the warrior of love

05.11.2025

A: You hate this world. You hate the people. You hate everything.

S: So? What have they done for me? Them and anything? They hate me and mine. Ours.

A: But you have the hypocrisy to say that you are full of love.

S: It is not hypocrisy. Why do I serve them then? That is my love. My philosophy is love is work.

A: You have a funny way of expressing love.

S: You want me to lick boots? Kiss arse? I’m not a fucking sycophant. They do wrong. I point it out.

A: That is why you do not get love in return.

S: You do not love to be loved. If you do, then you are not a lover.

A: You are still calling yourself a lover?

S: The warrior fights because he is full of love. The warrior is a lover.

A: Elaborate. It is not convincing.

S: Love is a battle. Of wills and wits. Defence and attack. Only the warrior can love. And only the lover can fight.

A: A cliche.

S: Because it is the truth.

A: You are from the warrior culture. That is what you think of love. You again attempt to speak for all.

S: You want me to endorse and promote the coward’s love? Where there is neither defence and attack? And therefore nothing?

A: You think you are so brave.

S: Yes. That is why, whenever I have felt love for someone, I have acted on it. I have no regrets.

A: Yet you are alone. You do not regret the aborted attempts?

S: If someone does not choose me, they are mistaken. I am the best.

A: You still believe?

S: Who can stand up against me?

A: Arrogance.

S: Confidence. Self-belief. The recognition of talent.

A: What good does it do you?

S: Against everyone, I followed the way of love. Against the family. Against this corrupt world and its corrupt values. I am the only lover in the world. No one else has had to pay the heavy cost that I have had to pay. I gambled my whole heart on my love. I am a hero of love. Because I am a warrior. These cold fucks with their cold love, what are they? What do they risk? Jackshit.

A: The Tiger’s love, reckless.

S: Lose everything in love. Except courage.

emptiness (microfiction)

04.11.2025

[written on the train home from work, 6-7pm)

A: You said that there was nothing. After the jealousy. After the fire. What did you mean?

S: The numbness. The ache of the emptiness. The place that is not filled. The void. The abyss. Many words. For the feeling of hollowness. Of incompleteness.

A: These are words. They do not describe the feeling.

S: You want to know the feeling of emptiness? It is complete numbness. It is nausea. It is the inability to arise from the bed in the mornings. Read the novel by Sartre. That is its literary expression. Why ask me?

A: It is you that is my friend. Not Sartre.

S: You do not want a wise friend? You prefer my company?

A: I prefer the company of The Tiger. He is also wise, the wisdom of nature.

S: It is a dangerous game. The Tiger has teeth.

A: Didn’t you tell me that the Punjabis have a phrase, ‘Friend of friends’? Isn’t that the philosophy of friendship of The Tiger?

S: You are one that appreciates care, attention and consideration and kindness. An anomaly. An exotic rarity.

A: You have many friends. You exaggerate. Perhaps you should keep better company if you feel like that.

S: The special friend I am looking for… Where do you find the better company? I have looked in so many fields. So many that I thought had embraced me only to watch them scatter in the wind…

A: When the kestrel cannot find a catch in one field, he haunts another.

S: The kestrel is free. He does not have a golden manacle upon his claw. He has no ties to a place.

A: You too are free. More free than anyone else. The wild ungovernable beast…

S: It is true what they say. Emotion is a cage.

A: Forget emotion. Become cold and hard like this world.

S: Impossible. They have a phrase in Punjabi, the language and people you are so fond of. ‘Dilwala’, the one with a heart. I am ‘Dilwala’. Not them.

A: Forget being one with a heart. Become one that has power.

S: It is accomplished. The power of The Tiger is unrivalled. He has transformed the world around him wherever he goes. The light that he sheds is like the blinding rays of the sun. And for them and those, it is unbearable.

jealousy (microfiction)

03.11.2025

S: I was insanely jealous. With an emphasis on the insanity.

