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.

control (microfiction)

04.10.2025

‘You don’t have any self-control’. Alfonso commented.

‘On the contrary, I have the most in the world.’ I responded. He was always accusing me of something or the other. Everyone was always accusing me of something. That was all that I was to them. Someone to accuse. Well, I accused in my turn. I accused them.

‘In what way?’ Alfonso asked incredulously. ‘You have fallen in love with women that are not even your type just because of close proximity to them. Several times.’

‘Have you not read Proust’s magnum opus?’ I asked. ‘That is how they get you. Through the proximity. You are assured that you are safe. You are not.’

‘So how do you have any self-control?’

‘Because even though I loved them, I did not even touch them.’

‘That is not your self-control,’ Alfonso sneered at me. ‘They did not let you touch them.’

‘You should be around beauty all day and not get a taste of it,’ I said to him. ‘Then judge me.’

Alfonso snorted. ‘Let us chisel past that front. What original thoughts did you have today?’

‘There is an author who has written a new book about how we know what everyone knows, how common sense is created. It is the mark of a philistine and a mediocre Western mind that this book was written. Because their conceit is to always talk about a positive form of knowledge when it is not knowledge at all. Socrates knew that. Here, common knowledge. What everyone knows. In fact, common knowledge is just a form of ignorance. It is what the fool knows. The wise man is the one that knows. What is common knowledge? That you should pour wealth on yourself like excrement to be considered attractive and influential? That education is worthless? That hate sells? Why do you think that living piece of shit Trump and that specimen of rancid ear wax Farage are in the ascendency? Because they know what the scum think. And what the scum thinks is ignorance, lies and stupidity. That is all that they can accept. Not love, truth or justice.’

‘You are full of hate,’ Alfonso commented. ‘Even more hate than they are.’

‘This poison that is in me,’ I said. ‘It will kill the evil in this world.’

‘You will choke on it,’ Alfonso said. ‘You are the only one that will be hurt by it. Come, forget this. Something else.’

‘How about this for a thought? What is this garbage?’

‘What do you mean? Alfonso looked at me keenly.

‘This life. It is garbage. What is this garbage? Even religious people want to escape this life. The Hindu wants to escape the cycle of rebirth and reincarnation. The Christian, the Muslim and the Jew want to go to heaven. They want to die rather than to live.’

Alfonso shook his head at me. So what? It was the truth. Nobody wanted to live here. Look at this fucking garbage that they had made. Alfonso was asking me about original thoughts I was having in this fucking garbage. The stench of it was making me sick. The sight of its ugliness was denting my mind and my eyes. Its extent was polluting the whole of society. And Alfonso wanted an original thought from me that wasn’t cynical and jaded, weary of this fucking garbage. All there was was this fucking garbage. And when you pointed out the garbage, nobody listened and they tried to attack you. That was the triumph of the garbage.

ultimate happiness (microfiction)

30.09.2025

‘Where do you think ultimate happiness lies?’ Alfonso asked me. We were eating sushi together. It was a supermarket version. Although he had, I had never eaten sushi in a restaurant. I was taught to be careful with money. Sushi was expensive. It is difficult to drift from a culture of thrift. The supermarket stuff wasn’t absolutely appalling.

‘The answer is just three letters: SEX.’

‘Aah. A sensualist. Come on then. Why sex? I heard the capital letters in your tone.’ It was a purple shirt today. Very classy.

‘Because you are able to forget everything in the moment.’

‘Why then,’ Alfonso asked me, ‘if it is so pleasurable, that people won’t take every opportunity to have sex? Do they not want to be happy?’

‘I told you that I will not make any comments about women,’ I said to Alfonso. ‘And the answer to this question necessarily relies on me talking about women.’ After all, life teaches you to hold your tongue.

‘Necessarily?’

‘If you want to ask unhappy people why they are unhappy, you should ask them. My answer is that I am unhappy. Read between the lines.’

‘Food makes you happy though. I have seen it.’

‘Yes, I am also a glutton. That is another aspect of being a sensualist.’

‘And company makes you happy. Friends make you happy. Natural beauty makes you happy. Creativity makes you happy. Education makes you happy. Why then do you say sex is the ultimate happiness?’

‘Because sex will give you babies and a family. The other things might be well in their own way, but the only way to secure long term happiness is through sex. These people that don’t and won’t have sexual relationships are going to be even unhappier in the future.’

‘Don’t speak for other people. You don’t know their minds.’

