Giving a Gift

10.05.2024

fly where you are flying
no one asked you
parade the feathers
and despise the look
break my head
with your beak
still every night
i throw the seeds
into the air
hoping that you
that you
the birds
can feel my love

You can read more of my poetry and my other books including fiction and prose on my personal blog which features the Open Access MEHMI PRESS:

https://lnkd.in/eP2auKX3

Someone looked now at the posts on this blog. Perhaps to see what I had written in my diary today. It is a Friday night. While I am at home, studying and working, it is the time for the western world to party. Could it be Helen? Is she missing me? Why is she not partying?

I wonder if I stopped writing this blog, whether Helen would be happy and relieved or sad. To me, her behaviour is ambiguous. But I see her with the eyes of the lover. I want her to love me. So I imagine that she does. It is wish fulfilment. But if she loved me, would she not be with me?

Everyone knows I like giving gifts. Perhaps no one really cares that I give them a gift. Still, we have our feelings and their expression. It is the one time that you can really show someone you care about them. The things that you cannot say in words. So I gave someone a gift today. I don’t approve of drink, but I gave them some books about drinks and a bottle of the stuff. They are going to drink anyway. If it makes them happy, just play along.

That is the difference between me and other people. Even if I don’t like it, disapprove of it, I will let other people do their own thing. I don’t try to control anyone. I will say what I have to say – that it is bad for you. That there are reasons why it is wrong. But they are not my children that I can boss around and expect obedience from. They are grown adults. If they don’t want to listen, you can’t force them. If they don’t love you, you can’t force them. If you see them choose someone over you, there is nothing that you can do about it to stop it happening. Even if it is Helen. What you can do is keep your distance away from them so they can’t hurt you. Even if they were your friends.

I don’t have any beef with anyone that stands between me and the woman I love. After all, it is her that chose them over me. But I don’t want to talk to them or be around them. That is my choice. Why should I be forced to be around them and talk to them?

Everyone says you should talk to someone that broke your heart. Why? In everything else I can be nice. Not when it comes to that. And if you do talk to them? All I would think is that there is still some chance.

When you love someone and they don’t love you back, you feel like you are not good enough for anything. Because they have not valued you. But what have you done wrong? All you have done is be yourself. And if that is not enough for someone, what can you do about it?

People are probably thinking that I write ‘what can you do about it?’ a lot. That is reality. You are powerless. You are powerless in love. You can’t force love. You are powerless in racism. Because, again, you can’t force the racists to love you. You are powerless in the popularity contest that is life unless you sell your soul to become a sheep like everyone else. You can’t force people to like or love you.

There is one place that I am powerful. In my thoughts. In my thoughts, I know what no one else does. In my thoughts, I can see what no one else does. In my thoughts, I am The Tiger. In my body, I am powerful. I am strong. I have stamina. I have total energy. In my body, I am The Tiger. In education, I am powerful. It is my jungle. In my territories that I know, I am powerful. But in love and like, in popularity, I am not powerful. There, I am not The Tiger. Because there, there are no Tigers. There are the idiots and the white man. Not us. That is reality.

Today’s activities. Jury service. University study. Getting the presents and then commuting to give the presents to her. Then, at home: work emails, remote overtime for work (one and a half hours) [you are asking what? Graphic design, workshop planning and writing, a PowerPoint to go with it – I was making suggested amendments]. Volunteering work – sending my artwork to the writing place I volunteer at for world peace. Leisure activities were browsing in a bookshop, reading about how to improve my writing style (this is just more work, but I’m not doing it for pay or volunteering). And this diary? This diary is work. Love is work. Work is love. And here, work is hope. Love is hope. What is the hope? Every night, I say ‘Helen, I love you’. Every night, I hope that Helen is saying ‘I love you’ back.

Newness

07.05.2024

I am on jury service. You are not allowed to write anything about it or tell people any details.

But there is something happening right now. I won’t go into it. So all of the energy has come flooding back. It took one moment. If you have been reading my diary, you will know me. You will understand. There is a guaranteed way of forgetting about all of your problems.

So I got myself a haircut, got myself a shave and took a shower finally. And then I took a photograph of myself to remember myself in this moment. Hope again. Trying again. Becoming new once again. The armour comes off one more time. If the sword is going to go into my chest again, then I will chance it.

In this photograph, I believe I look handsome and attractive. It doesn’t matter what other people think.

I am going to spend the evening reading. There is so much reading to be done.

