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.

who are you? (microfiction)

17.09.2025

‘Who are you?’ asked Alfonso.

‘Don’t you tell me that I talk too much about myself?’ I responded.

‘I am inviting you to dwell upon the subject. A straightforward question.’

‘I am a man named after a love story. I am a man named after honour and protection. I am a man named after a god. The god of love. All my names are the names of love.’

‘Even Tiger?’

‘Tiger is ferocious because Tiger has a big heart.’

‘Forget about your names. What are you?’

‘I am The Tiger. I am my enemy’s enemy. They say that you have to fulfil all your relationships in India. I fulfil them. An enemy’s enemy. A hero from the Sikh and Hindu community’s idea of a hero. From India’s idea of a hero. A fighter for the justice of the oppressed. An Untouchable.’

‘And what about the shadow? You are not all light, are you? You love to fight.’

‘What of it? It is for the good.’

‘And this hunger of The Tiger?’

‘Don’t be like them. There is nothing wrong with it. Don’t be deluded into thinking their way. They do not know how to live or love.’

‘You miss out everything. Do you not write? Do you not sing and make music? Do you not act? Do you not read all of the time? Are you not a poet?’

‘You did not ask me what I did. You asked me what I was. Yes, I am creative. Yes I am all those things, writer, poet, singer, music composer, reader.’

‘The sulking? The silence? The anger?’

‘You would want one that has been disappointed and never given his true value or what he should have been given to dance, laugh, clap his hands and cry tears of laughter? I am not a clown for their amusement.’

‘Any other thoughts upon what you are?’

‘Introvert. Extrovert. Sensitive. Callous. Quiet. Loud. Everything and nothing. All of these labels, categories. There is one constant. The Tiger is the warrior and the lover. Honest and loyal to the death. Braver than everyone else. Brimming with fire and heat. The power and energy of India.’

‘Vain. Boastful. Childish.’

‘Innocence is not childish. It is the mark of the brave and the honest.’

Alfonso clapped me on the back. ‘You have not said it all. I know there is more in you. I agree with you. You are a genius and an athlete. I have read your thoughts. You deserve to have whatever you want tossed at you. Remain The Tiger. One day there will be somebody on your level. And on that day, you will be recognised for your reality. They that pretend they do not know? They lie.’

suffering and reading (microfiction)

15.09.2025

‘Instead of suffering, shall we have another topic today?’ Alfonso asked me.

‘Well then, what would you like?’ I responded.

‘Isn’t it more the case of what you think your readers would like?’

‘Is it going to be a question for a question?’

‘Why not?’

‘You would rather have a whole conversation as a question?’

‘Don’t you think it’s possible?’

We both laughed. Fighting and laughing. We did those things the best.

‘So, the topic I will introduce,’ I continued, ‘is reading. When I finished that long trilogy that I was reading, I did not manage to slip into anything else. I made a desultory few pages into a children’s picture book about animal languages. That one is on my library app on my phone. Life is so busy it is hard to read anything.’

‘Didn’t you tell me,’ Alfonso smiled, ‘that there was a certain someone that read everything that you wrote on your blog for two whole years? Every night. Why were they reading and how did they accomplish the feat?’

I ignored the question. I had a theory. But dwelling on such topics was dangerous.

‘I am speaking of myself. I don’t have the requisite tranquillity to read nowadays.’

‘You are lying,’ said Alfonso. ‘How do you get such good marks on your part time university course around work hours? You do seventy or so hours a week on work, maybe even more. And yet you are still doing the reading and getting good grades on it.’

Alfonso was good at cross-examination.

‘I am talking about fiction. Which is supposedly the easiest of reads. But it goes back to the beginning of this conversation.’

‘In what way?’

‘You wanted a different topic from suffering. But suffering is all there is in my life. Reading is a great pleasure to me. It has been since I was a child. I was a precocious reader. Later in adult life, I did an English Literature degree and then a PhD in that subject. To give myself time to read. Yet now? Because I suffer so much, I find it extraordinarily difficult to lose myself in a book.’

‘You blame suffering. Why not blame distractions?’

‘Do you really believe that my attention span has atrophied with these users of their smartphones? I still read more in one day than most people manage in a month. Psychology articles, newspapers, magazines, poems, posts about history, art and culture. I don’t touch the fluff that they degrade their minds with. You are fortunate. You do not suffer. And therefore you read.’

‘Perhaps you should read to escape suffering. To lose yourself in another world.’

‘Before you take a step

Look where your feet are

Before you take a leap

Find what you are anchored to’

‘I make the wish for you to read.’

