30.11.2023

So, work isn’t giving me what I want. I am thinking what to do next. I am re-evaluating my life. I got into this industry to meet the right people. Is that really happening? I have some really close friends that I have made. But then… This work was for a particular aim – that is the whole motivation behind it. When you are not achieving the aim, is it worth it keeping at it? How worth it is it? The thinking about it is all being done right now.

The diary is at its lowest ebb. After the conclusion to the story that was happening, and everyone reading knows, there is nothing happening. I opened up everything. Now, that side is closed up. I’m not going to talk about it. So the interest in the diary has gone. And, added to that, I am not sharing the diary with anyone. If anyone wants to read, they have to check out my blog themselves. Yet, there are still people reading and re-reading the posts. No idea who they are, what their motivation is, what they are finding in the diary. Before, I hoped it was someone. Now, who knows? What is there to expect out of anyone or any reader in this life?

Recently, thinking about relationships has taken over. It is taking away the thinking about other things and using up all the resources. I’ve been sucked into the games I didn’t want to play. But was I better off when I just stayed in the family and mostly by myself in my solitary activities? Why have I let myself get involved in other people and their issues (because I need something from them). It would be so nice not to need anything from anyone again like I was before for so long and didn’t expect to meet anyone, know anyone, care about anyone. It is when you expect and when you desire that this becomes your fate, your struggle.

I am trying to get into reading again. I managed to read about plant science, quotations and fiction today and yesterday. There is so much going on but I have always read throughout my life. I just need to find that focus and that curiosity again. When you have problems, they spoil everything. I don’t want everything to be spoilt. Forget about the past. Move on. Don’t let other people spoil things for you. You have a nice life. You have a big, juicy, disciplined and important brain. The things that you know and are capable of knowing are things that have eluded people for thousands of years. You have six thousand years of continuous culture. You are the voice of your people. The opportunities you have had have given you a responsibility to make your mark on the community for the people. You have had the education of an emperor, not a normal man. You have to pay it all back. Get into the right head space and perform. It is hard work that makes an ordinary person into a genius, the voiceless into the writer, the marginalised and peripheral into the central and the most important. Jai maa kaali! Live to fight another day. Jai maa kaali! Forget, forgive, forge ahead. Jai maa kaali!

29.11.2023

To give you an idea of how many people read my blog posts: over 70 people have read my blog post on my fitness photographs. And it appears that the same readers are going back and reading the blog post over and over again.

It is going to be a busy week with friends and overtime this week. I signed up to a few shifts today over the weekend and just found out I’ve been put on one for Friday as well. I might have the Sunday off though – the whole day – to work on my university studies.

Serious Conversations Today:

– Talking about Albert Camus and Sisyphus with a new person in my life, as well as about his other novels.

– Talking about the mediocre education system in Great Britain which doesn’t reward merit, no matter how exceptional a scholar and student you are – what do you expect from this kind of society which never values learning for its own sake or ever values anything satisfactorily?

Good Deeds Today

– Gave someone a present. The last two times (I’m not including the one successful present giving recently in that for certain reasons) I bought a present for someone, I wasn’t able to give it to them because the situation changed. So it was a relief to be able to give it to them. The curse is broken.

…

The flowers my friend at volunteering gave me are poinsettias. They flame red in the area where i keep the flowers. I bought a cheap Kalanchoe as well – small white flowers.

A big ego boost today for a particular reason.

Had a good conversation with a visitor from Singapore. I was recommending things to do in London in terms of food. One recommendation I made was to go to Selfridge’s, do some shopping, and then get a gelato in the food court. I had one there once – I believe it was cherry cheesecake flavour. It was literally one of the most amazing things I have ever tasted in my life. I have to find some time to go there again.

The award pen has finally arrived! So excited to feel it in my hands. My first one from that maker. I collect pens. Usually fountain pens, but this one is medium value so it is a ball pen which can be more useful and convenient. It has a lovely silvery finish to it and looks very elegant and sophisticated.

