at the end of the long day

19.04.2026

S: It is the end of the long day. What is there to say now?

A: One can reflect upon a day, a moment, a life.

S: You ask for me to reflect? In this day, aside from work, I went upon the Cutty Sark. I went to a charity bookshop. I went to a fayre where I bought a biography of Marilyn Munroe for three pounds. I listened to music concerts all day. I went to Canary Wharf to look upon the waterfront and the big skyscrapers. I went into the parks around the Embankment. I had dinner with my girlfriend. I learnt Spanish, French, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu. I read psychology articles. I learnt Art History. I ate a chocolate profiterole dessert from Marks and Spencer’s. I listened to Hindi music from the films.

A: Are you not tired? You have spent this whole week rushing around.

S: You know that I do not get tired. Especially when the sun is out. But as I was walking the Cutty Sark, which is a boat that is stationary, I thought to myself that this is a metaphor for self-reflection. We are upon the journey of life. But then, we take out a moment from this journey. The ship stops sailing. We explore the frozen journey, to find out where it is taking us, what it is. We become explorers of the pause.

A: Where would you like this journey to take you?

S: To the beating heart of the enemy.

A: That is your wish? You could have love.

S: One loves the enemy. One wants to clutch at the enemy. To hold them the closest. So that one could squeeze what is inside out of them.

A: Forget enmity. You are the lover. You have a lover.

S: To forget the enemy is to forget myself. I am the warrior.

A: Forget. Tell me a story.

S: Once there was this king that rinsed everything outside of himself because of her. And she watched him rinsing everything out of himself as he grew smaller and smaller. He almost became too small and she did nothing to stop him. Because she enjoyed how much she tormented him and wanted to see if there was any limit to what he would do for her. There was not. But one day, when he was at the end, when there was almost nothing left to rinse, this king stopped. She did not love him. She was not the lover. She was only one that he thought that he knew and loved. She had not liked that he was the king and would want him diminished. He cast her off. And there was so much in him that even now there was more than anyone else. And he kept on growing and growing. He was the splendour of the sun.

A: What happened to her?

S: The life of those without love is the everyday story of the people here. Ask any of them how they live their loveless lives of lies, hate and oppression. That is her story too.

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 characteristics of the arrogant

12.04.2026

S: What do you think of arrogance?

A: What do you mean? Does not everyone hate it?

S: Not at all. The leaders that the people vote in are all arrogant. There is right wing fascism taking over the world right now. The incapable are in power with just bluster and bullshit. How can you say that the people hate arrogance? They love it.

A: The typical jaded view.

S: Do you know the ones? They were and are and will be self-absorbed narcissists, arrogant and preening bastards. Without much to offer. And yet, they find that they have love, adulation, relationships, money, everything.

A: Why not become like them?

S: Don’t you always tell me that I am one of them? That I always boast and strut around?

A: You are not arrogant. You never talk down to anyone. You merely change the canter of the horse for each individual.

S: At the same time, I believe I am the best. That there is no one better. What do you think of that?

A: It comes down to the distinction that they make between confidence and arrogance. A woman will like confidence she says. But not arrogance.

S: The thin line. The line of discretion.

A: Tell me the characteristics of the arrogant.

S: The arrogant cannot listen to anyone else. They are deaf. The arrogant cannot see anyone else. They are blind. The arrogant can only see their own perspective, no one else’s. The arrogant believe themselves to be morally superior to everyone else, that there can be no better way of doing things. The arrogant believe that they are entitled to all the good things in the world. They should be the writers, artists, singers, managers, lovers. The arrogant have had every privilege handed to them in life from birth. They are first born sons. They are born rich. They are born into the dominant culture, the culture of domination. They might be exceptional in some way, like looks for instance. Which have gone to their head.

A: This composite is based on what?

S: A lifetime of looking. Do you not remember that I have been to a grammar school and the London School of Economics? I have studied with the richest people in London and the country and the world. I have worked with many managers over a lifetime. I know exactly what they think – that everything is for them, that no one is better than them. And they will ruthlessly crush real talent when it rises from someone down the food chain that will not kow tow to them. The example is standing before you.

A: How can you fight them if you do not become them? You have to become an authority.

S: If to become an authority means to sell your soul and your identity, it is not worth it. If power comes to evil, then power has to be forsaken. Resistance is honesty, the honesty of humility.

