab. I am the scholar in the war, the warrior. They cannot manacle this mind. I am freedom. So in protest at this government and its dismantling of the humanities, I did that degree out of anger and spite. I am the Revolutionary and I believe in the Revolution. We will change vision.

A: Your beliefs are ridiculous. No one agrees with anything that you say.

S: I do not need the ignorant and the idiotic to agree with anything that I say. This hunger for learning, no one can quell it. I have seen tomorrow because I am the past, the present and the future. I am The Tiger. It is the wisest that truly rule in this world. I am the leader of thought. I know my importance in the world of thought. I know my place. There is only one place for the genius: at the top. That is the hunger for the good grades which I am getting. The competition of thought. And I will see Punjab as the winner. The French have had their turn. The Germans have had their turn. Now it is Punjab’s turn. The dominant have had their turn on the podium. Now it is the turn for The Oppressed, the Dalits. Jai Maa Kaali! Inquilaab zindabaad! (Hail the Dark Mother! Long Live The Revolution!)