body dreams

25.09.2026

Whatever anyone’s concept of an ideal body looks like, and whatever other people think, there is certainly a template that I desire for my own body. Which is ironic. Because I have been known for my body and looks since I was a kid. My nickname at home is ‘Sonu’ which is handsome. And at school, I was known as ‘the beast’ because I was so strong and muscular.

I would never get any cosmetic surgery on my body. I am against it in principle. It annoys me when people are getting their teeth straightened instead of leaving them natural. I believe everyone should be happy with what they have.

But the mind is contradictory. The daydream goes like this. An alien brings me up to their spaceship. And then they fix my body. Without any operations. With their wonder technology. What is it that they ‘fix’?

There is a big list. Here it is in order:

– My hair is thinning. They bring all the hair on my head back. With the brown colour it had when I was a kid.

– I’m five foot six. Although I’ve never worried about my height, I know potential partners care about it. So they make me tall.

– Making me lose my short sightedness.

– They make my body and face completely symmetrical.

– Losing weight.

– Making my muscles bigger and more toned. Making my shoulders wider.

– Straightening teeth.

– Getting rid of wrinkles.

Whatever these fantasies of the body in these uncontrollable daydreams, I am secure in myself. After all, I’ve gotten through almost forty four years of life being told I’m handsome and super fit. And in any case, I weight train regularly. I have been sculpting my body since I was sixteen years old.

It just shows you that an accepted ideal of beauty works away at the unconscious trying to do away with the body that you actually have. You want to lose the real you in an imagination and fantasy of the body. Whatever you might think about it with your conscious mind.

the illusions of free will, independence, choice and self determination

24.09.2026

Did you choose your own life? Whatever anyone says, what actually happens is completely different.

In my life, it has been rejection and constraint that has shaped the possibilities of what has happened. And also, the insistence by all, that I am Indian. Nothing else. In other words, it is the opinions and actions of others that determine what I can do and what I have done.

Your background determines your future. Social mobility in the UK is low for the working class and ethnic minorities. If, like myself, you aim at the bastions of privilege, then it is literally impossible to get in.

Independence? You have to work your whole life, usually for someone else. Someone else in a career determines your fate. Not you. It is them that interview you, them that keep you, them that promote you. Based on what they decide and find valuable. You have to play along with them.

There are no such things as free will, independence, choice and self determination.

How can you call it choice when you don’t get your first choices in life? This is a lie.

How can you call it free will, when you have to get permission to do what you want to do in terms of a career?

How can you call it independence when everything relies on other people? When you depend upon other people?

How can you call it self determination when everything is determined by the resource allocation of other people, determined by history, determined by culture and society and your upbringing?

Life is heavily compromised because of the asymmetries of power in this society. But is this the same for everyone in this life? No. Because if you had resources, then you have more free will, independence, choice and self determination.

Even myself, because I am financially secure and because I live with my family, I can choose work that suits me more. I can study degrees with the Open University. I can spend a lot of time in museums and art galleries. I can pursue my hobbies. The resources of the family have altered what would have been the compromised reality.

The sad conclusion is that it is resources that determine our freedom. And who controls those resources. When freedom is compromised by resource and power, how sincerely can you call it freedom?

But one hopes that despite this compromise, there is some resistance. That little spark that we can cultivate into a flame. Out of all possibilities of being, one hopes there is one possibility of being the authentic self. Because outside of the material domain, there is the domain of the thought and the imagination. And that is the one place where the seeker of truth can be truly free. It is Jesus that said it: the truth shall set you free. That there is a spiritual kingdom that is not of this world. It is not heaven. It is education.

a bounty of kindnesses

23.09.2026

How often does the universe conspire in its acts to unify an expression of emotion, to orchestrate and lure a particular response? Unexpectedly, this happened today.

After having been beat up by this existence, as is often the case in the lesser of the three worlds, I received the first kindness in the morning. I sent my self-published book on ‘King Solomon and the Monstrosity of the Law’ to a reader and a mentor and he boosted me up. He encouraged me to write more. He stroked the mane and the spirit of the writer.

