youth career love

13.10.2026

I made a mistake. When I was young, family, society, peers, everyone was telling me to concentrate on my career. Get a top job. So all of the focus went on studying and working. It’s one of the reasons that I did a PhD. To get that top job in academia. And because I was a perpetual student, this meant no money. Which meant no love.

To get the career to get love, I was putting myself out of the possibility of loving and being loved.

This is what is happening to these young people today. Wretched job prospects, a wretched economy, intense competition for roles, all of these result in the fact that the young folk are prioritising getting a career over love.

In fact, it is love that gives you meaning and satisfaction in life. A good career also helps you to be happy, but not so much as love. We are built to be around people. We are built to be social animals.

In this society, the focus on careers at an early age is taking away the best years of youth and love from people. And the young folk seem to think that this is natural. That they should be obsessed with a career instead of finding connections and love at a young age. The level of stress that it creates to find a career would kill any inclination of love.

What the young folk don’t know is that as you get older and older, the harder it gets to find connections and relationships. But they are in a trap.

I look back at when I was in this trap. Studying, working, trying to get a foothold in a career with intense competition for every role. Telling myself that when I get there, I can start up my family. It was all for this family that I would set up one day. The most important thing was the family but I kept on thinking just a few more years, just a few more years. I can’t get one right now, I don’t have money coming in. I’m studying. And then you wake up one day and the best years of your youth are already past you.

what not to write on linkedin

12.10.2026

Someone was telling me that I shouldn’t post anything critical of any institutions on LinkedIn because it gives the wrong impression. For instance, criticising the NHS for its malpractice after my operation. They said that LinkedIn should just be about work stuff.

What did I say? I said that my work is that I’m a writer. Yes, I am a paid author. I’ve published continuously throughout my whole adult life: student newspapers, journalism websites, book reviews, poetry magazines, websites, academic publishing, curatorial work, social media, etc. It is my job to write. I am posting my work. Any time that I write, it is work related.

But then, the objection. What if someone saw it and used it against you? If someone doesn’t like my writing and doesn’t like me as a result of it, so what? I don’t care. And how can they use it against me? I haven’t committed any crimes. Free expression means exactly that. Free expression. Just because someone doesn’t agree or doesn’t like it, it doesn’t mean that anything that I am saying is actually wrong.

Loss of job opportunities? Seriously, what has LinkedIn ever done for me? To say that it would is a joke. I got on LinkedIn because a colleague told me that they got job offers off it. I have never been approached for any job the whole time that I have been on it even though I am in the same industry as the other person.

And the other scenario, that maybe someone would check up on me and think twice about offering me a job depending on what they thought about what I wrote? I literally do not care. I don’t work for money like everyone else. I’m sorted out with my family. I don’t need to work. My writing is more important to me than a little bit of extra money.

Other than that, I’ve never been scared of anyone my whole entire life as far back as I can remember. Yes, that’s right. I don’t feel fear. To be a writer means to be brave. It means that you challenge the boundaries and the conventions. If I didn’t want to stick out, if I was a shrinking wallflower, if I didn’t tell the truth, critical or not, I would have to look down at myself. And I don’t look down at myself. I am my own hero.

The world can disapprove of your writing and your thoughts. They can defend the wrongdoers instead of the ones that call out wrongdoing. Because the wrongdoers have more power. But the real man tells the truth. Just because other people can’t stomach it, doesn’t mean that you should stop. I will decide what’s appropriate to write, not other people. I will decide what I can say or cannot, not other people. I am an independent thinker and I am the one that speaks the truth. The truth is always appropriate.

The people that follow me on LinkedIn, they do perhaps one job out of all of the jobs that I do. I write about all of my different jobs: activist, reformer, writer, poet, artist, photographer, scholar, academic, researcher, curator, and thinker. To mention just a few. No one and nothing can contain me because I have so much in me and I will not attempt to contain myself for whatever anyone else thinks.

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.

waiting for life

01.10.2026

Once upon a time, I was a young student. Naive and inexperienced. At home, my mother did not speak English and was locked into the Punjabi community. My father was always working. At school, the teachers would lie that the outside world was a meritocracy. That it was fair. You can tell how much of outside reality was penetrating into this mind and soul. In this existence, I studied and worked part time. There were no women. I was alone most of the time outside of the family. In this existence, I was waiting for life.

What was it that I was waiting for? I was waiting for a job that would take into account that I was one of the most intelligent and imaginative people in the world. A creative and satisfying, well paid and structured career with recognition for myself and the community of The Oppressed, the Dalits, the low castes. I was waiting for a salon. A circle of intellectuals, artists, musicians and writers all around me. We would speak of cultured things. Live an unconventional life. And above all, what was this watcher of Indian films and their romances waiting the most for? It was love. It was The Woman.

And now? I am still waiting for all of those things. I am still waiting for life.

But that is not to say that I have not tried to make all of those things that I wanted from life.

I have been working in arts and culture for about four and a half years. I have made a significant contribution to the institutions that I have worked for, in both employment and in volunteering. I have been the initiator of a tours project, I have been a curator, I have managed events and people in the cultural industries, I have worked to enhance visitor experience. What has been missing here is the recognition and the reward. And that is an ongoing project.

What about the salon? My friends are teachers, psychologists, architects, scholars in Art History, leaders in charities, and doctors. I have cultured friends that come to me to art galleries, that discuss literature with me. That I can have deep conversations with. And the artists, intellectuals and writers? There, friendship has not worked. I have made the effort but they have not wanted to be friends. And that is an ongoing project.

What about love? The one thing that I waited and longed for so many years and sleepless nights? That is an ongoing project. Privacy permits me to say no more. There are some lines from an Indian film, one of my favourite songs ‘Har Funn Maula’ (Jack of all Trades):

Itni haseeno pe kitni dafa yeh dola

He has fallen for many beautiful women

Phir bhi fakeeron ka pehne huye hai chola

But still he’s dressed like a faqir (holy man in rags that has renounced the material world)

In India, they say that the fruit of patience is sweet. This patience has lasted for a lifetime so the fruit should be the sweetest of all. One waits for life. It is the man’s lot. He waits for this woman. Where is she? Rouging her cheeks and lips, scrutinising her loveliness in a mirror, flowing perfume upon her beautiful form. The man waits at the door. He saunters in front of the house. He even tries to walk up and down the block a bit. His life and his love is there and he is here. She is here and he is there. He waits for his life. And she? She is always elsewhere. Always somewhere else. But despite that, the dreamer and the poet tries to make her appear. He dreams of his reunion with life, this life that he imagined. Through work and service, he lives in his dream. This is what it means to wait for life.

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.