A: You are insecure?

S: Where was the security? I had nothing. I was not theirs. I was clutching at a speck of a straw in the storm of the river.

A: And?

S: Seeing them with another… It was like a pickaxe to the brain and to the gut.

A: You have said that you WERE jealous…

S: Life taught me a lesson. To give up.

A: You? You gave up?

S: You cannot force.

A: You could love from afar. Like Dante.

S: Preposterous. A waste of life. To long and to yearn. And never love to earn.

A: And now? Where has the jealousy gone?

S: When hope is gone, jealousy is gone. Jealousy is the hope that one is mine. When there is still a bridge that connects. When there is no bridge that connects?

A: That bridge that you built, you destroyed it so easily.

S: Mine was not the hand that held the fire.

A: But you swallowed the flame willingly.

S: Not willingly. I was much loth to do it. The body and the mind fought me valiantly. They are the body and the mind of The Tiger. I am strength. Years of strength. That is why I am invincible. One lesser would have succumbed.

A: But what comes now instead of jealousy?

S: Nothing. The numbness.

A: You told me that you are fire.

S: You can be fire only for what is yours.

A: You are lying to yourself. You are still fighting yourself.

S: You don’t believe that love dies? Our world is one in which love is for a moment. And only that. It is a faint murmur that is forgotten against a deafening noise. There is no loyalty. There was no encouragement. In short, there was nothing.

A: The heart of a Tiger, the heart of a traitor?

where there is no bond there is no treason

the wheel of survival knows no season

loss is what we hide

why lie? we have died

a bubble of happiness (microfiction)

31.10.2025

A: Halloween comes once again.

S: Every day and night the dead haunt us. What is special about this day?

A: You are haunted. You always speak for everyone. When, in fact, you are different from everyone else. Do you ever feel happiness in your life?

S: I feel happy sometimes. I felt happy yesterday. You know that, naturally, I have a positive disposition. All my friends tell me that I have a positive energy. Unhappiness has been forced upon me. And I only feel the unhappiness most keenly in the night time and in the morning when it is hard to rise.

A: Yes, it is indeed remarkable that despite the amount that you complain, you never actually seem to be that low. Then we have your words in the night, a shocking contrast. Like Jekyll and Hyde. But to the question. How does a jaded and cynical, pessimistic person like you even feel any ounce of happiness?

S: There are people that make you happy. Everything comes from other people. They can make you happy. And then they can hurt you and make you sad.

A: Why talk about sadness?

S: Because that is what gives happiness meaning. Death and sadness, intolerable suffering, this is what gives happiness its meaning. In the old paintings, happiness was depicted as a child playing with a bubble. Happiness is a bubble. It is fragile and delicate. It is a shining orb of light which will only exist for a moment in this hard world. Look carefully at the surface of the bubble of happiness. It shines with light. It has all of the colours within its iridescence. It is beauty. The roundness of the bubble shows its perfection.

A: You can have the bubble forever.

S: The bubble has its enemies. What they should have shown in the old paintings is that the child has to protect his bubble from the world and the others. They are watching it jealously, hoping to prick at it and end its brief soujourn through the world.

A: So that is how you approach happiness? With fear?

S: Not fear. Caution. A warrior does not know fear. Do you know what the hero, my hero, Sunny Deol, the Punjabi Tiger says in the film ‘Jaat’? They ask this warrior who he is. He says that he is one that knows the value of life, but still puts his life in danger. What is most precious is what we risk in this life. That is the warrior culture. The bubble is precious. It is the most precious thing in the world. And we have to protect it. But we also put it at risk. In India, they believe in the evil eye. The eye of envy. It is real. Suffering in this world is created by people. But without risk, there is no meaning. And who am I? The biggest risk taker. The Tiger is known for his daring. Find someone braver. It is impossible. Because Tiger dares his whole heart on the people that he cares about and the things that he loves. Knowing the pain. Find someone else like that in this wretched universe.

sorry (microfiction)

28.10.2025

A: Your anger is too much. You are hurting people. You are saying things just because you are angry.