A: You say that you are humble. You have never accepted anyone’s authority or claim to power above yourself.

S: I am named after god. I am god. I am named after The Tiger. I am The Tiger. I am absolute power on this earth. Only The Mother is above me and she dwells not on earth, but in heaven. I am the anarchist. I accept no one above me. I accept no greater earthly power.

A: Is this not arrogance?

S: We come to shades of thought. This is self-belief. This is confidence. I am the splendour of Punjab, of India. I am the son of the soil. I am the champion of the people. I am their ego. Yet, I listen to others. I try to understand others. I try to see through their eyes. I serve them. Because a king does not rule, he serves the people. I come from a Sikh background as well as a Hindu one. We serve the community. We protect the community. And that means putting their needs above our needs. Putting their wants above our wants. They have prayed for a hero to protect the honour of The Mother. And the hero has been born into humble conditions where he has learnt humility. The hero cannot be arrogance. As Gandhi remembered, the leader of the people has abject humility and embraces poverty. He rejects show for substance. And the sin of unjustified false pride for justified recognition of the splendour that is The Mother and her representative on earth, The Tiger.

nothing in particular

01.04.2026

Already, it was April. The year was passing quickly. Everything was so fast nowadays. You would blink and you would miss it, that was the pace of life nowadays. We were talking about nothing in particular. Alfonso was lounging about, although he always lounged about with a certain style. He was wearing a cream suit with a pale green shirt and the top buttons were undone. I had been telling him that there were those that would listen avidly when I relayed our conversations about life and things. They were always eager for the next installment for their own unknown reasons.

Alfonso had just recommended a hotel to me for a trip that I was set on doing abroad. It was a special place and I had special plans there.

Alfonso drawled, ‘Why do you want so much to escape London? I thought that you loved London’.

I thought for a moment. I was remembering what life had been like before London, when I would only enter the city to visit my grandparents. ‘Life in London is very beautiful. But there is a world outside. There are many places outside of London. After all, it is not the world.’

‘After all, it is not the world.’ Alfonso mused. ‘But has not London become the world now? Is not the whole world like London, touched by London, a part of London?’

‘In many senses,’ I said, having considered it, ‘you are right. There is very little difference between places in the world and they are all touched by London and the West. But still, there remains that little bit of difference. And it is our duty to learn that difference and to extend it and extend it. Because there cannot be the rule of the one. There has to be difference. And I am difference.’

‘Difference is a word that you use often,’ Alfonso said with a touch of grandeur. ‘Does anyone really know what difference is? You like to say that difference is yourself. But how much are you difference and how much are you something of the same? You would have yourself as an original and the world as a copy.’

‘What is this world but a tired copy?’ I asked Alfonso. ‘Do you not tire of the grey? Do you think that a real original can exist in this world of the fascimile, of the fake?’

‘Somehow,’ archly said Alfonso, ‘you survive as an original.’

‘It comes at a price,’ I returned. ‘There is much suffering in being original.’

‘You are not a penniless starving artist in a garret,’ spoke Alfonso. ‘In fact, you have more than enough. Your belly is full.’

‘It is not what I am worth that I am rewarded with.’

‘Take what you can get.’

‘This heart craves honour.’

‘This honour that you want,’ said Alfonso, ‘it is only possible on the battlefield or if you change the world.’

‘The world is there to be changed. She is there for the turning.’

‘That is your mistake.’ Alfonso looked at me keenly. ‘What is it that fills you with this optimism, this belief in your own power to transform reality?’

‘You know my beliefs,’ I said. ‘I believe in destiny. I believe that I am destiny. I believe that I am god born upon this world. That I will answer the prayers of the people for justice and transformation, for good over evil, for love and belonging and happiness. I believe that the tears of the people should be wiped away. That there will be real diversity and inclusion in this world. I believe that the warrior will bring real peace and joy to the people. I believe that the hero has enough strength in him, that I have enough strength in me. I believe that one that wants something bad enough, that works bad enough for it, that this limitless energy and aspiration that is in me, it will come to fruition.’

‘But at the same time, you are a pessimist, cynic and a realist. You believe that man is a wolf to man.’

‘There is a difference between knowing how things are and a deluded hope. There is a difference, also, between a can-do attitude and absolute negativity. There are those that have fought before me. They have given us our hard-won rights. And it is up to us to keep fighting for them, to fight and fight and fight.’

