race (microfiction)

24.09.2025

It was eleven fifty five in the night time. I was still full from the dinner I had eaten at ten o’clock because I had been out singing with my group. Alfonso was sitting in another country. An expensive country for a holiday. I was writing to him:

Black was the night. At the end of a long day, I was coming home. As I came out of the tube station, shining in the lights was the red livery of a bus. Without thinking about it, I started running towards the bus station at full speed.

In front of me, quite a few paces in front, there was a young man. He had also started running. Now I do not like anyone being in front of me in a race. And this was a race. Why? I made it a race. Because I have an ego. I am a narcissist. And I am a narcissist because I live in a world that tries to devalue me and tries to tell me that I am nothing. And I fight against it. I refuse to be nothing. I am special.

I am not a narcissist like other narcissists. Because I am a narcissist for my community. For us. I am the champion of my people.

I was a schoolboy athlete. I won because I had the body of a god, nerves of steel and self-belief. My mind is stronger than anyone else’s. I am invincible, undefeatable. Even at my age, I am still quicker than most people.

And then, even though he had started so ahead of me, I was running past him. Now, it was me that was miles in front. I was the winner. I never doubted it. It didn’t matter how far ahead of me he was when he had started.

The difference between me and anyone else is that I will run to my very limit, even so hard that I feel nauseous and dizzy at the end of it. Because nobody else can bear the pain that I have had to live with. No one else is as hard as me.

You are wondering why I am writing this anecdote of these very real events. You are wondering why I race against buses on the streets to the next station. Because I love fighting. I love running. I love winning. I love a challenge.

I have always been the underdog. In India, they scorned us as Untouchables. In the United Kingdom, they treat me like an outsider even though it was my grandfather that first came to this country. I will fight until my last breath against the disrespect and hate that is given to my people and to Mother India. It is why my mother gave birth to me. She prayed for someone to save the honour of Mother India.

Even after a major leg operation a few months ago, there was no way that I would lose to that young man. People see the white hairs on my head and think my age has passed. I am still fitter than everyone, I still have more stamina than everyone and I still have more ability than everyone. You can’t beat good genes. My grandfather was a university level athlete. The top in his university. I come from farmer stock. My parents married young. It is hard to match the power in this body. It is not a boast. It is reality.

And I have been expected to be the best at everything every since I was a baby. And so I am. My ego is absolutely unassailable.

That’s why I win. I was born to be a champion and raised to be a champion. I was born to be Tiger and I am Tiger.

the fruition of desire: a philosophy (microfiction)

18.09.2025

Dearest Alfonso,

It was a certain time in the night. The thoughts would come.

But then, the mind rebelled against the absurdity of it all.

After all, what is the fruition of desire? Friction. That’s all it comes down to. Friction. Two bodies colliding against each other randomly, meaninglessly. That’s what we call sex.

It is absurd. However much you love someone, that is the consummation of your love. However much you connect with someone, that is the consummation of your connection.

Your whole adult life as a man you seek out the act. It is the prime motivation in your life. The act sculpts out who you are, who you become, what you want, who you want.

However complicated life becomes, however complicated society becomes, however complicated the brain becomes, at its kernel lies one simple rule: touch.

Beneath everything, in spite of everything, we are bodies. We are absurd. We are meaningless.

They like to talk about civilisation. What is the story of civilisation? Sex.

They like to talk about the arts. What is the story behind the arts, the story of the arts? Sex.

They like to talk about happiness. What is happiness? Sex?

And this act itself? Villified, misunderstood, cheapened, even, foolishly, resisted and deliberately prevented. In a culture of repression the act loses all of its beauty, its joy and its giving of joy, its ultimate significance as freedom and connection. I myself am almost succumbing to the false picture that they paint of sex.

The struggle is to retain a sense of the act’s urgency, its importance in life, the happiness of the act and its role in creating happiness and healing. Against the denigration of the act, against its attempted exclusion, its supposed meaninglessness.

The struggle is to fight against the construction of the act as a giving and a taking of power, as an abuse in and of itself, as not being important in its own right.

