the rules

15.06.2026

‘So what you’re suggesting,’ Alfonso said, raising his voice excitedly, ‘is that the usual rules do not apply to you’. He gave me a look of admonishment. ‘Why not? What makes you so special?’

‘Genius has its own rules. I don’t rate the tedious morality and cant of the non-men. Rules made for cowards that have no honour.’ I wrinkled my face in disgust.

‘That is how you always phrase it. That you are a genius. That is how you rate this society and its laws, by reckoning it against honour and bravery.’

‘What else would you have a warrior do?’ I asked him. ‘And after all, their rules favour them. The rich and powerful in their society. The racists. Why would I follow their rules? I am the son and lover of The Mother. We do not have their law. We have the dharma.’

‘Dharma is not the right to do whatever you want.’

‘No one says that it is. What dharma is, would you like to know? Depending on the situation, the hero chooses the path that is right for him. That is the dharma.’

‘It sounds like a licence to do whatever you want.’

‘That is because you are speaking from the position of those that follow the dishonourable laws of the cowards. Where there is one rule that you cannot deviate from. Where everybody is treated the same, no matter how unfair it is, because they are a herd of unthinking sheep. The dharma is that which comes to the thinking man. He chooses the way of honour and bravery.’

‘Give an example of why dharma is superior to this law.’

‘This law favours oppression. Injustice. The example is The Mahabharata, the greatest of texts and the greatest story that gives an exposition of dharma. In the story, the family is unjustly dispossessed of their kingdom through fraud and cheating. Their wife is dishonoured. If they followed the objective rules of combat, they would lose. Because the so-called objective rules protect the usurpers who cheat, lie and steal. Therefore, following dharma, and following honour and justice, they disobey the rules. Because it is more important for honour, justice and right that the heroes win. That is the difference between this shitty law and dharma.’

‘What makes you think The Mahabharata is the truth?’

‘Anyone that reads it is inspired. As my grandfather taught me, it contains within it everything.’

‘You say this because the hero is Krishna, who you are named after.’

‘I am the hero. I am The Mahabharata. I am the authority of our religion, our past, our present and our future. I am the hero with the dharma.’

At first, Alfonso shook his head. And then he smiled. ‘You are incorrigible. And that, my friend, that is why I like you.’

the weariness of performing

18.05.2026

S: Life asks that we perform. Always, therefore, we are performing. There is no end to this performance.

A: You are weary of performing?

S: There is a performer that shines with light. All he thinks about is his performance. He is the best. He is the cynosure of all eyes. The audience ask for him night after night. When will he find rest and peace here?

A: Is it his duty to perform, night after night.

S: Not only night after night. But also night and day.

A: What about the authentic self? Where is he able to find that which is true? That which is not the peformance?

S: The trial of this hero is that he has to perform himself every time. Only himself and nothing else. He performs authenticity. This is why he is the one that draws the attention. The others? They are fake. They are not even true to themselves, least of all to themselves. They are puppets. And he? He is a real boy.

A: How can it be that he performs himself?

S: He reads his culture. He interprets his culture. He watches. He listens. He lets himself be instructed. What is in the culture, that is how he models his life. What is false to the culture, he abandons. He has been raised on the stories of the Punjabi hero, the heroism of The Mother Goddess. That is the core of his culture. The warrior culture.

A: He performs the fight?

S: The fight is a performance. It is a display of skill. And he has all the skills. He is the one that they look up to, that they want to be like. His name is The Tiger.

A: To be oneself, to perform oneself, is it not as bad as performing another?

S: You are asking what is the lure of authenticity?

A: Yes, if you will.

S: To be the authentic self, to be true to what it is that you are, that is the teaching of dharma. Do not look at the false law of the state. Do not look at the false rules of others and their lies as to what is the truth. Be true to your own truth, to your position, your situation in life. Look at me. I come from the working class, from the ethnic minority, from the Untouchables and the Dalits, The Oppressed. I have never forgotten where I come from. I have studied at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, taught at the most prestigious universities in the world too. I have had the cream of this world, dined in the finest restaurants, holidayed in the finest resorts, been to the most beautiful places in the whole world. I have accomplished things that others dream of, a doctorate, a published book and research, taught hundreds if not thousands of the underprivileged. And still, I never forget who I am, where I come from and who there is to fight for. Why I was born. For the community. For The Oppressed. I have never forgotten that what I am is duty, yearning for justice and fairness, for equality, respect and the dharma. And this authentic self of mine? It is everything. Artist, poet, writer, scholar, athlete, warrior, photographer, curator, teacher, journalist, the greatest of the game players, psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, anthropologist, actor, singer, philosopher, historian, manager, leader. There is more and more. I am all. I play all the roles. That is true authenticity. Everything. And with an Indian stamp. With Punjabi style. And with a British accent.

Radha

14.01.2026

S: I am named after the god of love, Krishna. Suneel means the colour of his skin, very blue.

A: You always say this.

S: Have you ever wondered who the god of love is with?

A: Radha. What about her?

S: She is the wife of someone else. Yet her true love is Krishna.

A: Who is she then?

S: She is worshipped as the goddess of love.

A: Krishna’s lover is the Indian Aphrodite?

S: To be with Aphrodite is a curse. But to be with Radha is paradise. She is confidence, devotion, beauty.

A: How can she be devotion if she is with another that is not Krishna?

S: The love with Krishna is a heavenly love. The love with the other is the earthly love. What is more exalted? Heaven or earth? The ideal or practicality?

A: You are fated to be with the goddess of love? These are names. They are not identities.