‘I make the wish to discover life instead. Instead of living as the dead and the dying.’

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.

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 hero never wins

07.09.2025

‘I have just finished reading the Divergent books,’ I declared to Alfonso.

We had not spoken for a short while. He was elsewhere, both physically and mentally. Life events cause ruptures. But not separation. That could not happen with me and Alfonso. He was not like these fair weather friends of convenience that were around you all the time. He was as solid as a stone.

‘I am surprised that you read it.’

‘They have told me that I do not understand women of this generation. I make the attempt.’

‘And what did you understand?’

‘The false narrative. That the hero should and must die for love. In fact, the hero has to live for love. That is what I am doing. Living for the ones that I love. Not for myself.’

‘Any other observations?’

‘That you cannot escape your destiny. She was brought up in a culture of self-sacrifice. So was I.’

‘You confuse yourself for a hero. When this society has you as the villain.’

‘Who is there to believe? Them? Or the dreams of my mother and the dreams of the people?’

‘You hate the people. They are disorderly, mean, grasping, selfish, repugnant in every way.’

‘Yes. But that is all the more reason to fight for them. Because they could be good if they were given a chance.’

‘What do you make of the book, this western story about heroism?’

‘It is the same as the Eastern story in the Indian films. The hero never wins. Do you know the basic story of the Indian action film? Someone in the hero’s family is killed. It is the duty of the hero to get revenge. But even when you get your revenge, do you really win? In the film Sholay, when the Thakur kills the enemy, he weeps afterwards. Because the villain killed his whole family. Even the children. The hero can never win. That is this world. Not just fiction. The hero cannot win. The people that win are the monsters.’

‘What monsters? They are human beings.’

‘They are evil. Those bastards like Trump and Farage, the whole lot of them. That bastard Starmer. All these fucking pieces of shit. They are vermin. If I…’

Alfonso stopped me by raising his hand. ‘Don’t. Think it. Don’t say it. That is the policy that you have to adopt with things. Truth is not to be borne here.’

‘I know it,’ I said. ‘I don’t write stories. Because the real story is that only the evil and the mediocre prosper. The fucking sheep. In a story, the good and the best prosper. And it can only happen in the imagination. Because this world is full of shit. It stinks of it. The stink is fucking everywhere.’

tomorrow the enemy (microfiction)

03.09.2025

‘You love fighting, do you?’ Alfonso asked me. ‘With a name like Tiger?’

‘I’m not going to deny it.’

‘You watch those violent Hindi films. Don’t you think it is ridiculous that the hero is always fighting? That might is right?’

‘The hero fights against might in the films. Showing that might is wrong.’

‘Why does he win in the fight? Surely that is might is right?’

‘The hero wins because he is morally superior. Not stronger. The hero wins because he is good. And good will always triumph over evil in the end. That is why we fight. We are the good. The Tiger is goodness.’

‘Look at the world around you. Evil has overtaken this planet.’

‘Not all of it.’

‘You really believe? Despite all of this? Despite your life? Despite the treatment you have gotten?’

‘I can’t be the only person in the whole world that tries to be good.’

‘And yet, you love fighting. Fighting means hurting someone.’

‘The human condition is that we allow others to hurt us. Quite badly. Even your lover is really your enemy.’

‘You don’t feel regret when you fight with someone? When you are otherwise so soft-hearted and considerate?’

‘I was born to fight. I was trained to fight in martial arts as a child. I have been in the debating society at school and university. I argue. I fight. It is who I am. To have good in the world, you have to fight for it. The message of the god Krishna is that it is the duty of a king to fight. We are not like others.’

‘You are so big headed. You call yourself a king. You call yourself a god. You call yourself a hero. You call yourself The Tiger. Not even just Tiger. You call yourself The Tiger.’

‘If there is anyone better than me, I have never met them. People might be better at me in one thing. But not in so many things. No one can compete with me or keep up with me. I have always been the best. I am not arrogant about it. It is just fact.’

Alfonso laughed and shook his head. ‘I am not like the others,’ he said. ‘I know that you are talent itself. I know that you deserve this world on a plate and every happiness it has. I am your real friend. The one that can value what you are. But forget this conceit.’

‘As long as you do not lord it over others, there is nothing wrong with confidence,’ I told Alfonso. ‘The reason they hate my confidence in this country is because of my brown skin. They want us to shrink and grovel in front of them and accept the shit they want to stuff down our mouths. Well I have news for them. They can eat shit. Not me.’

Alfonso laughed. And I looked at him and laughed too. It is good to laugh. Tomorrow the enemy. But the future? That is us. The Tiger.

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.