S: I am an angry person. I’ve always been an angry person.

A: You need to find some other way to get rid of it. You know how much it upsets you when you upset someone. The guilt completely consumes you.

S: Not when I’m angry. But yes, I genuinely feel sorry that I have hurt anyone. I did not mean to do it. I didn’t think it out. I made mistakes.

A: Why not just say sorry?

S: No one ever accepts an apology.

A: Really?

S: Well, a good friend did recently. But usually not.

A: Find some way to control your anger. Then you would not have to say sorry.

S: It seems like every emotion I have, I have to apologise for it. Maybe the best thing would be not to have any emotions at all. Isn’t that the ideal of Hinduism? Emotion is a cloud…

A: Your problem…

S: My problem is that when someone upsets me,maybe I should tell them I am upset with them. And then maybe I would hear sorry instead of having to say it all the time. Maybe I should only talk to people that can communicate directly in words what they are saying too. Because then I don’t have to read their expressions and their minds. Which I can’t do.

A: No one is going to communicate directly to you. They don’t. You can’t do it yourself. That is the problem for everyone.

S: The problem is that I’m sorry. And I can’t say it. And what good would it do? It is another emotion that you cannot express, regret. And then you wonder why I am so angry. It is the one emotion that a man is allowed to express. And even my anger, I am not allowed to express it fully. You see? There is no emotion that you can express. Tell me something, how do you express your anger fully? Surely you would not have me bottle it up inside?

A: Listen…

S: Everyone has moved on in life. The bridges have all been broken. I don’t have any bridges connecting me to anyone any more. Anything I did that hurt anyone, I am sorry for. But what is the point of anything now? The boats have floated away from each other. Some things, I am still not sorry for. Some things I am sorry for. The people that I most wanted to impress, they are disappointed. That is life. And I am not going to offer explanations and excuses. No one listens to them.

A: Has anyone ever said sorry to you?

S: Yes.

A: And what did you do?

S: I accepted their apology.

A: How long ago?

S: Just yesterday. Many times. Certain friends.

A: What do you think of the sorry?

S: If someone feels bad and wants to say sorry for something, I just forgive them. Because they are reaching out to you and they care about you and want to keep things as they’re going. That’s what I see a sorry as.

A: But you realise, for some people, sorry doesn’t mean anything.

S: Maybe nothing means anything in this life. I am going to sleep. One time a Punjabi guest came to the house. And when they left, they said to forgive them if they had committed any mistakes. Maybe that is all you can do in this life, whether the sorry is heard or accepted or not. There is an intention behind a sorry, if you could recognise it.

love cancelled (microfiction)

27.10.2025

S: All that this world does is to cancel love. We are not allowed to love.

A: Anyone? Everyone?

S: Us.

A: I knew you would say that.

S: Why not tell the truth? If we dare to love someone, everyone stands in the way of it. The family. This society. The one that you love themselves. Years even of a lover’s endeavour for a refusal…

A: Forget love. It is a snare. You have done well to escape it. The tragedies of your love only appear to be pitiful.

S: The real snare is loneliness.

A: This love that you wish to end your loneliness, do you really think it will do so? Enjoy freedom.

S: The solitary freedom of a Crusoe. Without a Friday or love in his life.

A: Why has your love been cancelled?

S: Because of my freedom. My heart is too free for this world. The lover’s love is the love of the Revolution.

A: You have said this before. What do you mean by it?

S: The lover does not look at status. The lover does not look at race. The lover does not see another culture and despair. The lover does not follow convention or care about what anyone else thinks about it. He looks into the eyes of the loved one to find unity and connection across status, race and culture. The lover has humanity. The lover has the prize of love. And in this world of hate, separation, the oppression of unjust power and differences, in this world of inhumanity, the lover is the Revolution. Because the lover only loves. That is why his love is the Revolution.