The struggle is to see the art as not absurd. As necessary. As light. As guidance. As the realisation of beauty in this world and all worlds. On the walls of the Indian temples are adorned the acts of love, the energy of sex. The power of union, the power of connection. The amalgamation of the divine feminine with the divine masculine. The meaning of being a god or a goddess. Shiva as the lingam. The Mother Goddess as the yoni.

when skin channels skin

when we just are

and stop crying virtue or sin

when the animal regains the flesh

then

then there will be no fear

then will come the freer

then the bodies will truly mesh

Poetically and prosaically, above all philosophically and loverly,

The Tiger.

con-nection

14.09.2025

‘Connection is a con’ I pronounced sententiously.

‘In what way?’ Alfonso had just been admiring a vase of flowers I had put together, with yellow gladioli, pink roses and then some purple asters. I had gone at the stalks with some Japanese pruning scissors which were one of my prized possessions. They made me feel like a professional florist.

‘Whatever human beings have done for connection, it has always led to disconnection. When they created a religion to tie people together, it led to wars of religion and separatism. The same with the state. In our time, they created dating apps to draw people together. All that led to is total disconnection. People have sickened from the dating apps.’

‘So disconnection is a constant of connection?’

‘Perhaps there is a history of disconnection. Perhaps it accelerated with the decline of religion which fostered a community.’

‘Evidence?’

‘There is an argument that newspapers fostered a new public sphere, a nation of readers. Now the newspapers are not even read much any more. More disconnection.’

‘Just because you are disconnected, it doesn’t mean that everyone else is. Just because you are not loved, it does not mean that there is not love in the universe. Just because you are not valued, it does not mean that everyone devalues.’

‘True. But, after all, we care about ourselves. We think about ourselves. When you are in a societal predicament like I am, it does not matter how far it extends outside of the bubble of oneself. One is still caught up in that situation and feels it.’

‘Do you ever say anything cheerful?’

‘What do you want me to say? I am not going to be a yes man for this sick society.’

When I had had my dinner today, a little bump had appeared on my arm in the bicep area. An unexplained circumstance on my skin which itched, and not a little. Out of nowhere, issues come and assail our body and our mind. Suffering appears without notice. It is our lot in life. My skin is pulsing with trauma. Two spots on my face have erupted recently. Old scars are flaring up, the one on my elbow. The skin is inflamed. I am fire and everywhere the volcano is erupting.

lost for words (microfiction)

12.09.2025

Not always too predictable as a whole, Alfonso had given me a bit of a surprise. We were going down the escalators at Kings Cross station after a literary tour through Hampstead Heath, the haunts of Coleridge the poet. It had been a long day, something in the region of thirty thousand steps. I was commenting forlornly to Alfonso that now, surely, at the end of the day, I wasn’t going to meet anyone.

Alfonso had looked up behind me and explained to the lady there that his friend wanted to meet someone, so would she be able to help him out? I turned around and the woman had smiled at me and introduced herself.

And I? I laughed. I didn’t say anything. What was there to say? Hadn’t I been trying to connect and communicate with others for my whole life? Who was there for me? I turned around and got on with my life. There was no point talking to anyone.

Alfonso had asked me afterwards whether I understood communication at all. No, I replied. I did not understand communication. I did not understand connection.

‘But,’ Alfonso said. ‘You are friends with me.’

‘It is an exception,’ I had told him. ‘I am struggling. I don’t understand other people.’

‘I think,’ Alfonso said, ‘that the problem is that you understand them all too well.’

‘Not at all,’ I replied. ‘I don’t understand anything or anyone.’

‘Why then,’ Alfonso continued, ‘do you then characterise this world as what it is according to your agenda?’

‘Who doesn’t?’ I had asked Alfonso.

Promptly, he then changed the topic. He asked me what I wanted. He said, ‘I thought you wanted to meet someone? I introduced you to someone there. You did nothing.’

‘I want to be left alone and in peace if I am never going to have any genuine connection with anyone.’

