an impossible want

11.10.2026

S: This world makes what you want impossible. It could be the simplest of wishes and it will not be granted. This world is the reverse of a genie in a bottle. If you rub its bottle, then you have the denial of a wish.

A: That is not true. You have achieved many of your wishes. You hold a doctorate, five degrees in total with First Class honours and so on. You’ve been a teacher, worked in museums and art galleries, been a curator, got promotions at work, been published everywhere…

S: But the greatest wishes? Denied every time. Despite having all the qualifications, skills and characteristics required each time.

A: The competition…

S: I was the best. In a meritocracy, it should have been me. And, what about a family and children?

A: Let’s not broach that topic. You hate this world. This world is your enemy. I get it.

S: You see this world as a friend? To us? To the working class men? To the ethnic minority men? To the Untouchables, the low castes, to the men of The Oppressed? You delude yourself.

A: You always bring it down to what you are.

S: Because this is what they have done. They have made it about who you are. Not what you do. Not what you can add. Not your qualifications or your experience. But whether or not they think that you ‘fit in’. In other words, the only thing that matters is your identity and your background.

A: Why do you not try to fit in?

S: Why? I am good as I am. Better than them. I am not going to disrespect myself and my people for anyone. Everything I have done, I have done as myself. I have never played a part.

A: This dissatisfaction, this anger…

S: It is the just recognition of what this world is. The killing of a wish. Our wish.

A: But is it healthy to be so angry and dissatisfied? What would you have, a crown? A throne? You see the world as denial?

S: Look how they will keep things from you. Look at how they will keep love from you.

A: You want this world to love you?

S: But it cannot love a Punjabi man. Its love is organised to be against us. And can you argue someone into love? Can you reason someone into love? No. Because hate is constructed on the irrational. Hate is constructed on the illicit, on lies. On what should have been excluded from thought. And love is the same. It is constructed also on the irrational, on the illicit, on lies.

A: And because you believe in a love constructed on the rational, on the legal and on the truth, then you will never get love in this world?

S: That is why the genie in the bottle denies the wish.

the failure of the university and the motivation for a masterpiece

10.10.2026

There is this book sitting on my computer. It is a masterpiece. It will change the world. It is something that none can see but me and it has affected human thought for thousands of years. It is so big that no one can see it but me. But it has lain there for five years untouched.

Four people have read it. Senior academics. They have agreed on the book’s importance. Because I have shown how madness is created in culture. I have exposed the game.

Why then, if this work is so brilliant, if it is so world changing, it lies hidden? Why, when this book could prevent the cultural construction of madness and the mad, why do I not finish it and publish it? Why do I not just submit a book proposal to an academic publisher, work on the first draft and get it out there?

All of the motivations I had for publishing academic work seem to have dissipated now that I know exactly what it is that you get when you do publish. My first book was also important. It showed how we were constructed as readers and viewers by the law. How our minds were usurped by the misogynistic constructs of legal reading. And what did I get? No job offer at a university. One book review after about four years. No citations. No letters from readers of the book. A few hundred pound’s worth of royalties.

Where was my reward and my recognition for almost a decade of thought and scholarship?

How many of these academics in these universities do you think published a book from their doctoral thesis? How many academics could make such an original and important argument? Yet I got literally nothing from it. Why? Because academia does not want someone like me in it.

So even though I can create the most important thoughts, the most important books, the most important scholarship, what is the point?

This ignorant world does not get any wiser. It ignores and marginalises any thought that can challenge it. It will starve the thinker. And the people that are getting all of the resources in the universities? It is because they fit in, not because of any meritocracy. They follow the agenda. If things were based on merit, I would be sitting at the head of the top universities in the country. Because I am producing masterpieces.

I look back at my life in university and I genuinely feel that it was a waste of time and effort. All that work. All that thinking. For what? What effect has it had? When I had to sacrifice everything for that study, including any chance at a personal relationship and a family? And then, why keep on sinking time, money and investment into this for nothing?

People wonder why the genius is so dissatisfied. Why they won’t share their genius with the world. Look at the conditions for genius. They will not give a career to the genius. They will not give any understanding to the genius. They will not give any recognition for the genius. They give it to his intellectual inferiors in this system of unfairness. They want his work for nothing. They want him for nothing. But he will not give his work for nothing. And he will not give himself for nothing.