I didn’t do exercise in the morning and I skipped breakfast again. I had to do exercise after jury service. But tomorrow is another day to try and get better. Tomorrow, I am going to get up early and do what I need to do. All it took was a change of scene and the stimulation.

My thought about Helen today. I think about her. It is not a secret. Every time I told Helen what I was doing, she wanted to do it herself. A language that I learnt. A university course. Photography. I wonder about what she was saying. Do you know, Girl 3 had all the same hobbies and interests as me? Potential Girl has the same interest as well. And despite having all of these things in common, I am not with any of these women. Despite talking to them all the time and being around them for six months plus in each case. It just goes to show you. It doesn’t matter what you do or who you are. There is always some excuse.

I Have to Get Better

06.05.2024

why do you drink
so much
what do you find
in it
if not the bones
if not the corpse
the corpse of
my grandfather
that died from a stroke
from drinking
why do you smoke so much
what do you find in it
if not the corpse
the corpse of my grandmother
who died from smoking
too much
the only drinking i do
is to look in your eyes
full of intoxication
when i am drunk
it is with those eyes
that smile
that laughter
that pain i feel
when you are so close
to me
and i don’t have you
in my arms
to drink again and again
from your eyes

Something happened today which was disappointing and very upsetting.

I was going to go straight home, but because I was distracted, I forgot a letter I needed for tomorrow in my locker. So I had to go back in. That wasted an hour.

When I got there, it was late. I didn’t feel like going home. I went and sat there in Trafalgar Square by myself for thirty minutes. I was looking at the water and thinking how beautiful it would be to go in that water and never come back out of it, like Virginia Woolf who drowned herself.

I kept on thinking about the film Collateral with Tom Cruise where he asked how long your corpse would be on the metro before someone realised that you were dead, or whether they would do anything even if they knew you were dead.

I keep on thinking that I am getting better, but everything is getting worse. The nausea came back.

There is something wrong. I used to be normal. Things didn’t affect me this much before. And I know what is wrong, but there is no cure and I can’t do anything about it.

So I sat there. And then, I remembered that I would have children at the end of this year. I have waited long enough. I’m not waiting any more. I promised myself those children on the pain of death. And straight away, I got up and got myself dinner. Because to have those children, I need to be at my most fertile. I need to be in tip top shape. I have to give them the best that my body can produce. I can’t starve and mope around wallowing in my own pity for myself and my situation.

I have to get better now.

I have to start getting up in the morning on time. I have to beat the habit of lying there moping about things and then skipping breakfast. I have to make sure I exercise every morning. I have to do my language learning and reading to keep my brain sharp because you have to exercise each part of your body.

Look at me right now. I haven’t shaved in a week. I haven’t had a shower in a week. I am finding it difficult to motivate myself to do anything outside of work. I am becoming undisciplined, the type of person I don’t like.

I have to stop caring about people that don’t love or like me back. It has always been the same problem. They never like you back if you like them or love them. Every one I have been with has asked me out or hung around me first when I wasn’t that interested in them. Every one I have ever been interested in has said no. All four of them.

You have to forgot that they don’t love you. You have to forget about them. You can’t keep on hoping that something is going to happen. With Helen and Girl 2, I have a really dysfunctional relationship with both of them at the moment. I can’t forget that they wouldn’t go out with me. And Girl 2 judges me and criticises me all the time and is obviously still angry at me. What about Helen? Helen is never going to be around and she always hangs around her white men that follow her around all the time anyway. She does not care that I love her. I want to believe that she does. I don’t want to give up.

Do you know the peculiar thing about Helen and Girl 2 which struck me today? I never think about them in bodily terms. I don’t even look at their bodies. That is not natural. I am a man with a high libido. I love women. That proves that things are dysfunctional. Because with Potential Girl, who is not white, I do think of her in bodily terms. Which is natural.

When was the last time I even had a proper conversation with Helen or Girl 2? I haven’t had one with Helen in about five months or so. It is about the same time period with Girl 2. They are both in the past.

I am writing this all down rationally. Not through feeling. In actual facts. Obviously, your mind in this area does not work rationally. Even while I am writing, I still want to be with them.

What is happening in my life at the moment? Last week some drunk woman messaged me on Tinder. She must have seen my like about a week before she got drunk and wrote to me. She is white. That is the only message I have had from a white woman after being on Tinder for five months. And because she wrote to me when she was drunk, I am not going to write back to her. Because I can put up with Helen, Girl 2 and Potential Girl drinking even though I don’t like it because I know them and I care about them. But I am not putting up with it in a stranger that I don’t even know. Today, some Afro-Carribbean woman matched with me. She is very beautiful, but, like most of these women nowadays, she is taller than me. So, again, I have another Helen – taller than me and the same age. Is she even real though? That’s the question with this dating app.