‘Let’s change the topic. What is your ultimate happiness?’

Alfonso was always asking me things about what I thought. And then questioning them. What did he think?

‘Happiness is friendship. Having good friends for company.’

‘But I contrast friendship with a family. You cannot build something with a friend like a family.’

Alfonso sighed. ‘That is your problem. You have good friends. You have satisfying work. You have money. Your health is not absolutely in tatters. You are still young. You have so much going on in your life. And all you can think about is that family that you do not have. Why can’t you be like all the others and forget about having a family?’

‘It is the most important thing in our culture.’

‘Do what it takes to get it if you think it is so important.’

‘I told you. Family is the most important thing. I have to look after the ones that I have got. They are not expendable.’

‘So the family is destroying your family?’

‘What a world, eh?’ I grimaced. ‘No one can forgive you for being loyal. For disloyalty, they can forgive you everything. And then, all the other things you have to do…’

I trailed off. There was no point saying anything. Because having an opinion on this topic was dangerous. Dangerous and unproductive. There was no point to it.

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.

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.

tiger’s teeth (microfiction)

13.09.2025

‘They could easily have killed you,’ Alfonso admonished me. ‘There were eight of them and one of you.’

‘Death before dishonour.’

Earlier on in the evening, I had gone to a singles meet up in Hyde Park. I had arrived and there was absolutely no one there at the meet up point. I had sat in the beauty of the pink skies in Hyde Park pondering on this as a metaphor for life in London. There is no connection. There is no hope of connection. Whatever you do is destined to fail. Other people do not exist. It looks like they are there. They are not. It is an illusion.

On the phone, as I walked back to the station, my friend speculated that maybe they had been scared of the Far Right riots.

Later on, when I walked out of my dinner at McDonald’s in Leicester Square, I got my own experience of the Far Right.

There was a fucking little cretin with a flag walking along with his dickhead friends. He took a look at me and pulled a face at me. He was trying to intimidate me because of my brown skin.

‘Fuck you’ I said aggressively to him.

Suddenly, from being the aggressor and feeling safe in his little crowd of fucking Nazi scum, this piece of shit was surprised. ‘What?’ he asked me lamely.

‘Fuck you you piece of shit’ I said loudly.

From being full of stupid insolence and cheap impudence, this little shitbag was suddenly full of fear. Because my body had gotten ready to fight. I gave him a look of absolute ferocity. They were not just words. But he had his piece of shit Nazi friends to try and impress, to try and give them the illusion that they weren’t little coward non-men united by hate with no balls.

He took a few steps towards me gingerly.

‘What the fuck you going to do about it you fucking dickhead?’ I bellowed at him.

Ridiculously, I heard someone say ‘You little sausage to me’. It didn’t surprise me that these uncivilised dicks couldn’t even speak properly. And suddenly, all of his friends were standing between me and him, protecting him from me. I think bystanders got up to get between us. Because they knew. They knew that I was The Tiger. They knew what was going to happen to that little bastard.

I walked off. I didn’t look back. I’m not scared of anyone.

Alfonso was still telling me off.

‘What are you, my mum?’ I asked him.

Alfonso took a moment to laugh. ‘You are wrong. You are throwing your life away.’

‘I was born to fight. I come from warrior culture. He was up in my face. I taught him a lesson. These little fucking cowards melt before a real man. They show their true colours. Nobody in this society can handle a real man.’

‘You are wrong,’ Alfonso said to me. ‘You are risking too much.’

‘All I regret is that I wasn’t able to teach him his lesson’ I said sourly. ‘I love to fight.’

To show face in an encounter is the badge of honour. I don’t get scared. I don’t back down. They back down. That piece of shit was trying to put fear into us. Fear into The Tiger? Impossible. There was no one to write this little account of war. There was no one to sing the legends. But do you know what? People in my culture prayed that they could become The Tiger. They prayed for the will, the composure and the ferocity. They prayed for just one chance to become The Tiger. But who actually was The Tiger? It was me. I was built to be a machine of war. They didn’t just call me Tiger. I called myself Tiger. I had my real name and my real identity. It hadn’t been taken from me.

And that’s why these little chickenshits were scared of me. Even if they walked around in a group of eight and I walked alone in the night. Because the sheep walk around in a fucking herd. And The Tiger? The Tiger hunts alone.

Wherever The Tiger puts his feet, that is his territory. The sheep don’t count. They don’t have a territory. This is my country. Not theirs.