And then, when I was writing to thank him for what he did for me, telling him that I had finally submitted my Art History dissertation to a journal because of his encouragement to stay in the game, thinking about his words to me, the second kindness was showered on my head. More praise. The recognition of achievement.

Kind words from those who have always been kind. Kind words from those that we look up to, from those that have looked after us.

They do say a truth, which is that you never know what the effect of your kindness will be on someone. What they might be going through and what a difference it can make to have a few kind words. To know that someone cares about you, however separated in time and circumstance they might be from you.

Inside kindness, there is a giant of strength and power. In this hard world, with its inner core of ice, with its splinters and thorns, there are sparks of kindness which offer warmth and light. Few and far between the deserted plains and barren distances, we find these sparks that point the way in life. They tell us that what we did was worthwhile. What we do is worthwhile. What we will do is worthwhile. They tell us that we are worthwhile. That we matter.

If only we could let everyone in this world know that they mattered. If only this world was kind. If only life was valued in this world. If only kindness was valued in this world. But it is because the world is what it is that kindness carries its golden aura with it, because the contrast and the exception is what gives the act its splendour and nobility:

to have a kindness is to meet god in hell

what is bad becomes better

and what is sad becomes well

reflecting on an unsettled life

23.09.2026

While I was born and raised in England, my family in India are poor. So, my whole life, I have been hearing about poverty. I have been hearing about the insecurity and precarity that comes with an unsettled life.

My family in India, they believe that when they get to a developed Western country, their life will be settled. The lives of their children will be settled. This is what my grandfather believed when he came to this country. That’s the future that he imagined for his children and his grandchildren.

But my life has never been settled. I have had to struggle. Just like they dream of a settled life, so I have had to dream of a settled life.

The difference between the ones from India and the ones from here is that they have arranged marriages and they have their own unified community. So they fit in and they get hitched. They’re willing to work in whatever job they find because it is better than being unemployed in India or working for peanuts.

Here, if you are Indian and choose not to get an arranged marriage, try meeting someone. Try starting a family. Try getting the jobs that you are qualified for doing and would excel in. It all hitches on someone giving you a chance or an opportunity. When they cannot. Because of the racism in this country.

So, just like the origin of my poor family in India in the caste of the Dalits and Untouchables has clouded their whole life and made it a struggle, making their lives unsettled, so has my ethnic origin as an Indian person.

But still, I have refused to give up my Indian culture. I have refused to accept the conformity in this country or pander to the unjust expectations that we must all follow convention. Is it worth it? It has come at a great personal cost. The greatest personal cost. Yet if it was easy and convenient to be authentic and true to oneself, then the world would not be what it is.

The virtue of an unsettled life is that this is a life that I have created for myself despite everyone else. Despite the insane pressure from the Indian and the British community, I have forged my own way through life. I have done what I thought is right. I have made my own choices. I have thought out life in my own way.

The reward is isolation, uncertainty, the lack of a resolution or a happy ending. No love. The achievement? Dignity and self respect. We come from the honour culture. It is the greatest prize.

an unsettled life

22.09.2026

When I was a young man, the focus was on getting settled in life. So I studied hard. I did 6 ‘A’ Levels and got the best results in sixth form. I went to a top university, the London School of Economics, in the hardest subject to get into, Law. I graduated in the top 10% of the year. I volunteered in the law courts, I wrote in the university newspaper. I worked in Pizza Hut. I had work experience as well as education. I worked really hard.

All I wanted was to get settled. Get a good stable and satisfying job. Raise a family and children. Have my own house.

Flash forward in time. I am almost forty four years old and I am still not settled in life. Everything is up in the air. How did I cope all of these years, twenty six years, in an unsettled life?