There is a quote in John Wick 4. It goes something like:

Those who cling to life cling to death

Those who cling to death cling to life

The more and more I keep on thinking about that quote, the more and more I keep on thinking that it is true. I want to cling to death. And that is why I live. And those that cling to life? What do they really know about living, if they have not been raped by death?

It is said in a Hindi song in the film Guide: Today once again I have the desire to live/Today once again I have the intention of dying.

Greek Chocolate Biscuits; The Hunt, The Chase, The Trap: Reflections on the Game of Love; Volunteering; Art History Study

01.05.2024

today I want to be alone

with my dream

today I don’t want to feel

the apathy of the world

and its neglect

its lovelessness

its lack of attention

lack of observation

lack of sensitivity

this world that

can’t even see

the scar of separation

cut across my face

today I don’t want to see her

laughing and talking

with everyone except me

today I want to write to her

converse

convince

connect

the one made

out of electronic paper

the one that listens to me

the one that is

my dream

I ate some chocolate biscuits from Greece today. As I bit down on the unfamiliar taste, I wondered how the Greek palate was constructed. I was tasting a different country. A country where even their mouths have been ordered in a different way. Everything is ordered in life. These weren’t like the chocolate biscuits you get in England. A different system of beliefs and habits and learning. What do I really know about modern Greece? Nothing. I was raised in first a completely white British area and then I have lived for the past 23 years in an Asian area with almost exclusively Indian people.

I was talking to my friend and I commented that love is like making a trap for someone. You are trying to trap someone for life. My friend looked at me. He is kind. So he didn’t say what he wanted to say. Instead, he said that’s one way of looking at it. Everyone knows I am cynical and jaded. But what are you supposed to believe about love? Is it free will and choice? No, it is not. Your partners are chosen for you by society. You are led to the ones that are supposed to be like you. Even with the interracial relationships, they have had the other cultures kicked out of them and they do whatever the partner with the most power has. They forget themselves. In love, the one in love makes a plot. I will do this and then I will get her. All you do is make plots in your head. You conspire with your friends to get the other person. And then, you try your absolute best to hold onto them so that they won’t leave you. It is all a big, complicated, stressful game. The days are long gone when you chose one person and then you stuck fast to them for the rest of your life. It is the culture of convenience, the expendability of people, the massive numbers of population everywhere, the death of the idea of eternal love.

But, then, you see people that have been together a long time. In life, you have to remember one thing: you are Indian in a white society. You are different. It is not the same for you as everyone else. For everyone else, for all these Westernised people, everything is easy for them. And for you? Everything is hard.

Do you know that there has never been anyone in my whole life to ask for advice about women and dating? I had to make it all up from watching Indian movies. I only ask my friend now for advice because he is white and this is a white society and I have known him for a long time.

In the morning I volunteered in art interpretation. Then, straight away, when I left, I went down to the Japanese art gallery which I haven’t been to in quite a while. And I wrote some social media posts and talked to one of the new volunteers who had studied languages – I also study quite a few languages myself when I get time. I caught up with one of my main friends there. It was good to see her after a while.

I banged into a friend of a friend on the way home when I was printing off some portraits I painted for a friend. He complimented me on my art and was asking me about it. It came out quite well and I was pleased with it myself. Everyday, people compliment me. Except for the people you want to hear it from the most, the people you want to impress the most. They never compliment you on anything. They are never impressed with anything you do. This is life. There is nothing that you can do about it.

The only time I forget about being sad is when I am lost in the flow of creating. When I am working. In life, you might not have anything or anyone else, but you do have work. The work was supposed to be for my family. That work was my love for my wife and children. But in this culture, if you are Indian, you cannot even give love to anyone that you love. Such is life. Except. Except for this diary. Which is my love which I give to Helen:

i write with the flames

which burn inside me

I hunger in this fire

which burns me inside out

I thirst for the intoxication

of her black eyes

and the waterfall of her hair

Tiger’s Bedroom

27.04.2024

I never used to have a bedroom of my own until I was eighteen. And even then, for years, we had the only computer in the house in my room, so everyone was always there all the time.

Since I have been a teenager, I have always had posters of women in the room. Women are beautiful and they are the most beautiful visions in the world to me. So why would I not want them around me all the time? The first poster was of Jennifer Lopez.

Today, I spent the whole day buying, building and putting the bookcase into my room. There were piles of books everywhere cluttering the whole place up and I am half way through so many of them or have just started.