I got a cookies and cream cake at Marks and Spencer’s for a fiver. It tasted good. Dinner was exceptionally beautiful today. I tried some Marks and Spencer’s vanilla flavoured cola, made with natural ingredients. It was so fantastic – still thinking about the flavour. Cola was my favourite drink but I stopped drinking it because of all the sugar and the additives.

Finally found some time to read up on plants and biology for the gardens. It is a steep learning curve. But anything worth doing is a steep learning curve.

I just got back from volunteering , so a dictated diary tonight.

I was thinking about my friends today my friends invited me to holiday with them, my friends looked for jobs for me, my friends sent me a note so thank you for the advice and support that I gave them. I have good friends in my life. I have very nice people around me all these people were doing all these things for me this week over the past three days. It shows you how incredibly connected you can be to your friends and the network around you. Even today at work where I volunteer my friends got me a bunch of flowers as a present of gratitude. There’s so much love and support around me right now in my life even if other things aren’t going well you always have your friends. Your friends are always ready to take care of you and show you the appreciation of you

In other news my pen which I ordered from the money I won awards for that money is coming over looking forward to receiving it in the post. I managed to pick up quite a few books I wanted in the charity book shop near work. I got The Tulip by Anna Pavord. I also got a book about art called the Art Book and then there was also the Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought.

Quite a hectic day in that I got requested in to help with some volunteering stuff. I enjoy it I appreciate the mission that the place is doing and quite happy with that. In the morning we had some tours again at the other place where I volunteer. I’m such good friends with the other volunteers. I had a very in depth and meaningful conversation with one of my friends. We have so much in common. This person is one of my favourite friends.

26.11.2023

In ‘Dangerous Liaisons’, when the anti-hero can’t get the woman that he loves – the married woman that he is after in the impossible game that he is in – he plunges into a duel and kills himself. It is an honourable death for the period in question. Not a suicide. Death by combat like a warrior. However, self-destructive the motives and the result. In ‘Romeo and Juliet’, when Romeo can’t have the love of his life, he also kills himself. He is also in the impossible game of the two star crossed lovers.

Each time, the hero is from a fight culture. In ‘Dangerous Liaisons’, the predominant metaphor for love is battle. Love is a game of attack and defence. The woman defends. The man attacks. The metaphor is stretched to its limit – there are very questionable ideas of consent involved in certain escapades in the life of the anti-hero. Romeo is also from a fight culture. The two families, the Capulets and Montagues are involved in a war with each other, a feud. The love arises in the midst of the feud. As in ‘Dangerous Liaisons, love forms a continuum with violence and war. This is the nature of love. It is a fight. It evolves from fight culture. The true lover is the man of violence, the warrior.

The ending of love is self-destruction in both cases. The aim of love is to destroy yourself. While Freud said that love has to fight against death, that Eros has to fight against Thanatos, both these masterpieces of literature see self-destruction as love’s ending. Why?

The context is the impossible game. Absolute frustration of an end, an aim, a plan. Of all organisation, control, everything. In both cases, love is a Sisyphean endeavour, a punishment from the world and the gods for transgressing the rules. In ‘Dangerous Liaisons’, the more perfect novel for the revolutionary, the impossible game of the anti-hero aims to attack the law and the subjects that it creates. The impossible woman is married, a good wife. Dutiful, loving. The hero is revolting against the rule of the law and its forcing of monogamy, of its control of all relationships. Romeo revolts against the law of the father. He goes for the daughter of his father’s enemy. He loves her. It is the conditions that these men are working against, that these lovers are fighting in, that makes the game impossible. But these are the kind of men that will fight in an impossible game. Because they are warriors from fight culture. And warriors have big hearts. That is the distinguishing character of the warrior. From Romeo and Juliet to Dangerous Liaisons to ‘Gadar’ and ‘Gadar 2’ – the recent Indian version. These men have a belief in themselves – that everything can be stacked against them, all power. And yet, they will win. That is why these men are special.

Why the self-destruction? In each novel, the threat to the law is neutralised through voluntary self-destruction. It has to be voluntary – because no one can fight against these warriors and lovers and win. They are invincible, supremely powerful. They have the power of love within them. No one can defeat them. No one can challenge them. No one can test the real king on this earth.