But there is this thought at the back of the head. Those that have been made mad by this culture. The genius is their voice. He knows how to help them, give them the tools to fight back. He has written a masterpiece for them, for all of us. Will there come a time again when he becomes once more their champion, become the one that protects them, become their warrior? He is a genius. What does genius expect? Work. But can the genius work with the conditions that he has been given? In the failure of the university, in the failure of a research institution which does not value the best research?

the glamour

08.10.2026

S: Do you know where the word ‘glamour’ comes from?

A: I can just look it up on the internet. But go on, tell me.

S: It came from the word ‘grammar’, which then went on to be associated with spell books and magic. From there, it took on the idea of magical allure.

A: Why talk about glamour?

S: Whatever I talk about, you always have an issue with. If love, why love? If glamour, why glamour?

A: You love to argue. You love an enemy.

S: It’s true enough. And I have many sparring partners. But to answer your question, the reason I speak about glamour is that I saw glamour last night. I went to ‘Roxie Rocks Chicago’ at a swanky cabaret with a lady. And the lead actress, she saw me and came to sit with me at our table.

A: Now it becomes more interesting. So you saw glamour?

S: This glamour that I saw, this world apart. It was full of music, dances, the most beautiful women. Singing of the most exceptional quality. It was full of splendid and expensive costumes. It was full of light, glittering and countless sequins on clothes. Which created a light and aura around the performers.

A: So you aim to form an idea of glamour from this?

S: Primarily, glamour seems to be about light.

A: In what respect?

S: These people are on a lighted stage first of all. They are called ‘stars’, as though they are full of light. Did you know that a lighted face makes a woman more beautiful? They teach you so in photography.

A: We are creatures of darkness. And we are drawn towards the light.

S: But there is one that is the reverse of light and she is the most beautiful. She does not have glamour. She is the Dark Mother, the Mother Goddess, Kali. She is the shadow self. She thirsts for blood. She is the berserker.

A: Did you forget Kali for the glamour?

S: Kali one never forgets. And remember, dolt, the cabaret that I was at. Chicago is about a woman’s revenge. It is just the Western version of the Dark Mother. Kali follows me around. She has her hand upon my head.

A: You do not believe in the supernatural.

S: She is my destiny, whether she is imagined or real. I made no difference between the conceptual and the actual. She is my guide through life. I have been raised for one thing. For Kali.

A: You will not follow the light? You that is the sun?

S: Krishna is all and nothing. I am Krishna. I am also all and nothing. East and West. Light and Dark. It fuses together into one entity. Glamour cannot seduce the lover of the dark. He cannot succumb to glamour.

A: But can he not succumb to the darkness? He has, hasn’t he?

S: You have not yet seen me become Kali who forgets all for the lust of blood and to wipe sin from the face of the earth. Still I am one that watches the glamour.

reading versus life

03.10.2026

In a novel that I was once reading, there was this episode. A man who was a bookworm aimed to relinquish books and reading because he wanted life. But then he saw what life was and was disappointed. And then he turned back to books.

There is this opposition. Reading versus life.

A voracious bookworm myself, there has always been this tension between reading and life. When you are living, it is difficult even to find time for reading. It is difficult immersing yourself in a book. It is difficult to be able to take on board what the book is saying.

And when you are reading? Then it is difficult to live. There is the time factor. There is the fact that you are studying, thinking and writing about books and concentrated on that.

In books, you have the best of thought. In life, you have the best of company. In books, you have a direct correspondence with one author, an intimate conversation. In life, you have many people.

Life is like a whirlwind. Reading is like a monk’s cell.

Still, over and over again, this choice comes up in my life. Reading or life?

I did an English literature degree in the past because I wanted to read more. I want to read more. It has been a constant in my life. But how do you balance life with the desire to read? There is no money in reading. They would not let me become an English Literature Professor at the Universities. Reading does not give you any material reward.

Life can give you material rewards. Life can give you relationships. Life can give you experiences.

Perhaps, however, reading gives you experiences and experience too. Are these any less real than experiences in the real world?