The main thing is that I did not blame myself. I blamed other people. And I was justified. Not only had I worked harder than everyone else, but I was naturally intelligent and I could do anything. The fact that I could not get the work I wanted was not because I did anything wrong. I passed the interviews. And even when I did so, they would put me on the reserve list. You would ask for feedback and they would say that you did not do anything wrong. I knew I was being discriminated against.

Without the work, there was also no love. This was the world that I was in.

And the loneliness? I coped by learning. Learning and learning and learning. Because after all, you would always have books. You would always find fulfilment in learning and reading. I had the capacity for complete loneliness with my books. This what got me through five degrees including a PhD.

What created this resilience then? It was ego first. The ego of knowing how great I was. I never lost the sense of my own value. The brilliance of my mind. When I was faced with disappointment after disappointment, when I saw those that were not as talented as me getting ahead, I depended on my ego, self-belief and self-valuation to get me through things. And then, it was the love of learning which would nurture and nourish, when the world is cold, hostile and stupid.

My parents supported me. In my culture, this is my right. But still, it was them that supported me.

So even though I have been unsettled throughout my whole adult life, still I have survived and prospered. I live in a beautiful home which is because of my hard work. I have a brilliant and erudite mind and can enjoy my own company because I have invested in learning. I have been working in jobs that I find a lot of fun for the past few years. And I have the grace to accept that I can only control my own performance and that I cannot change the injustice, immorality and the unfairness of this world.

That’s right. I still blame everyone else and not myself. I see myself as a victim and them as the oppressors. And I have never given up hope. I might have lived my whole adult life in an unsettled way but I still look forward to being settled one day. I give myself the same advice that I give to everyone else that is struggling: Faust got to heaven because he strove for it. Like Goethe, I am a genius. And I accept the words and the lesson of a genius. We are fellow spirits, although his early disappointments in love which influenced his work were adequately compensated because he found a relationship later in life. Goethe’s philosophy is my philosophy. This is the philosophy of the unsettled.

belief in study

08.09.2026

Coming from an Indian background, I had a sincere belief that education could change the world. Being educated could change the world. Coming from a Dalit or Untouchable, low caste background, knowing about Dr. Ambedkhar who was from our caste and how he had been the architect of the Indian constitution, I had a sincere belief that education could and did change the world.

Belief in study is a crucially important thing. You have to believe it matters. You have to believe that study will change the world. You have to believe that study will improve your chances in life.

Now, even though I know that none of my studies have done anything for me professionally or financially, because of the racism in this country, I still believe in study. Because that study has given me the ability to do all of the volunteering and charity work I have done as a teacher, curator, as a writer, as a journalist and as a tour guide. It is that study that has prepared me and allowed me to excel in soft power, in enhancing and contributing to the cultural, academic and educational life in London and in changing the world for Dalits in India and ethnic minorities in Great Britain.

The reason that I studied, to contribute to the community and to make the world better through education, that has been achieved. I just did not get anything out of it for myself: the money, the status, the family and children and love.

There is one other belief in study. The belief in yourself. That you can study. That you will achieve. That you will succeed. That you will get top grades. Where does this belief come from?

When I would come home from a test at school and get the best marks in the year, do you know what my grandfather would say to me? It wasn’t a congratulation. He would say that he expected me to get full marks on the exam and I hadn’t. This was the level of expectation. My primary school teachers? When I would finish all of the work in class, they would give me extra work to do. Reading comprehension exercises. They gave me prize after prize for my work. The kids in the lower classes told me that the teachers would present my work to them as a model to imitate. The same thing happened during my GCSEs. Everyone saw me as the model student. The one to aspire to. This is what they expected from me. My PhD supervisors? They told me that my project was important and original. My second book which is in first draft form, described as absolutely breathtaking, important and highly original and innovative by the four people that have read it, highly respected researchers and academics. I know that this book will change the world.