The weakness comes in separation. When these fighters are separated from their love, that is when the self-destructive urge takes over. Romeo sees the dead corpse of Juliet, the most horrible and ugly thing in the whole world. The anti-hero in ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ has to watch the woman he loves leave him without her. These fighters are joined to their women in eternal union. They choose death rather than having to live a life without their loves, rather than becoming separate, discrete entities. It is not technically thanatos (death) versus love (eros). Love is death. Death is love.

Have you ever seen the ending of ‘Devdas’, one of the most famous Indian love stories? It tells us about the wall. The hero drinks himself to death when he cannot get his love back – someone who has married someone else and has been taken by the law. At the end of the movie, she is separated from him by the Wall. The wall of society, of convention, of cowardice, force, arbitrary despotism, tyranny, fascism. She cries behind the wall. He dies behind the wall. The wall is what you cannot take. You can take everything else apart from that alienating, separating, dividing wall which takes our love away from us. They divide us and conquer.

But is this the nature of love then, that is a death? Love involves ‘the little death’. The oblivion of the self, forgetting. However, the context is the impossible game. This game is not one that everyone enters into. Most people – the lucky ones – enter into the possible game. Everything is easy for them. They don’t have to work hard. They don’t challenge anything for anyone. They don’t have to fight against everyone for someone. But if you come from a fight culture, if you come from a completely different tribe to the one you fall in love with, then the problem arises, then the impossible game comes into effect. You have to fight against everyone for someone.

The tribes? The anti-hero of ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ is amoral and he loves a rigidly moral woman that is a dutiful wife. He is not monogamous – he is forced into monogamous love. He is a libertine, he is converted into a relationship with someone that hasn’t got his daring and recklessness, someone that plays by the rules that he cannot play by. Of course, Romeo loves a woman from the other tribe, the warring tribe. He loves his Other. Just like the anti-hero of ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ loves his Other.

This is the mark of the hero, the lover, the fighter, the warrior. He loves the Other. He loves difference. The hero is the supreme man. He is masculine force.  In ‘Dangerous Liaisons’, supreme masculinity is modelled upon the limitless. Femininity becomes the opposite pole of supreme masculinity which is limited by the law, by chastity. For Romeo, supreme masculinity is modelled upon the breaking of boundaries, of hate, of revenge. But both Romeo and Juliette cannot break these boundaries – they are bounded and limited.

In both masterpieces, the warrior’s world-shaking, world-breaking revolutionary love submits to the limit, to the boundary, to the law. The hero chooses voluntary self-destruction. But these are novels. That support the status quo. For the anarchist, for the tiger, for the revolutionary, love has to remain revolutionary. It can’t be tamed. It can’t submit. All the walls have to be broken down. In everything else, the anarchist and revolutionary can submit. Not in love. Because, according to the rules of gender, the anarchist can only love absolute difference. This is what woman is to him, his Other. If he loved himself, he wouldn’t need anyone. He needs difference. He lives for it. He loves it. The anarchist and the revolutionary lives for the breaking of the law, the breaking of the limit. The violence of his love is directed at the world as it is – not at himself. He won’t choose to destroy himself, even though this is where the narrative and the canon directs him. He will keep on surviving and fighting. This is the meaning of being the true warrior in the world, of being the tiger. If there is a force in love, if there is a violence in love, it is the violence of transformation. You obliterate yourself to become someone new. You obliterate hate to become a lover. You obliterate the conditions of reality to create the dream. It is only the bravery of the fighter that can achieve this. For some, the game is always going to be impossible. That is the nature of the game and of the warrior’s life. But the warrior has to choose life and not death, whatever impossible game he is in or not. And when one game ends, another one begins. That is life. And life, requires the bravery to accept the impossible game and accept the work that it will take. Revolution requires the courage to play.

23.11.2023

I went to a leaving do for one of my work friends and I was reunited with not just her – who is a very good friend to me – but also with a lot of my most favourite people there at that workplace. I wasn’t going to go first, but then I thought to myself that that friend always makes me feel good about myself and I love that workplace too. When you are around so many of your friends that you don’t get to see that much around, you feel happy.