There are perhaps over six hundred books on my bookshelves at home that constantly admonish me that I have not the time for them. Because over the past four or five years I have chosen life over books. Every day, I think to myself that I will make more time for reading. But how much time can you put in? An English Literature degree with first class honours. A PhD in English Literature, Law and Art History. Journal articles about major authors such as Charles Dickens. Having read most of the greats. Reading is never ending. Life is never ending. How to reconcile the two?

independent thought and the lack of an institution

26.09.2026

All my life I wanted to be a writer. But not like this.

To many, what it means to be a professional writer is to be validated by publication and the publishers. That is what writing has meant in the past.

I have received this validation. I have been published as an academic author with a book and articles in top journals. I have been published as a poet in a poetry magazine. I have written for many websites. On top of this, I’ve written tour scripts for cultural attractions.

However, despite all of this, I do not have an overarching institution which supports my independent thought and academic output. The academic book and journals were written off my own back. There was no money supporting these projects. To get the articles done, I relied on an academic friend lending me a book and for the editors and reviewers from the journals and publishers to make constructive comments in the submission process, rather than having any readers I could turn to.

No resources. No network. No stimulating conversations with anyone about any of these topics.

What independence in thought has meant is absolute loneliness and self reliance. What it has meant to be a writer is nothingness. Nothingness all around me. And others? They have everything all around them. They have the institution. They have resources, conversations, a network. When you are not part of their agenda, you have to forge your own path in life.

What has been my response to this nothingness? I have not given up. Almost every day, I write something in my blog. I have created this blog with my own publishing outfit, THE MEHMI PRESS. I self published a small book entitled ‘Solomon and the Monstrosity of Legal Culture’ just a few days ago (see the ‘About’ page in my blog). With nothing, I create something.

This is not what I thought a writer was. This is not what I thought writing was. But the virtue of isolation and loneliness is that I have truly independent thought. No one can control or censor what I write, my contribution to the world of thought. I embody the freedom of expression which is one of the highest values in this society. And, after all, isn’t this what we prize in the writer? Isn’t it freedom that we prize the most? So, perhaps in this sense, I am writing how I think a writer should write. With absolute freedom. And with the cost of freedom and independence. Nothingness around me.

the teaching of hunger

19.09.2026

How do you teach someone hunger?

If social media news items are to be believed, Cristiano Ronaldo said, when he watched his son enter the sphere of professional football, he said that the hunger was the most difficult thing to achieve, to learn. Because his son had been raised in a soft life of luxury. Because his son had not lived through poverty and hardship with only the hunger to raise him above it.

And I? I have been taught this hunger.

Where did I learn this hunger? True enough, I was raised in a council house estate. With a bedroom I shared with my brothers. School dinners were too expensive to buy so we had packed lunches. I wore hand me downs. We had to work from the earliest age that we could as we didn’t get much pocket money. So that is where I learnt this hunger.

But above and beyond that, I was raised by the very poor. My grandfather lived in absolute poverty in India because his father had deserted the family. My grandfather and his brothers went blind because of malnutrition. So that is where I learnt this hunger.

Where did I learn this hunger? From birth. When I was born, the nurses said that I kept on drinking and drinking the milk. I have been hungry from birth.

And this mind, this mind is hunger. The mind consumes the most energy in the body and my mind keeps on working and working and working. I am hungry almost all of the time yet I never put on any weight. This super fast mind means that I have a super fast metabolism. So that is where I learnt this hunger.

And where does this hunger go? It has gone on five degrees, six ‘A’ Levels and eleven GCSEs. All with top grades. It has gone on writing a book, articles in top journals, writing after writing in websites, newspapers, newsletters. Going after experience after experience to develop and see. The insatiable hunger to be a scholar. A writer. A man of the truth. Reading book after book after book, article after article, chasing knowledge after knowledge. Because there is a difference between wanting to learn and having to learn.

I am all hunger. There is no one that is more ambitious and more driven. I have learnt this hunger. In hunger, none can match me.

the book i can’t bring myself to publish – recovering from ostracism in academia

18.09.2026

Academia kept me out of the game. Complete rejection and ostracism.

I am writing this as someone that published a book and several academic articles, some in top journals. On paper, it looks like I was accepted by the community.

In fact, I have made no significant money from my studies. They’ve never given me an opportunity to teach. I don’t have any network aside from two kind law professors. The articles? I wrote them by myself with almost no help, although I was lent a book by my network for one. I don’t consider this acceptance.