This belief has been built by everyone around me. I know the importance of my scholarship and of this mind that has been forged by my grandfather, the voice of the Indian Independence movement. It is this belief that has taken me through double the amount of A Levels of most people, six, and through five degrees, with First Class Honours in English Literature and a Distinction in Art History, as well as graduation in the top 10% of a Law degree at the elite university LSE. A PhD on top of that. Achievement after achievement. Success upon success. Results delivered every time.

It is this belief that sustained me working seventy hour weeks in work and volunteering and then studying for an Art History degree at the Open University on top of it. It is this belief now that has told me that I can do a Master’s in Art History with the Open University and I am expecting myself to get a Distinction again.

Because, however racist this world is, however professionally unrewarding it has been to amass all of this education, I still believe that education can change the world. That I can educate myself and change the world. Because Suneel is not Suneel. Suneel is the community of the Oppressed, the Dalits. Suneel is the dream of the Indian Independence, freedom and dignity that my grandfather was raised upon. Suneel is the hero that my grandfather dreamed of. We educate ourselves and others for someone. The one that prayed for us to come into the world.

succeeding in study through distraction

06.09.2026

A small council house. That’s where I grew up. So small that any noise filled the entire house. And my bedroom? One wall was missing. Because the front room upstairs had been converted into a bedroom and it had a balcony and not a wall. The room itself? I shared it with my brother. I never had my own bedroom until I was eighteen.

All evening long, after school, the stereo would be going off. My brothers were playing hardcore gangster rap on it. Downstairs, the TV could be blaring.

In this environment, in which a middle class white person could never find any time for study or focus, you found the straight ‘A’ student that is now known as Dr. Suneel Mehmi. The student that got the best results in his sixth form.

Despite the distraction, despite the noise, despite the challenge, I got top grades. I would sit there at the desk in spite of everyone and everything.

Here, you found a student that had dedication, hard work, focus, determination and self belief. I believed that I was the most intelligent. And therefore I was the most intelligent. And moreover, I had a genuine love of learning.

One phrase follows me around my whole life. Our family came from the Untouchables in India, the lowest castes. We were Dalits. We were denied an education as part of our oppression. And my grandfather, who a rich man had plucked out of poverty and sent to university, where he became the top student and top athlete, he had told me this story. That our people, the Untouchables, we would stand outside classrooms, study with no light in the dark, study with nothing to become Big Men. Like Dr. Ambedkhar who was the architect of the Indian Constitution.

Again and again that story assails my mind. And I remember it as the detail he told me, that we had to stand and study while others were sitting. In other words, we faced adversity while others had every comfort and privilege. We had hardship and suffering. Others had the ease and luxury of being taught. They were spoilt. We were not.

This is the supposed level playing field of education in the United Kingdom. It is with this distraction and noise that we, the working class, we the sons of immigrants find ourselves in, the world in which we study.

And yet, despite everything, we succeed. I am the holder of five degrees including a PhD. I have published a book and articles, curated in museums and for websites, written journalism, poetry, reviews and articles for website upon website. You cannot kill talent. You cannot drown it out. You cannot kill the focus of a superior mind.

We don’t have excuses. We have achievements. I graduated in the top 10% of a degree in Laws at the elite and world-class university, the LSE. While working part time at Pizza Hut. I did an English degree in two years with First Class Honours. I remember skipping classes to work part time. While working 70 + hour weeks over the past four years, I got a First Class Honours Degree in Art History. When I did my PhD, I was working part time as a teacher, volunteering in a museum and at after school homework clubs for children, as well as volunteering as an English teacher for refugees and migrants.

And you that’s reading this. You who will like any underdog story. I know you will not like this story. Because when it comes to the real underdogs, the Dalits, the Untouchables, the working class ethnic minority male, this story means nothing to you. Because this is not a sob story. This is the story of resolution. This is the story of the Dalit that shared his grandfather’s dream, that shared Dr. Ambedkhar’s dream: to have education for our people.

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.

children of immigrants and mental health problems

03.09.2026

We live in a society that creates a massive amount of stress, which sabotages health. And, as per usual, most of this stress is put upon immigrants and the children of immigrants.