It was a real swanky place too. I have been lucky in life in that I have been in some of the swankiest places in the whole world, including five star hotels and suchlike. I enjoy beauty and love being in beautiful surroundings. At this place, the Trafalgar Tavern in Greenwich, there were some nice paintings and I got a beautiful moonlit view of the Thames and the London skyline from the balcony where my friend who was leaving took the time to take me out to.

Funny thing about women and clothes. This person that I have worked with several times, had lunch with several times in the staff room, didn’t recognise me when I came in with my normal clothes that I wear every day outside of work. All of my friends have told me that I look completely different when I am not in my work clothes. Because at work, one of them said, you look like a clone. Outside, in your every day attire, you actually look nice.

I trained another new person at work today for about two hours. I like training people and showing them around. I have been a teacher for a while and I always enjoyed sharing information and knowledge. You never really lose your passions in life. It’s why I love doing tour guiding so much.

I also had lunch with one of my best friends in museums and art galleries today. I’m lucky in that I have so many good friends at work because – from my end – I have always made every effort to be friends with everyone and take an interest in everyone at work. If someone can’t treat me like a real friend or trust me, it is not my fault. It is theirs. All in all, it was a really good day.

22.11.2023

2 hours overtime even though I was thinking I was just going to go straight home after work tonight as the next two evenings are booked.

I keep on thinking about it. In the film ‘Raja Babu’ (Gentleman King) , there is a spoilt, uneducated rich kid that won’t take life seriously, treats it like a pastime. There is a woman that sees that he has never achieved anything in his life. He loves her. He chases her. At first, he fools her into thinking he has the job of an educated person. Then, she finds out the truth. Then, she rejects him. Because he is nothing. But she also insults the boy’s father, telling the father that his son, who he loves so dearly, isn’t worth spit. At first, the boy doesn’t care that the woman insulted his father. He is spoilt and selfish. One day, suddenly, someone tells the spoilt rich kid, an only child, that his parents adopted him. He didn’t know it before. The son realises what his mother and father did for him, that they gave him the life they gave him even though he wasn’t even their own blood. He learns about the debt that he owes them, a debt of love he can never repay. He turns his face away from the woman that rejected him and insulted that father of his. He puts on a farm labourer’s clothes and works on his father’s farms. But now the story changes. Seeing that he has changed, now the woman loves him. She wants him back. But she has insulted his father. He can’t forgive her. Of course, this is a film. Eventually love wins. The father forgives the woman for his son so the son forgives her as well. The lesson is learnt. It is an Indian love story: where parents are respected, where everyone sacrifices for love, where everyone forgives. Maybe that happens in some people’s lives.

Sitting around doing chain decorations for Christmas somewhere. Thinking about things in the corner as the hands fumbled over those chains over and over again. There is so much to make, to do, to complete. And yet, I still couldn’t get out of bed again in the morning and skipped breakfast again. I have lost weight from not eating it. My underpants were falling down today. People have commented that I am getting thinner.

The new shoes I got have been pinching my feet as they mould themselves around my posture. I hobbled around like a baby learning how to walk. But after about a half day, the pain started feeling good. It made me feel alive again. Then, when I went home and walked back, the pain completely stopped. It was psychosomatic – it wasn’t real.

I had to fill out a 5 yearly form for my medication. And I didn’t know what condition I had on the form. I had to look up the medication and find out what it was for. It is a thyroid condition, nothing serious. I just take the medicine and don’t think about it. The symptoms are supposed to be that you gain weight, feel cold all the time, are tired all the time. I wonder if I really have that condition because I have been trying to put on weight for several years now without any luck and I never really feel tired.

I had an intellectual conversation with someone today. A debate. Unlike other people, I like arguing. I was in the debate club at school, I studied the law, I made arguments as a researcher. Made a welcome change to have an actual intellectual debate at that particular place after a while. There used to be someone for that at first every time I met her – my closest friend there – but she went. And sometimes, when they leave, that is the end of the friendship, because otherwise, the wrong signals would go out.