‘You have always lost every battle.’

‘But that is not to say that I am not right. This whole world is against me. Nobody is pleased with me. Because I do not accept the rule of the majority. I do not accept dishonour. I am the greatest and the best. I am the splendour and the pride of Punjab. I am The Tiger. Why should they always have what they want? Why should they be the ones that decide? I am the one that will have what I want. I am the one that will have what I decide. Who has been able to stop me? I am the poet. I am the artist. I am the photographer. I am the writer. I am the historian. I am the journalist. I am the truth. I am justice. I am right. I am strength. I am resolve. I am revenge. I am The Tiger.’

Alfonso sighed. He believed that I always ended on a boast. But why not? There were others singing my praises but still I sang my own. What I believed was inside me, which was god, that had to be recognised in this world. There was so much good that came from me, that transformed the reality around me. I had not lost every battle. I had won many. There were so many that I had touched, that I had given to. I was aware of my own power. And, I was the culture. I was the learning of Punjab, of India. I was six thousand years. I was greatness. If it did not come out, who would know what we were? Who would know the reality of the god?

the fear of contentment

01.03.2026

S: I fear contentment.

A: Why?

S: It is the hunger that makes The Tiger what he is. When you look at singers, boxers, actors, they are always their best when they are hungry for it. Not when they have made it.

A: How can you keep the hunger alive?

S: This is the fear. I have money. I have a girlfriend. I have many jobs. I have been published everywhere for serious writing. I don’t want the contentment to eat up my ambition.

A: There is one thing that you don’t have. Children.

S: That is very true. And I also do not have fame.

A: So can you not keep on with the hunger?

S: I want to see our community advance. I want to be the champion for the Dalits, the Oppressed. I want the name of our family to be known.

A: Is that not hunger enough?

S: I fear that one day I will put the pen down, that I will put the brush down, that I will put the camera down. I fear that one day I will give up.

A: You have not given up. You have been at this writing game ever since you were a youngster. However little love or reward you have been given, you have kept up at it.

S: The second book. I have not been able to work on it.

A: Your project was to find love. You are allowed to have a life. You cannot live solely for the people.

S: Gaining this love, I don’t want it to kill my hunger.

A: You fear selfishness, happiness. You fear contentment. You are allowed and deserve to be happy. Just remember The People, The Mother and The Revolution. Be the names of power, the prayer of The People, The Tiger, god.

S: We are in a race. Tiredness threatens to overcome.

A: Remember your promise. You are a man too and not just the community.

Suneel’s Christmas Message – TfL RACE CNG Newsletter December 2025

It is time to write a Christmas message. I write this message as someone that comes from a Hindu, Guru Ravidasia and Sikh background but, as everyone knows, Christmas has become cosmopolitan in the United Kingdom, even regarded by many as a secular festival. All faiths and backgrounds sit together on Christmas day to make it an occasion for family and friends. Christmas is celebrated in different ways by all of us but we share the celebration together.

In my view, one of the themes of Christmas is a belief in dignity against a society that may take dignity away from people. Jesus is born to a poor family, in a stable, and first welcomed by shepherds—people on the margins of society. In addition, Jesus was a Jew from Galilee and Jews in 1st-century Judea were an ethno-religious minority living under Roman imperial rule, with limited political power. Within the Roman world, Jewish people were often stereotyped, taxed heavily, and at times persecuted for their customs and beliefs. So for me, the nativity story, which sees Jesus as God, returns dignity among those often overlooked.

If there was an earnest belief in dignity, I believe the work of improving society would have been done and the champions of diversity could rest. This could have happened long ago. One of the great examples of the belief in dignity is the Edict of Ashoka from the 3rd Century BCE. Reeling from the devastation of wars that he had caused, wracked by guilt, Ashoka turned to compassion and respect for all people to transform himself and his world.

In his rock and pillar edicts, Ashoka affirmed the inherent dignity of every individual, passing over divisions of ethnicity, religion, or social status. Ashoka supported religious tolerance among Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Greeks, Persians, and other groups within the empire. He promoted equal justice and humane treatment under the law, as well as respectful dialogue between cultures rather than dominance or suppression. Ashoka wrote that honouring others’ beliefs “strengthens one’s own faith,” reflecting an early understanding that dignity and equality thrive in diverse societies.