A: You are not the lover. Your loves were all unfulfilled.

S: They could not stomach it. But you know, I am named after the god of love. He that came to all the women at once. The power of love itself.

A: A name is not an identity.

S: I disagree. I am love. The love that goes against the sword.

A: Love itself is a venomous blade.

S: I tell you I drink the poison. And I smack my lips at it.

the children of genius (microfiction)

22.10.2025

S: When you think about it, there are millions of children that I am producing in a day. But none of them ever see the light of day.

A: And? It is the same for every man. You can’t regret potential for not happening. Everyone is full of potential.

S: Are they though? Is talent that common? I doubt it. But the point that I am making is that there are possibly hundreds of geniuses that I could be producing.

A: Here is this claim again. What qualifies you as a genius? Presumably you are saying that you want to pass on your intelligence?

S: Being able to see what no one else can see. I have proved it time and time again. Look at each of my publications. For these famous authors, they have been studied by experts for their whole life. And those experts still can’t see what I am seeing.

A: If you are such a genius, why don’t you have any recognition?

S: Racism. Ignorance. Difference is marginalised in this culture. If you can’t take my word for it, look at the studies that prove it statistically. The intelligensia in this country is one of the most racist in the entire world. Do you know why I was rejected from Cambridge? I passed the interview. It was my brown skin that got in the way. So they pooled me and eventually did not have me. It doesn’t matter what anyone says about it. That is what they are like. Full of racist shit. There is always the reluctance and the excuse. Any excuse. Exclusion on the flimsiest of pretexts. How many of those people they chose over me have published books and articles like I have? Exactly.

A: If you are a genius, don’t you owe it to the world to write?

S: I don’t owe this world of shit anything or anything to anyone.

A: You are squandering your talent.

S: Fuck these people. Let them drown in their ignorance. The gift is too precious to give to them.

A: Yet you told me that you are writing that new book, that colossal and earth-shattering book.

S: I will write it. Because one has been chosen to know all alone of the countless. Because one is a genius. Because a genius is proven by work, not by recognition.

A: If you are this genius, work out a way to pass it on. The waste if you are right…

S: I am working on it. In love, like in work, like in life, genius is not rewarded. Whereas ignorance…

the maximalist of doing (microfiction)

15.10.2025

He was known for work. But why was he known for work? Why did he work so much?

First of all, there was the empty ache in him. No one had come to fill that space. So he crammed it in with works. Time yawned open unforgivingly. The loss of her and the family that there would have been… There had to be some substitute, some forgetfulness in the work. When he was not working in culture for money, he taught, wrote, photographed, drew, painted, sang and acted. When he worked, he always had the desire to meet someone through that work. He did not. So he kept on looking and looking. So that was why he was the maximalist for doing.

Secondly, there was the relentless energy. No one had come to claim that energy. So he crammed it in with works. And still, despite that, he could never get tired. So that was why he was the maximalist of doing.

Also, the ambition. To be someone. That monstrous ego. To be everywhere, to be god upon this earth. To shape the world in his own imprint. Ambition was a monster that had straddled his back. The self belief: I am one that will live eternally in my name. Not just for himself, for his people this ego, the ego for the Oppressed that had been crushed into the ground for thousands of years. To be their champion, their light and guide.

Then, there was the background. A father who had always been working. A family who had always been working. His working culture background. A family and a culture that always kept busy and productive. That had worked as farmers and shoe makers. A background of hard, labourious work. So that was why he was the maximalist of doing.

And what about the commitment? The desire to change the world. The desire to contribute to society. The desire to be a productive member of this reality. To not just take but to give.

Do not forget the money. To have those savings. To always be ready to provide for a family. Money not for the self but for the family which never came.