I was wondering whether I have recently had a mid-life crisis and whether it is over yet if I had it.

The funny thing about life is that the only remedy for a woman troubles you is another woman. That’s the paradox of heterosexual male desire.

21.11.2023

Oedipus kills his father. And marries his mother. Then, because of the situation, when she finds out what has happened, Oedipus’s mother kills herself. But the story does not end there. Oedipus produces the daughter Antigone, a daughter that has to fight against the state for the law, for mourning, for family. Oedipus and Antigone form a continuum: the father’s resistance to society has to become the daughter’s resistance. The guilt of the father has to translate into the feminised resistance against the state and its so-called laws. The ultimate expression of resistance is feminised revolt. This is the curse upon Oedipus. It is ancient. It is unalterable. In Hindu thought, we move in cycles of time that direct our destiny. Anarchy is the fate of Oedipus. Oedipus is a rule breaker, the destroyer of laws. Antigone is a rule breaker, the destroyer of laws. Antigone is the real face of Oedipus. There is no alternative. And, in the myth, Antigone is fated to lose. She is buried alive. Concealed. Repressed. It is the state that wins, with its so-called laws. You can only understand anarchy if you understand the myth of Oedipus, the state and its methods of attack and defence, you can only understand the challenge to the law if you read the myth. You can only understand everything if you understand what Antigone is, if you have felt it in your body and your mind. She is outrage, love, the mourner, the family, the powerless that comes to power, the silenced that becomes the voice, the inconsequential that becomes the threat. Anarchy is based in gender.

Meeting in the pub with a close friend. He often tells me that I am a highly unusual person and wondered if I was autistic? What difference would it make if I was? I told him these are just labels. My mind pays attention, lingers on things and people, thinks – as he says – obsessively about things over and over again. It is a mind that finds it difficult to forget. Yet, you can pull yourself away from a subject of interest. Time and separation. That’s all it takes. And then, you only think of that subject sometimes.

For instance, I was obsessed with becoming a university professor. I worked hard at my PhD. I presented original papers at conferences. I got my thesis published as a book. I got articles in top journals. I used to work for free on scholarly book reviews for journals, the university and websites all the time in my free time. I tried to network with as many academics as I could, follow the most contemporary debates. I used to read all the time. Then, when I spent so many years trying to get in and they wouldn’t let me, despite working all the time, one day I just turned my back on everything. And now, the only thing I remember is the betrayal of the intellectuals and knowing that I worked on important things that were not recognised at the cost of life and living.

The last challenge: getting up out of bed early in the mornings. It has been a few months now. Every night, I resolve to get up early and do all the things I need to be doing. Every morning it is the same story. The motivation for the day is what you don’t have. Everything is directed towards those things that are not there. In the end, the time comes. You are going to be late in. So, you snap yourself out of it. You skip breakfast every day. You skip all the morning routines like meditation, you put together a very quick exercise routine which is severely abridged. Somehow, you manage to get in a half hour early. What do you do in bed? Think. Nothing else. Thinking and thinking. About things that are out of your control, that are in the past, that nothing can change no matter what. As you lie there, completely powerless over your fate – which is always in someone else’s hands and will always be – you become a passive, motionless object, a corpse in a grave. Silent. Voiceless. Alone.

20.11.2023

You either stop writing because of circumstances. Or you keep on writing despite circumstances. The choice is what makes you a writer.

This diary was going to be over. But then I reflected on what some people said when I told them this. They were disappointed. I might not be the most interesting person in the world. People might not talk to me like they talk to other people, easily and freely. I might have small issues in my life compared to other people. Yet people are making time in London to read my diary. There is something in it for them. So why not write for them? All the writer wants in life is his readers. And I am used to being the centre of attention in my life and writing every day.