‘You cannot be alone. You live in a society. And you do not want to be isolated. Your body and your mind is sickening because you don’t have a genuine connection in your life.’

‘You have no evidence of that,’ I told Alfonso. ‘When anybody looks at me, they cannot tell if I am sad or if I am happy. I laugh. I joke around. Whether I am acting or not, nobody knows the difference. Even those that think they are closest to me don’t know what I think or feel about anything. I am inscrutable. You do not know that I am sick or sickening. I keep it to myself.’

‘There is something off in you,’ said Alfonso. ‘Why do you think nothing is working for you? It is because there is something off.’

‘Possibly,’ I told him. I was wondering what it was that I wanted. Did I want anything at all now? Or had I just given up? There is a psychology experiment with dogs, ‘learned helplessness’. At a certain point, you realise that nothing you ever do is going to make any difference to your predicament. And then, you just give up. Had I reached that point now?

a flirtation with destruction

11.09.2025

‘It is the death instinct versus the life instinct.’ Alfonso was drinking a lime cordial in soda water. It was a drink that I had introduced him to. I would admire the green bubbles of fizz and savour the coldness of the refreshment as it went down. I wondered what he made of it. You can never step inside another’s body. Another’s mind, perhaps. Not the body. That was why they could not understand what it was to be me and to have this hungry high testosterone form. I was an alien to them.

In the morning, they had killed that aide of Trump’s. It had been a topic of conversation. But that was not what we had been talking about. In the evening, as I staggered home from fatigue and sadness, I had not looked when I had stepped into the road. A car was just a few metres away from me. Instead of walking back a few paces, I had sprinted across the road.

‘Did you not care that you would get hit?’ Alfonso asked me.

‘No, not really. What difference would it make if I did get hit? Who would really miss me?’

‘How close did the car get?’

‘I’m fast. Not too close.’

‘Don’t you feel that you are worrying the drivers when you do this kind of thing?’

‘It’s only happened a few times.’

‘You obviously do not care if you live or die. You just want to take stupid risks.’

I didn’t say anything. Alfonso had shown some real anger. It was what I felt inside. This anger. I was trying to control it. I was trying to stop the fire from ravaging through the world.

Instead of letting the fire out, I was typing a few words in my bed. I was dying of tiredness. I had overstretched myself, done too much. And it was never going to get me anywhere. The more I dug, the more stuck I was. I was trying to live but everyone wanted me dead. The only difference was that no one was going to shoot. I was going to have to live the pain.

meeting on the moon

08.09.2025

‘It is a full moon tonight,’ Alfonso remarked.

‘Full and beautiful. Do you know, there is someone looking at that moon at the same time that I am looking at it. And our gazes meet on the moon.’

‘Forget about your romances,’ Alfonso remarked drily. ‘No one looks at the moon and thinks of you. They think of someone else. Or themselves. Only you think of them.’

‘While I think that they would spare a thought sometimes of me, what can I do about it if they do not? In any case, I made no mention of romance. You did.’

‘The moon is the apt figure for any romance in your life. Because you do not talk to any of them. And they do not talk to you. You look in silence, if that.’

I did not respond.

‘Do you not have any romance in your life?’

‘I will not disclose whether I have or not. There is nothing in talking about such topics except for disdain, fear and loathing from anyone that hears. That is this culture. Love is outlawed here. Hate is legal.’

‘You think you are a prophet? Why make such pronouncements? All they do is to upset people.’

‘I am spoiling for a fight. I am a fighter. Come at me. I will take them.’

‘All you do is fight. Come, rest. Talk about the things of peace.’

‘This dishonourable peace? You want me to talk about the things of this dishonourable peace? The world is burning because of the excesses of the rich. The future is being torched because of the worship of status and rank and possessions. The poor are being enslaved because of the iniquity of the world. The oppressed are starving. The corrupt politicians are building their walls. Everywhere there are lies and injustice. And you want me to talk about the things of peace? In this world?’

‘Constant criticism will not win friends.’