And what did he get from the work? Did Sisyphus cry? When you move the rock up the mountain and never succeed, do you cry? Does the maximalist of doing ever cry? He did not cry. He could not. But he wanted to cry. His life was a punishment for some grave sin. He did not have the happiness of undoing, only its tragedy. Because the more he did, the more he was undone.

So that was why he was the maximalist for doing.

the conspiracy against love (microfiction)

12.10.25

They wanted to liberate the people from love. But instead, they were liberating them from their humanity.

In this era, online interactions had replaced real life ones. It was no longer fashionable to date in the pool of people that you knew. The desire was for the stranger because the grass was always considered to be greener on the other side. And the stranger was appealing because prolonged human contact was no longer desirable in and of itself. Superficiality reigned, not deep knowledge of someone. That was what was undesirable. Knowledge was regarded as poison, ignorance as bliss.

As a result, the online dating companies grew and grew in wealth. Love was an industry. It had always been an industry. The Victorians would sell off their women to the highest bidder while canting about love in their triple decker romance novels. The royals had always looked at possessions for their matches.

To preserve their wealth, the dating companies needed their users to be always single. Or only to be in a relationship briefly. They decided to make it so that it was so. It was the grand conspiracy against love.

They took their cues from the world of work. They taught the people that everyone was expendable. You could just throw away someone when you had had enough. They taught the people that the most important thing in life was to be independent. So that the people could never tolerate being in a relationship or endure being connected to anyone. They taught the people to be selfish and grasping. So that they could never be in a genuine relationship with anyone and to give rather than to take, to give their whole heart without ego. They taught the people that there were only workers. Not lovers.

So there was no longer any love. I watched the bodies move in a loveless world. A sordid, practical world of money. I was all alone. Everyone was all alone. Just like the book, it was a lonely planet.

the lie (microfiction)

06.10.2025

‘Imagine there is a lie,’ I said to Alfonso. ‘A great lie that you are told, that I am told, that we are all told. A lie we have all spent our whole lives trying to obtain.’

‘Is this a riddle?’ asked Alfonso, looking over at me from above the pages of his magazine. Again, it was just us at the end of the day. In the lonely night, he was the only one there for me. The only one to say the things of the heart to. My most intimate friend.

‘It is no riddle. The lie is connection.’

‘Absurd. You have friends. The obvious example is before you. You are connected.’

‘Real connection is romantic love. It is the highest order of connection. Romantic love is the highest form of connection, whatever form it takes.’

‘Some people have romantic love.’

‘Not people like me.’

Alfonso tutted at me. ‘It is the case,’ I continued. ‘They lied to me. They said to become something and you will find real connection. They are all fucking liars.’

In a patronising tone, Alfonso asked me how that made me feel.

‘I have learnt not to trust anyone. So now there is no trust in my life.’ Tut. ‘I have learnt that there is no connection with anyone. So now there is no connection in my life.’ Tut. ‘I have learnt that there is no warmth from anyone. So now there is no warmth in my life.’ Tut tut.

‘You are suggesting,’ Alfonso said, ‘in your wallow of self pity, that you are a meaningless, isolated atom that is removed from the whole of humanity. When all you do is build communities around yourself. You have literally hundreds of people that you know. If it is the case that no man is an island, you in particular are no island.’

‘They are all strangers.’

‘Because you can’t fuck them?’ Alfonso asked incredulously.

‘There is no need to downgrade the sexual act. That is real connection. The chemicals that it creates. Its alteration of the mind.’

‘You only feel lonely in the nights.’

‘We only talk together in the nights.’

‘You are not lonely.’

‘When I lie in my bed alone in the night time, I feel the loneliness of death.’

‘Love is heartbreak. Love is sorrow. Be thankful you don’t have to have your heart broken every minute.’

‘What do you think this world has done to me? Why do you think I am like this?’

We sat in silence, ruminating on things. It was past eleven in the night time. Soon would come the witching hour.