The immigrants are made to jump over a number of bureaucratic hurdles which stop many of them from ever escaping from the jaws of poverty and becoming settled in life. The children? They watch what the state puts their parents through. They are made to understand the horrible sacrifices that their parents had to make for them in leaving their countries and families and friends behind, the expectations their parents put on them, made to feel all these heavy weights, this crushing weight of expectation that they will live the better lives that their parents tried to give them.

As a result, the children of immigrants have an increased risk for depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and other mental health problems.

I am one of these children of immigrants. My feeling about the unique cause of this stress is a lack of love. This is what it comes down to.

When you are the son of immigrants, it becomes very clear that no one loves you. That no one cares for you. You are rejected by the country that your parents come from. They see you as an outsider. You are rejected by the country that you are born in. They see you as an outsider. You are rejected by the other children of immigrants. They also see you as an outsider.

Permanently, you are a stranger.

One of the charities that I volunteer at tries to make strangers into a community. Because being a stranger causes isolation and alienation, atomisation. But what can you do when the community will never let you become anything else but a stranger?

The mind gives way. Humans need a community of some sort. When there is no community of any sort, it is the time for mental heath issues to creep in. For stress to overtake the system. And stress asks for a cure.

When you are the child of immigrants, you get no belonging anywhere. In fact, you are always asked to choose what culture you will be in without ever being accepted in any culture. Without belonging to any culture.

How do you cope with this stress? With the constant stress of decision making without the rewards of being accepted, recognised or loved? You have the pressure of always creating your own identity, always being seen with suspicion, never being understood. You have the pressure of being rejected from work, relationships and friendships because you are perceived as a stranger.

When people meet me for the first time, they make comments like you don’t look Indian. People guess that I am of different ethncities. There is the radical uncertainty as to what I am and where I come from. This is the radical uncertainty in which we live, the children of immigrants. No one will let us have an origin and an identity. No one is sure who we are. Everyone sees us as a stranger. And love? She is hard to find in a universe of ice.

thoughts in public

31.08.2026

A: What is a thought in public?

S: Is it the expression of a thought and the assertion of an idea or is it an act of persuasion?

A: It could be any of those things.

S: It is a naked and vulnerable thing that is open to attack. It is a hostage of war.

A: With you, it is always the war.

S: Why not? This world revolves around the war. In any case, we live in the cancel culture. All are scared of expression. All are scared of their own thoughts.

A: And you are not scared? You who type away all day and night?

S: What is there to be scared of? Them? I am not ashamed of my ideas and what is in my mind. In my mind are six thousand years of India. As well as the whole of the West.

A: You have not read everything.

S: You do not have to read everything to know everything. It is a blessing from the goddess of learning.

A: But to the subject. The expression of thought. What is it?

S: It is the creation of the archive. In my case, the creation of the Punjabi archive. It is the expression of the counter culture. It is the expression of love in a world full of hate. Imagine what would happen if we had no voice? I create the voice, the being and the identity of the Punjabis.

A: Can you not have thoughts without identity? Like Western maths and philosophy and science and all of their disciplines pretend to do?

S: If you look at Western so-called education, you will know that it is nothing else but the expression of an identity.

A: How so? What about science? The objective?

S: Uncertainty in physics in the quantum realm has been theorised to stem from the radical uncertainty of the war time in western culture. The field encodes the culture of the time. Newtonian physics was wrong. It was based on a limited world view and understanding of the universe. It was the culture at the time that they encoded. Everything is subjective and based on identity.

A: Play at your identity politics.

S: Why not? It is what everyone else does. I do it with my heart on my sleeve. I am open and honest. We are Punjabi. This is how we think. I have six thousand years of Indian culture in me. I have been raised like a warrior on the Mahabharata. What these thoughts are are the thoughts of the warrior. They come naked like Kali, the Dark Mother. And these thoughts, they slay this world of hate and injustice. They are the way that has stood up to history.