results day

27.07.2026

S: You know, about five hundred people have read about my results at university, that I got a first class honours degree in Art History and Visual Cultures.

A: It’s a big readership. It’s a good thing that you didn’t fail.

S: Indeed. I’ve been spared the egg on the face.

A: Why mention this?

S: Because, despite all of those people reading, only a handful of close friends congratulated me on the degree. The reality of life is that most people can’t spare a couple of seconds to write congratulations for a major milestone in someone’s life. It shows you what the reward of success really is. Indifference.

A: Perhaps they are not indifferent? Perhaps there are other reasons for not writing?

S: It is always friendship that trounces the objective recognition of achievement. That is why there will never be a meritocracy.

A: You should have written about all of the challenges you faced while doing this degree.

S: You want me to talk about how I overcame the heartbreak, depression, isolation, loneliness and the massive amounts of work and volunteering that I was doing throughout this part time degree? I think that you are wrong. Nothing will ever impress these people. They have never recognised my achievements and they never will. In fact, all of the barriers that I have had to face, it is them that have put them before me. Instead of helping, they obstruct. They are the ones that gave me heartbreak and isolation and depression.

A: If you will never be accepted, forget about wanting to be accepted.

S: One should forget. But then, the People have asked for acceptance. And this is the fight that we fight. Climbing mountain after mountain. Achieving success after success. But yet, never finding that acceptance and warmth and love.

dialogues and stories

24.07.2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A: Give me then a story.

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

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

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

A: Where did you find this ability?

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

A: And a dialogue?

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

achilles without a heel

23.07.20206

S: Achilles was the greatest because his mother’s love protected him. She gives him invulnerability.

A: You have spoken of this before.

S: Harry Potter has it too. The protection of The Mother. I, too. I have the protection of The Mother.

A: You believe that you are invulnerable?

S: You forget the basic truth. I believe that I can do everything and therefore I can do everything. And that belief comes from my mother’s belief in me. That I am not just a man.

A: And what else does this mother’s protection give you?

S: Not just confidence. Not just a can do attitude. Love itself is strength. The love that you get from someone, that is strength.

A: You are channeling her energy?

S: What else? I am her and she is me. All of her desires, I have achieved. The ambition that she has had for me, I have achieved it. Anything I have wanted, I have taken.

A: What else has she given you?

S: Language. Culture. Style. The destiny to be her voice. Her love has been an armour against this cold and hard, hostile world. It has sheltered. This love has been home. The refuge, the sanctuary.

A: When The Mother gives Achilles his invulnerability and strength, it is lacking.

S: This is the misogyny and the anti-Mother attitude of the Greeks and the West. In fact, there is no lack. Achilles has no heel.

A: You mean this Achilles?

S: In Indian culture, it is The Mother that is all-powerful and triumphant. It is The Mother that is all conquering. She is the one that protects. That is why no one and nothing can stand against me. They all fall. It is me that remains standing. It is me that achieves. It is me that becomes The Man.

a momentary feeling of achievement

22.07.2026

S: I have had quite a few big achievements this year, the culmination of four years of work.

A: You must be feeling pretty pleased with yourself. As you have such a big head.

S: Not at all. Do you know something about expectation?

A: What?

S: If you have high expectations for life and for yourself, then you are never really satisfied.

A: Whatever do you mean? Everyone would love to have what you have.

S: I am demanding for myself. I have about sixty years of life left in me. I want to achieve everything that I have set my heart upon.

A: What you want, what you have told me, that is impossible to get. Be happy that you have achieved and accomplished so much. You cannot be the greatest genius the world has ever seen. You will never get the acceptance and the recognition that you crave. Look at the competition.

S: The genius is for the People. It is for the Oppressed. The recognition is for the People. It is for the Oppressed. It is for The Mother. And The Mother demands.

A: What she is asking of you is impossible.

S: Great men say that the concept of the impossible does not exist.

A: You believe? You believe that you are the greatest? You believe that you of all people can achieve the impossible?

S: The things that I know, the secrets of society, the secrets of the self. If there is one that has the prize of intellect, it is me.

A: You are unliked. It cannot happen.

S: Others are more liked. But when it comes to the objective truth of things, I hold it in my hands. It is the truth alone that is supreme. In the end, it is the truth alone that triumphs. Satyameva Jayate.

A: So even though you have achieved, it is not enough.

S: I crave absolute knowledge. Like Goethe. I am the Goethe of the modern age.

A: How can you compare yourself to him? He shaped the literature of his nation. What have you shaped?

S: The curse of true originality is that one is not accepted or even understood. The curse of the Revolutionary is that the conventional world will not recognise him. The curse of the one with the mind, that is ahead of his time, that fights against oppression, the curse is that the whole world is against him.

A: You have told me that you are powerful enough to fight the whole world.

S: The fight has not finished in me. I am eternal. I am fearless and therefore powerful. I am The Tiger.

small accomplishments

18.07.2026

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

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

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

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

what it feels to miss love

15.07.2026

S: Do we miss other people?

A: Yes.

S: You answer immediately. But is it them that we miss? Or do we miss how they make us feel? Do we miss their love?

A: Those are aspects of them.

S: Is an aspect them?

A: One is one’s attributes. Do you miss someone?

S: There are those that I think of that are gone.

A: The dead?

S: There are those that are living too. The quick and the dead.

A: The biblical reference. Always with the books with you.

S: The living, I can feel their eyes on me. I know who it is that looks upon my words.

A: Friend, lover, enemy? Who do you talk of?

S: The secret rests within this breast.

A: Why not bring them near to you?

S: It has been a long time. There are distances.

A: You miss them. You will not make it up with them. That is perverse.

S: Humans are perverse. They themselves are perverse. They that hate, they know that I understand them. They hate because I understood, not because I did not.

A: Perhaps that is conceit. Perhaps you misunderstood.

S: Whether or not I understood them, which it is impossible to tell, they did not understand me.

A: The poor misunderstood man.

S: No one understands genius.

A: Why then do they fear it?

S: Precisely because it is an unknown.

A: What say you to the lost?

S: I say that I see your eyes before me. I say that I see your face. I see you saying the words of friendship to me. I remember how I would rush towards you. I remember how I would look forward to seeing you.

A: And yet you cannot bend and they cannot bend.

S: Some things are destined not to be. Everywhere, men build walls around themselves, around others. Such walls become the stuff of life. Such walls determine one’s destiny. Find me one that does not build this wall.

A: Some walls, you have broken through.

S: There is always a wall. To open one’s heart, one has to become a god. One has to become fearless. One has to shed all doubts. One has to become The Tiger.

the delicous ravishment of expression

09.07.2026

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

A: Whatever do you mean?

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

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

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

A: Love for yourself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the embrace of difference in thought

07.07.2026

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

A: What indeed?

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

A: Why do you ask?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the list of things done

29.06.2026

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

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

cristiano ronaldo and admiration in its forties

24.06.2026

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

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

A: An icon for you. Why?

S: Just like me, he is the greatest.

A: I knew it would come down to narcissism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A: He has his reward. You have nothing.

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