S: I am the god of love. I bring love into this world of hate. I bring the philosophy of India into the world that is six thousand years old, the philosophy of love that this wicked world could not extinguish. It is my fate to be with the goddess of love.

A: You tell me you are a warrior. How then can you be the god of love?

S: My war is love. Love is my war. The warrior is the lover. Krishna himself was a warrior. He preaches the warrior duty in the Bhagavada-Gita. He is the philosopher of the warrior. The culture that I come from is the warrior culture.

A: And Radha?

S: She is too a warrior. She is the other form of the Mother Goddess, the Warrior Queen. The stories that make us what they are, they are entirely consistent. There is no confusion.

A: It is very fine to call yourself the god of love when you are bagging yourself the goddess of love.

S: Isn’t it? Krishna enchants the world. Radha enchants Krishna.

the geometry of love (microfiction)

10.11.2025

S: It’s incredible when you think about it, isn’t it? The geometry of love.

A: Does love have a shape? And a geometry? That is news to me.

S: Of course it is. You are not a genius. It is an original thought from me.

A: And what is this original thought, Oh man of prodigious mind?

S: Look at the way in which we connect in love. The approach. That is the shape of love. You hug someone. When you do it, their body has to mirror yours. You open up your arms to approach them and to embrace them. When you kiss someone on the mouth, your lips approach the other in the same way, half open. Your lips mirror each other.

A: And sex?

S: I am not talking about the act and the execution. I am talking about the approach. The approach in sex is to kindle the flame on both sides. So that one flame is as hungry as the other. You look into their eyes. They look into yours. It is done through the look. The words. You say the words of seduction. They say the words of seduction. You stroke the flames. Blow for blow.

A: And then this idea of geometry?

S: Love can be theorised as mirror which reflects another mirror.

A: But then there is nothing. The mirror has no substance.

S: You are wrong. Then there is only light. That is what love is.

A: Does biology agree with you?

S: Let us turn to the act itself, which I did not introduce before. Did you know that the human animal which has procreative sex face to face is unusual in the animal kingdom? And it does so for some reason. Why not so it can see itself reflected in the eyes of its partner? Because that is one aspect of it. The mirror of the self. When you are looking in love into the eyes of the other, is it so you see yourself?

A: Speculation upon speculation.

S: No one understands love. But let us speculate. One day, when we comprehend the mirror neurons in the mind, I will be proven right, just like the Greeks were proven partially right about the atom. Without experiment and through simple observation and speculation.

Krishna and Rama (microfiction)

09.11.2025

S: Krishna and Rama are two incarnations of Vishnu. Both warriors. But they are complete opposites.

A: In what way?

S: Rama rescued his wife from a man that tried to abduct her. Krishna consorted with the wife of another, Radha. He took someone’s wife away from them. Not just one woman, but all of them, all of the wives, the Gopis. Rama followed the law of matrimony. Krishna is above the law.

A: Anything else?

S: Rama, when he was exiled to the forest, accepted that another rule in his place. He let the usurper rule the throne when he was the firstborn son and the throne was his inheritance. Krishna, when he was dispossessed of his throne, he killed the usurper and reclaimed his throne. Rama accepts dispossession and unjust usurpation. Krishna fights against it.

A: I know you will say there is more.

S: Krishna has a good stepmother. Rama has an evil stepmother.

A: Always the mother with you.

S: Krishna was raised in a humble background then became a royal. Vice versa for Rama. And then, Krishna is known as the thief of butter because he stole butter. And Rama? He does not steal. Krishna is his own law. Rama follows the law of the other. Even at the end of the story, Rama sacrifices his wife in the name of the law of matrimony, because the people cannot accept that she is pure because she had been abducted by another man.

A: I think I know where this is all leading.

S: I am named after Krishna.

A: Whether it is Krishna or Rama, they are the hero.

S: Rama is the hero of the conservative. Krishna is the hero of the revolutionary.

A: It is a name. I have told you before. It is not an identity.

S: And yet, you can model yourself on that identity. The anarchism of Krishna. And the liberation of Narsimha, the man-tiger, the other incarnation of Vishnu. After all, one of my names is Tiger.

A: This obsession with names and identities, it is old fashioned.

S: I am six thousand years old. And yet, I am fresh. Because I am not just the past and the present. I am also the future. I believe. So does India.

the tears of the flowers

04.11.2025

Unexpected acceptance can be found within unacceptable expectation.

The day was long. In the garden, the flowers wept. The grass lamented. The sky itself, it was filled with melancholies of grey.

A bird glided into the tree and S. watched her keenly. The birds of Da Vinci flew in his mind, the artist feverishly tracking and recording their movements. Wanting to become the bird.

A. had asked him why he saw poison. Why he thought poison. Why his life had become poison.

What else was there? When all the good things were being churned from the ocean, instead, the god Shiva had swallowed the poison. To prevent the destruction of the universe. His throat became blue with the poison’s anger. And S.? His name was blue. The blue skin of a god.

A. had asked him, how can you become a god? S. had said that in the West, to claim godliness is arrogance and the height of madness. It is folly. But in India, one modelled onself on god. They called the good people gods. It was the aim to become god upon the earth. A god was known by good deeds. The deeds of humanity. And S. tried his utmost.

‘So you are Shiva then?’ A. had asked.

S. had said that the hero is formed in adversity. The whole world, including the gods, fate itself, all had to be against the hero. It was only then that the triumph of the hero could be known and recognised. It was only then that the legends of the hero could be told and the songs could be sung.

Life had to be poison. Otherwise, heroism was dead.

A. had smiled. The Buddha’s smile was known. It was the sign of his wisdom. The smile delighted the hearts of his followers.

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.