What does it feel like to be marginalised by a community that you wanted to be part of? It is heartbreaking. When you are an intellectual and you can’t afford to be in the game because it will not accept you. When your special talent is lost outside of academia.

And the effects?

My second book is in draft form. It is a very important book. It shows how madness is constructed. It could help many people. The four people that have read it have described it as important, and highly original. One called the research within it breathtaking.

Yet that book has sat there for four years in first draft form. Instead, what is happening is that I am working and working, studying to improve my career prospects. Because I know that I will get nothing out of that book for myself.

What did I get for my last book which was also important and original? No job. No kudos. No status. No network. No respect. No recognition. There was one appreciative book review in a journal. No citations. It is the same with the articles. Just a few citations.

If that is what they are offering, why would I slave away at this second book? Why would I sacrifice my life for these people if they can offer nothing? I am not a saint. You cannot eat self satisfaction in publishing another book. All that happens is that the publishing company makes money from it, from my work. I would have to be their slave.

So you see, because of how they have treated me, I cannot perform. And this book, which could change the world, it is sitting there. It has only been read by four people. It is my masterpiece. It is revolutionary. And it is going to sit there. Unread.

thoughts – 04.09.2026

Often, in the past, I’ve kept a thought diary. Just like I’ve kept a stories diary. I have been concentrating on writing diaries and fiction recently, as well as theatre, art and film reviews. When one is a real writer, one can write anything. In any case, I will share some of my thoughts from today, a tiny proportion from this mind that keeps on thinking, thinking, thinking…

Why do racists see us as closer to nature? Because they hate and revile nature. Being in harmony with nature and one with it should be seen as a goal. Instead, anyone that is not a white man is seen as too at one with nature, like us and women.
Why does realistic art only arise in certain cultures? Can it be the case that stylisation and abstraction, imagination and distortion, these are the intuitive way that we understand the world?
What if there was nothing? No universe? Nature abhors a vaccuum. Is nothingness stable? Is it capable of being sustained? Does there have to be something?
Why has primitive art been characterised as powerful and an antidote to the west? Is the West attempting to absorb the power of difference through it rather than learning from it? Is this simply a power play?
Why didn’t Da Vinci share his knowledge? Why do we learn about his thoughts on trees many centuries on? Was the academic infrastructure not there? Was he unconcerned with what others thought? Why create and think if you cannot bring it to the people? Was Da Vinci selfish?
Henry Moore’s titles use language as a direct reference, such as ‘Hole and Lump’. He did not want fancy titles, just words that pointed to things. Is this is a naive view of language? Or did he not want his direction to overtake the interpretation? Moore was not a realist. So why did he use a ‘realist’ vocabulary in his titling, that in which A is referred to as simply A? As though language is not an intervening web? Was this a creative act or a distinctly uncreative act?
A community is something that you have to make. It is not something that simply happens.
I have sculpted my brain. Just like I sculpt my body with weight training. And the weights for the mind? They are words and ideas. Which are therefore part of the forces of the universe, of physical reality…
I am the product of Salman Khan and the fitness revolution. Khan is a Hindi film actor that become a masculine body ideal with his body building. The fitness revolution is still sweeping the Indian film industry.
What is the philosophy of failure? One thinks of Batwara 1947 failing even though it had the right ideas about harmony across religions and nations. It is good to fail when the world around you is full of hate, prejudice and suspicion. They did not read the public mood. The mood of monsters, not men.
How do you read the public mood? Do you have to be one of the people to read it? Or view it as one removed, through a glass darkly?
Why do some people not have an opinion and struggle to think? Everything they say comes second hand from someone. That is why people call me original, why I have been described as an original thinker through my five degrees. I think things through by myself and am therefore exceptional.
I have had the training to believe that I can change the world. My grandfather worshipped Dr. Ambedkar who revolutionised Indian law as one of us, an Untouchable and Dalit from the lower castes. He is the one that taught me. That is where this confidence comes from.
Funny how research institutions like academia and museums are happy for ethnic minority men like me to do unpaid work but they never offer paid opportunities or more pay for our labour. It is toxic and exploitative industry if you have the wrong colour skin. Arday managed to do it and they came for him in the end. That is the real story there.

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.