‘I don’t want friends that live in a sugar coated reality. A warrior looks for an army and a warrior fights for the truth. If you cannot bear the truth, you cannot be a warrior.’

‘Wars are lies.’

‘Not just wars. If I did not believe I fought for the truth I would not be alive.’

‘Do you think you have what it takes to fight? You live in a world of fantasies.’

‘They are not fantasies. They are ideals of love, truth and justice. If you cannot bring your ideals to life but you spend your life fighting for them, then you have not lost. You have won. The one that tries never loses.’

‘Yet you told me yesterday that the hero always loses.’

‘In the Ramayana, Rama who is of perfect virtue fought against the villain Raavana because Raavana had abducted Sita, the perfect woman. Rama won. But could he keep Sita with him? No. Because the people thought her honour was tarnished. It is the duty of the king to follow the wishes of the people. It is the duty of the king to maintain the honour of the people. Sita had to go. The earth swallowed her alive. And Rama? Rama wept. The hero always loses. It has been known for thousands of years in India.’

‘Do not import your love stories into your explanations of myths,’ Alfonso admonished me. ‘You are not Rama and there was no Sita in your life.’ Alfonso sighed. ‘Come, it is getting late. Let’s retire. Tomorrow is another day. Forget these ill-fated romances. Read another book.’

the early early night (microfiction)

01.09.2025

‘I was so tired of life and angry with life that at seven o’clock after dinner, I just went to sleep. I was out cold. I didn’t call up my friend and go out like I said I might. I couldn’t read my book. I missed several messages from friends. It was not like I had not slept properly the last night. It was the first evening of my holidays.’

I finished writing to Alfonso. I wondered what he was doing at twenty to one in the morning. What he would make of my message.

After that deep sleep, which had cured the anger and disappointment that I had felt all day, that empty ache in my stomach, this anger and disappointment that was over two years in age, I felt full of energy and I felt okay. Because now I was away from everyone for a while. I wasn’t away from their unfairness but I was away from them.

I replied to all the friends that had got in contact. Then I reflected on life.

That sleep was a way to process my feelings. It had been an intense day. In life you have to control your feelings somehow. Talking does not help. It does nothing to communicate your feelings. Because other people will not understand and they will not change. You can communicate to them for two whole years and it would make no difference. But sleep? In sleep, everything would be resolved.

When conscious life cannot help you, sleep can help you.

My life was going nowhere. It is your relationships that make your life complete. It was going to be like this now. I had just a few people I could really rely on. No romance.

But I had Alfonso. I could always speak to Alfonso or write to Alfonso. Even at twenty minutes to one in the morning.

the first madness of a first love (microfiction)

29.08.2025

‘Her hair.’

‘That’s what you remember?’ asked Alfonso. He had been asking me about the first woman that I loved. He asked with some surprise.

‘She had strawberry blonde hair. Like gold with a touch of red.’

‘Is that all you remember about her?’

‘The Victorians would keep lockets of hair of their loved ones who had passed away. It is enough.’

‘Anything else.’

‘She had a twin sister who I also met.’

I did not say any more. Alfonso did not probe the issue. I would probably never see her again and I did not know what she was doing now.

‘All that happens in life,’ I was telling Alfonso, ‘is that you meet people that you think you have connected with. But all there is is disconnection.’

‘That is not true,’ said Alfonso. ‘You have many friends. Including myself.’

‘I am talking about romantic connection.’

‘It is not true for everyone.’

‘It is true for me.’

‘You should give up your despair in life. You are mistaken if you think that you can’t live without love. Everything is possible in this life. You can adapt to any situation.’

‘It is not a question of what I can do. I can do anything and everything. I never doubt myself. What is there that is too difficult for me to do? I am a genius. It is about want. About hunger. About masculine needs, emotion and sense all together.’

‘To achieve your wants is not the definition of happiness. You will always want more. Let us change the topic. There is no point counting what you do not have. The more you think about it, the worse it will be for you. Think of something else. Come, a new subject.’

‘Do you know why we worship the mother?’

‘Go on.’

