25.04.2024
when
through the window
my mind connects with yours
when
you read my words
about how I think of you
and when you think of me
when our two looks
collide
in this moon of electronic paper
what do you feel inside
if it is not love?
Just now, at about this time that I am writing, someone – probably Helen (I assume) – checked if there was a new diary entry. Whoever it is that is reading almost without fail every night is so used to reading this diary. It has become a habit with them. Has this person ever asked themselves why they are so interested in me and my thoughts? Maybe, if it is Helen, she wants to know what I am writing about her every night. It has been seven months. Every night, I think of something new to say about Helen. Every night. I love her. It is like the Arabian Nights in real life. But the storyteller is not a woman that is about to have her head cut off. It is a man that has had his heart ripped out. The one that is holding it in her hand is the one that is most likely reading every night. Maybe, one day, she will give that beating heart back. But you wonder, what is she waiting for? If it is her. Who knows? In this relationship, like with all things with Helen, everything is unequal. She has anonymity. I don’t. I am the one that invests the time into writing, which takes much longer than reading. I am the one that loves at a cost. She receives the love for free. She has to do nothing for it.
My holiday has begun after work finished at 6pm. I rushed down to the Wellcome Collection for the Cult of Beauty Exhibition. With comic predictability, it rained. With comic predictability, the Collection was shut down because the toilets and the water weren’t working. The trains were messed up when I tried to get there too. This is what happens when I have a holiday. I am unlucky. It affects every aspect of my personal life and my relationships.
I went to Waterstone’s on Gower Street instead. Amazing haul of books today. One of my favourite places in the whole world.
Everyone that is close to me at one of the places I am at teases me. Especially the young women. They all pretend to be mean to me. It is so much so that other people comment on it. As I always say, what have I done to deserve this treatment? I am a nice person. But it is all in jest. But when I tease someone? The last time I did it, I got told off for it – in serious trouble. I am still in the bad books for it. That is the difference between different contexts and if it is a man that is doing the teasing or a woman.
Discussion with someone about types of investment. Some make financial investments. Some, like me, make an investment into education. I was told that my education was an investment into myself. But it is actually an investment into our people. There is a reason I have had one of the best educations in the entire world. It is for us as a people. For the Dalits, the Untouchables, the community of the oppressed. We who were denied education to keep us down. They prayed for a mind like mine to come into this world. For us. To be our voice. To be The Tiger. The Tiger has come into this world. The Tiger has become an author. Someone who writes our values. Our way of life. Our hopes and our desires. For us. By us. As myself, I am no one and nobody. As The Tiger, I am Us.
I saw someone after a while. I missed her. Everyone missed her. She is like Helen and Girl 3. She is one of the darlings of the place. Everyone wants to talk to her, be around her. Life is a popularity contest and some people win in it. When they go, there is a vacuum which can’t be filled.
Someone at the place saw me as they were walking past and told me that they read my blog entry on an exhibition. And that it was really good. I was caught by absolute surprise. You never know who is reading what you have written. And why. It was the same when I was doing my PhD. I used to share stuff on the Whatsapp group for PhD students. And, believe it or not, these busy busy people, who I didn’t even talk to, all used to read my blog. It is incredible.
The long-awaited holiday has come. So today I was able to relax and read on the tube. And what did I read? An introduction to some travel memoirs and the history of the Indus river which flows through the Subcontinent. And then, an introduction to plants, their lives and how they have impacted the human imagination.
diary of a lone man 