‘Kulla Pyaar te Kulla Vaar’ (= ‘Open Love and Open Warfare’). This is the philosophy of the warrior and the Punjabi. Love is made openly. Warfare is made openly. It is the mark of bravery. It is the mark of honour. Don’t be scared. Don’t hide. Believe, be brave. Who cares who is watching, listening, nosing into your business? In the end, it is your life. They will know that you are together eventually if it happens. You have to talk to that other person. If the only channel of communication is a diary, that is going to be the channel of communication. If it doesn’t have the effect you wanted, the result, the fulfilment, so be it. If they say something that may not even be true to make you leave them alone, you have to go with it. That is their decision and choice. Which you have to respect. Even if you are prepared to go to war for someone with everyone that you know and love and they still do not want you, you have to give up. At least you still have your honesty, your integrity and your bravery. It is bravery that is everything in life. Paula Radcliffe said just one thing to Mo Farah when he ran an important race as a youngster ‘Be Brave’. The words are the sign of experience and wisdom.

In fact, in love, since in this culture the woman judges, the most open form of love is when you allow them to subject you to either the sword in your chest or the flower in your hand. In the Hindi song ‘Guzaarish’, the hero stands exposed and topless in the desert of love’s thirst while beautiful visions of the woman beseige his thoughts and she is to judge him in the morning after he exposes his feelings to her. He is vulnerable, ready to be attacked. But he is also on the cusp of a new life, like a naked child. Because either the sword or the flower are going to give him his new beginning. He will allow the sword to enter his chest and into his heart because with the blade comes freedom. It is a freedom he does not want, but it is also a freedom that he does want. Because, the hero knows that one day, he will stand once more naked in the world before his judge and she will give him the flower. The new beginning, the future. Because the hero still has that face which is so loved. The hero still has those eyes which are so loved. The hero still has that body which is so loved. And the hero still has that big heart, which will also be so loved:

The hero’s reason for living is Maa Kaali, the mother goddess. She fights naked. She is the body beautiful, the body supreme, the body manifest. She is love itself, which is the naked body exposed to every hurt in this world, without any armour, without any protection, without any deception or concealment. It is because that body is ready to show itself and allow the weapons of the enemy to enter it that is powerful, ready, able, willing for love. Whatever the hurt, that body will take it. And it will carry on. Because this is the power of love: in the words of a Hindi song, ‘This love, this love is courage/ this love, this love is power/ this love, this love is fate (kismat).

This is the body of the Punjabi man, the tiger:

Speaking of the nude, I am going to get some professional fitness photographs taken of myself, rather than these ones I took myself which don’t really show my face in its best light. And for that, I will do a bit more exercise in the mornings and shape up a bit more. Other things I need to buy are the pen which commemorates my awards and successes to carry with me, a few books about plant science and botany and then a DNA/Heritage test to finally find out what blood is in me and what my history is, as well as the history of the rest of the family.

So what is happening in the life of the tiger? Subscription to a dating app bought. Already matched with some Indian women. The only ones that like your profile are Indian, black and Chinese. That’s London for you, showing you what diversity actually means in practice and proving my point that that is the treatment you get if you are Indian here and what white women – as a generalisation (let’s be fair) – are like on first impressions at least. In a bit of a coincidence, the family is trying to arrange a meeting with a British Indian woman. There are two other people that I know that are candidates. One, I’m not sure if she is single because of something she said once. Another one, I’m not sure about but she is very attractive and there have been certain signs recently. And there will be events coming up, which someone with my physical presence is successful at. I didn’t want to go into those bars with all those drinking people and superficially just pick someone on looks. But if that’s what you have to do, you have to do it. People like to pretend that you should connect with someone on a mental or intellectual level over time. You do that, and they friend zone you. Sometimes, you are not even a real friend, as you find out when you see how they actually treat their other friends, including other men that they have only known for a short while. The whole time you have deluded yourself because you liked them and wanted them to like you back.

I bought myself some black cargo trousers from Marks and Spencer’s because the black trousers I had before for this whole time in museums and art galleries cost about a tenner each and weren’t my taste. I also had to buy some new shoes because I have been walking about for 20,000 to 30,000 steps each day in broken shoes with holes in them for the past five months so that I didn’t have to get new ones. I was really tempted to buy an overshirt as well, but I decided not to because of the environment.

For lunch today, I had chilli con carne and rice because it was special trip for the volunteers. One of the highlights of my professional career going there with the organisation.