‘We are warriors. For a war, soldiers have to be produced. We look to the mother to produce them.’

‘That is quite simplistic.’

‘But true nonetheless. Look at Western feminism. When the World War came, they needed the women to be workers. They needed workers for the war effort. That was what changed the status of women from before. Now, all they can be seen as in a capitalistic economy is as workers. It has become unusual to be solely a housewife. It is war that decides the fate of men and women.’

‘Is there nothing else in the warrior’s worship of the mother?’

‘I’ve said it several times before. The mother gives protection. That is why she is worshipped. She fulfils the role that the warrior wishes to fulfill. He wants to become her.’

‘Anything else?’

‘The mother is the life force. She gives birth.’

‘So what would you say to these people that criticise the warriors for thinking of women as mothers? For daring to talk about the biology of women?’

‘No comment.’

‘Caution?’

‘Disengagement from the culturally insensitive and those blinded by their own assumptions and prejudices.’

Alfonso snorted at me. I remained silent. We did not need to explain ourselves to them. Because they persisted in being them rather than us. And because they were them, they could fuck off.

…

Visual Diary 29.08.2025

your life is quite funny (microfiction)

26.08.2025

In that beautiful suit of his that was from some fine and expensive haberdasher, Alfonso was chortling away to himself in the corner. The smiles were radiant, but so also was that hair of his, that full, thick hair of which I was so envious at my age. I used to have hair like that. He smelt wonderful. Some guy on the street had given him an armful of perfume samples and he was wearing the sample apparently. He had given me one just yesterday.

‘Your life is quite funny.’

‘I’m glad you find it amusing.’

‘Look at all the places that you have gone to find love. Cultural institutions. Acting and improvisation workshops. Volunteering in a play with six hundred volunteers. Clubs for learning. Events all around London. Flower shows. Even a floristry course. You’ve been doing it for three years. All that time, effort, distance, investment. Anywhere but a pub or a bar where you would actually find someone. It is laughable. You are undateable. Nobody cares if you have anything in common with them.’

‘It looks like it.’ What was the point of arguing? He was right. I was going to be alone forever. I had given up. There was no one in my life. I was living in a loveless world. At least he was finding some enjoyment out of my situation.

‘So I guess,’ Alfonso continued, in his casual and cruel manner, ‘that you are going to tell me about how everyone is against you, how everyone devalues you, how much you are suffering and how you do not fit into this world?’

‘It is my usual repertoire.’

‘What do you think went wrong in your life?’

‘Do you know,’ I asked Alfonso, ‘how many medicines I am on? It is a lot. And all those medical problems come from rejection. That is what started everything off. Yet despite the pain and the things I go through, I am carrying on, working and volunteering in all these places. I have a finger in almost every pie. Because I am strength and will. I am named after a god and The Tiger. They look to me for protection and inspiration. The people expect.’

‘You were rejected, so you are sick.’

‘Those problems are going to plague me all my life. Yet it doesn’t stop anyone from rejecting me. They cannot face the brutality of the rejection that I have had to face. When you are rejected by someone you love so much, it is a dagger into your brain and into your heart. That ‘no’ has wrecked me.’

Suddenly, Alfonso stopped smiling. He had actually winced. ‘To be alone is not so bad. You cannot be like them. Therefore they do not like you. Forget about it.’

‘What else is there to do? I am trying to forget. From a mind that remembers much.’

‘You have not tried dancing. Dance. Meet someone there.’

‘The leg…’

‘After the doctor looks at it, dance. You will be fine. Come on, let us talk about something happy and hopeful.’

‘Hopefully I will die soon.’

Alfonso shook his head at me. ‘Don’t be naughty. A warrior hopes for a glorious death in battle. Not to ease his problems.’

‘You want hope? University will start again soon. It will be time to work on a dissertation. The voice of the people.’

‘Yes, the voice of the people. You say that you are it. What do they say?’

‘They say ‘inquilaab zindabaad! Inquilaab saada zindabaad!’ (Long Live the Revolution! May the Revolution Live Forever!’)