The nativity story and Ashoka matter to us today. The belief in human dignity is not a modern invention but has deep historical roots. This belief has long been essential to peaceful coexistence in multicultural societies. I hope that we can all believe in dignity so that we can all live dignified lives. Not just at Christmas, but all the year round. My thoughts go out to the Jewish community as I write because of the recent Bondi Beach mass shooting, but also to all in this world affected by those for whom there is evidently not a belief in dignity, of the dignity of life, the dignity of choice, the dignity of difference and the dignity of diversity.

Dr. Suneel Mehmi (Lead Editor)

insults (microfiction)

07.12.2025

S: Shylock can’t take their insults. For the violence of their words, he wants the violence of the law. Because the insults are words which are a law and they are violence. The language of this society is violence. It is the law of this society. There is no concealment of it. He wants to answer them in their own tongue. With the law of revenge. The violence of justice.

A: That was then.

S: I don’t write about then. I write about now. But the worst of it? They steal Shylock’s own daughter away from him. She who he loves the most in the world. They take his love away from him. They turn his love against him. That is the ending of the play. It is the unjust that win, not the just. It is the destroyers of love that win, not the lovers. It is what the poet knows. Shylock suffers the same fate as Romeo. They separate him from his love.

A: That happened in the past to you. Will it happen now?

S: In a relationship, there are not just two people. There are others. And others intrude. That is the downfall of every relationship. Here, those that intrude are the haters. They are filled with hatred and cannot bear that anyone can be filled with love. They want to kill love and the lover. That is their stupidity. You cannot kill love. There has been love in every era in human history.

A: You are saying that love is always destroyed. And then you are saying that love cannot be destroyed. Which is it?

S: That is the question, isn’t it? Which is it? Does hate win every time? Or does love win once in a blue moon? Is it true as the literary critics say, that Romeo and Juliet are joined in death? And what about Shylock? Is his love only going to be heartbreak?

A: You don’t have the answers?

S: The answers are in my heart. Because in my heart is love. Real love. There is a Hindi song. They say do not break my heart because the heart is the house of god. She broke my heart anyway. But you cannot break the house of a god. This heart, this body, this mind. It is formed after the god of love, my namesake. I am god.

the tears of the flowers

04.11.2025

Unexpected acceptance can be found within unacceptable expectation.

The day was long. In the garden, the flowers wept. The grass lamented. The sky itself, it was filled with melancholies of grey.

A bird glided into the tree and S. watched her keenly. The birds of Da Vinci flew in his mind, the artist feverishly tracking and recording their movements. Wanting to become the bird.

A. had asked him why he saw poison. Why he thought poison. Why his life had become poison.

What else was there? When all the good things were being churned from the ocean, instead, the god Shiva had swallowed the poison. To prevent the destruction of the universe. His throat became blue with the poison’s anger. And S.? His name was blue. The blue skin of a god.

A. had asked him, how can you become a god? S. had said that in the West, to claim godliness is arrogance and the height of madness. It is folly. But in India, one modelled onself on god. They called the good people gods. It was the aim to become god upon the earth. A god was known by good deeds. The deeds of humanity. And S. tried his utmost.

‘So you are Shiva then?’ A. had asked.

S. had said that the hero is formed in adversity. The whole world, including the gods, fate itself, all had to be against the hero. It was only then that the triumph of the hero could be known and recognised. It was only then that the legends of the hero could be told and the songs could be sung.

Life had to be poison. Otherwise, heroism was dead.

A. had smiled. The Buddha’s smile was known. It was the sign of his wisdom. The smile delighted the hearts of his followers.

Falsity (microfiction)

07.08.2025

‘Most people lie,’ was all the comment that Alfonso made.

I had just finished venting about a particularly preposterous lie that I heard. I had been looking into the eyes of this liar and they had not even flinched. Was it possible that they even believed their own lies? Or were they completely shameless?

‘I don’t lie.’

‘That is why you do not have much,’ said Alfonso. ‘People don’t welcome the truth with open arms. In fact, they loathe it and will do anything in their power to destroy it.’

‘It is not the truth,’ I said tiredly. ‘It is a truth. One of many.’

‘You believe that hogwash?’ asked Alfonso incredulously. ‘You have told me yourself that you are the truth.’

‘Although not everything that passes as truth is the truth,’ I elaborated, ‘still there has to be some room for manouevre. You don’t want a rigid and totalitarian framework. Which is what knowledge passes as in this society of twits. Their fascism is supposedly knowledge.’

I thought again of this liar and the lie. I had heard some good ones in my time. Some of them had even fooled me. It was obvious why these people lied. Because the truth was too dangerous, because they wanted to cover up their own guilt, because perhaps their intellects were so unsound that they could actually believe the paper thin story they were trying to wrap events in. They were so skilled at lying to your face. And then they would call it ‘civilisation’, their false narrative.

‘Don’t let it bother you,’ said Alfonso, sensing what I was thinking about. ‘You live in a society of liars. I am surprised that you still haven’t gotten used to it.’

‘Only a coward accepts injustice,’ I said firmly.

‘Yet what do you do about people lying to you? Nothing.’

‘What can you do? As you said, they will not accept the truth. It is not worth wasting time on them.’

‘And if the lie is an injustice?’

‘If I had my way,’ I told Alfonso, ‘There would be no lying and there would be justice. This world has never been ready for that in its entire history. Why would it be ready for that now or in the future?’

‘So why do you exist then?’ asked Alfonso. He sneered at me, one of his trademark sneers. ‘I thought you told me that you fought for truth and justice.’

‘Yes, by telling the truth myself. Just like you can’t make someone love difference when they are prejudiced, just like you can’t make someone choose fairness when they are biased, just like you can’t reason with a bigot, so you cannot stop a liar from lying. They have a psychological problem and they need therapy. They are just compulsive liars.’

‘I keep telling you, don’t be upset. Forget everything.’

‘I will, I told Alfonso. I will go to sleep now.’

Alfonso clasped my hand. ‘If you are the truth,’ he said, ‘show us the freedom and the wildness of The Tiger.’ He knew what was in my dreams.

Jesus, The Man of Difference and the Revolution

25.12.2021

Today, the world celebrates the birthday of Jesus Christ. When we look back at thousands of years of Christianity, it is easy to reduce all the complexity of that system of thought and the identity of its founder. One almost automatically thinks of how the religion was tied to war, imperialism, racism and the state in modern times. One thinks of the immorality and authoritarianism of organised religion and the Church. The feminist arguments against patriarchal monotheistic religions come to mind too. In this view, Jesus becomes the origin of oppression and conservatism. Because of such ideas, and the relentless march of a scientific reason which denigrates religion, I don’t think I am exaggerating when I say the hostility to religion in general, and to Christianity and Christ in particular, has almost become insurmountable.

However, let us try to be just to Christ. Historically, Jesus was a revolutionary. In many ways, the early version of Christianity was the religion of resistance. Christ went against the Roman state, the biggest superpower in the Western world at the time. This was his achievement, his badge of valour and the reason he holds the place in the minds of men that he has today. Today, this is how I choose to remember him. In many ways, Jesus is the model for the revolutionary consciousness. Against the state, which held the monopoly of power, wealth and men, which monopolised thought and being, Jesus and his small band offered an alternative world. This was a world in which success did not mean territorial expansion, being rich and subjugating other populations. Christ’s world was not an empire. This was an independent and non-materialistic world, a completely different form of organisation which required a completely different identity and character.

Jesus was a model for the revolutionary because he had nothing to offer against a dominant power than an idea. The idea was of a different form of being, living and thinking. Jesus was a world-builder and a builder of the human mind. Throughout the ages, this is how resistance against the superpowers has played out. There is one man or a small group that has that precious, world breaking and making commodity, difference. Jesus was the origin of difference.

Indeed, what marks Jesus and his origin is difference. He was born out of wedlock, the standard model for conception. He went against not only the Roman state, but also the Jewish religion. He aimed to break free of power wherever he found it.

Today, when the state is ever more ascendant and has thoroughly co-opted Christianity for its iniquitous purposes, when the conservatives and blind conformism have taken over society, when a new form of cultural imperialism is at its height, the birthday of Jesus stands as a model for the revolutionary and for the transforming consciousness. Yes, I am not a Christian. Yes, I do not follow the teachings of the Bible. But I judge Christ not as a god, but as a man. The inspiring, pioneering, matchless Man of Difference. And like others, I wait, ever so patiently, to see another coming of this difference into the world.