‘You believe it?’

‘It is always the time for the Revolution. There will be justice. I cling to life because I cling to that hope.’

‘Hope is a dangerous thing. You hoped for someone for years. What did it get you? Grief. Disappointment. Failure. This Revolution…’

I interrupted him. ‘The tyrant rules. But he will fall. The liar controls communication. But he will be caught out. The idiot teaches. He will be exposed. Corruption and filth saturate the universe. It will be cleansed. The cockroach is the ideal. The ideal will be torn down. Against the say of the rich and powerful, there are the words of the community of the dalits, the community of the oppressed. I am the prayer of my mother, the prayer of the people. It is my destiny. And if I cannot do this work, it shall be done by one in whom the spark is lit. Live for the Revolution. Die for the Revolution. Writhe in torture in hell for the Revolution.’

‘Has anyone told you that you are the Indian Don Quixote? You are tilting at the windmill.’

‘Not so ludicrous as you think. The windmill took away jobs from men. It was the awfulness of technology which made humanity expendable. Quixote was right to protect the people from it, just as I am right to fight against this society.’

‘They ignore you. Therefore they have slain you.’

‘There are still the words I write. In my mind I am free. In my mind I love freedom. In my mind I am difference. And in my mind I love difference. Amongst the sheep, there is The Tiger. Amongst the people, there is god. Amongst the weak, there is supreme power. The life spirit amongst the dead.’

‘It is not quite clear whether you are dead or not,’ Alfonso remarked. ‘But time will tell. Let us hope it is not too long into the future.’

gifts (microfiction)

25.08.2025

‘I spent yesterday and the whole day today giving out gifts,’ I was telling Alfonso. The first time I had met Alfonso, I had been utterly charmed. But I had also thought there was something dangerous about the man. I thought so now as well, but I was less wary now. I embraced the danger. After all, I was fearless. And he was a man that you could follow.

‘You have always been generous,’ remarked Alfonso.

‘And yet, I receive gifts very seldom,’ I told him. It was true. Nobody wanted to give me anything. Nobody thought enough of me to give me anything. I wasn’t worth it to other people. It didn’t surprise me. Nobody that I loved had ever loved me back. People that I thought were friends were not reliable. Just a thank you for helping or listening – you didn’t even get that. Even family… Everyone always liked everyone else more than me. There was no point talking to other people.

‘Don’t worry,’ Alfonso assured me, ‘they are only material possessions. They mean nothing.’

It was easy for him to say. Although I couldn’t make anybody be my friend or make them love me, I could do one thing. Which was that I would not talk to the fake people. There was no point saying anything to them or listening to their fake words when they did not regard you as a friend or a lover or anything. Whatever the delusional mind constructed about the history of me and them, it had all been a mirage of connection and communication. All that happened there was disconnection and miscommunication. I had just thought them better than they were. They were not good enough to be with me. That was the end of the story.

Alfonso persisted. He asked me what I wanted as a present.

‘The whole point is the unexpected nature of the thing. If you only got what you asked for, that would not make you happy.’

‘You do not look happy,’ Alfonso remarked.

‘I am not happy.’ I said. In fact, I was tired of living. I was tired almost of everyone. I didn’t want to be where I was any more. The good good friends were what kept me going. How rare kindness and fellowship was in this world.

‘And your leg, why has it started hurting again?’

‘Oedipus walked on his lame legs. I am Oedipus. I killed my father and married my mother. You cannot escape from your fate and the stories. The one that is born to fight for the revolution has to be Oedipus. In mind and in body.’

‘Oedipus, Krishna, The Tiger, god himself. You have to choose who you are.’

‘I am all and more. In the old legends they sing about me. I am the hero of this tale.’

Alfonso laughed. ‘We are heroes, all of us. But where is our heroine?’’

‘Where indeed? If any of us knew the answer to that, we would be merry.’

Instead, we sigh winds and stop the tears rolling down our cheeks. We jest without mirth and laugh without enjoyment. Everyone says we are fine.