This is how I have planned my room to look now. I moved the desk from the wall where the bookcase is now. So now I am sitting in front of the window which has the better view and the light.

You can see all the subjects I am interested in and all the languages I am interested in learning when I have the time. You can also see that I am a neat and tidy person. I like to live in beauty. I don’t want any mess around me. There is enough mess in human society and ugliness for you to have to see the same thing when you are at home.

We went down to the IKEA, me and my parents. I marvelled at the taste that you can buy in interior design so cheaply. So many different contexts that I travelled in throughout the day. And it all looked so good. I love interior design. Of course I do. I love all art and culture. I value talent. I’m not like other people that can’t give it its value.

When we’d got the bookcase, I built it together with my father. We did the job in about an hour. He was in charge, of course. I just followed the instructions and helped out without being told what to do most of the time. We were smacking the bookcase with our hands and slapping it about to get the dowel rods in and pushing the pieces together with brute force – that’s how we do stuff. We don’t need tools. We can do the job with our hands because we are tough and strong – although we did use the hammer here and there.

This is the bedroom where everything happens. I do most of my thinking here. I do my writing here at my desk. I make my artwork at my desk. I am always looking at beautiful people and beautiful things. And I just look at the books I own sometimes, thinking how lucky I am that I can be surrounded by art, culture and education.

The room has been planned and arranged by my mother. I didn’t choose the colours or the layout. She gave me the biggest room in the house for me. Women want to arrange their territory. Why would I interfere with that? With things like this, I let the woman have her way. I have lived in the smallest bedroom in the house for about seven years before this bedroom. I have lived in a shared bedroom for most of my life. I can live in any situation. But you can see how I have arranged and the stuff I build up around me. I try to live the life of beauty, art, culture and education.

There is a great feeling of satisfaction when you have arranged your space and the basis of your culture – your reading, writing, art-making and thinking space. Life feels organised for once.

The Holiday Begins: Teasing; Investment; Absence and Reunion; Reader Surprise; What I Read Today

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.

‘Chocolate House Greenwich – Society, Intellect and Chocolate in 1700s Greenwich’

Old Royal Naval College

22.04.2024

This opinion reflects my personal views in my capacity as a private individual and does not reflect any consensus or anyone else at any of the organisations I work at or volunteer for.

Ascending up the stairs to the exhibition space on the mezzanine, you see a window through which you glimpse another world, another milieu, the past. It is a rare interior scene of a coffee house, one of the new forums for public debate that shaped the modern world. The customers are reading the newspapers that created the imagined community and fostered and nurtured the Western nation-state. Thus begins the historical journey into the Chocolate House in Greenwich. We are guided through a sort of window onto the past.

Behind another window, we then see the esteemed lady that ran the Chocolate House on Blackheath as one of the many women in history that have provided the world with its unique and wanted things. It is Grace Tosier ‘at the height of her powers’. Her eyes stare at us in the portrait through time. We are sharing her vision. She is the character that is leading us through things, the guide, the model: a strong, independent woman in a capitalistic culture. The heroine for this time and this society.

We learn that the Chocolate house served royalty. It then ‘became the Georgian equivalent of a celebrity hotspot’. So now we experience the glamour of the place.

The exhibition now shifts its focus. The story changes. We start learning about the origins of chocolate in South America, how it came to Europe, how it involved the morally reprehensible evils of a capitalistic society which evolved from slavery and exploitation. The trajectory of the story has shifted. We have come to a moral reckoning of the realities behind the glamour of the chocolate house. A confrontation with evil.

At this point in the story of the exhibition, like a huge wild monster from the imagination, we see a glorious display of the Cacao Tree rising up on the wall against a black canvas. The plant is covered over in insects. Why this image? The beauties of nature? The absolute origin of chocolate depicted without any varnish, perhaps, warts and all? The idea that the comforting illusions of capitalism, when the veil of ideology has been ripped off, reveal an insect-ridden reality?

The story of the exhibition journeys next into how coffee houses enabled ‘the free discussion of the latest ideas, unrestrained by the protocols of the royal court.’ In the light of what was before, the implications begin to produce a result: the free speech of this country is founded on the fruits of slavery and exploitation. It is an implicit link.

There are quite a few interesting pictures to ponder over at this junction in our journey which reflect the culture of the times, so that the task of time travel is further enabled.

Now, there is the context: Greenwich. So the place is elaborated.

A table draped in a table cloth reveals the production process of chocolate.

We then move onto the last years of the Chocolate House. And we see an image of what the building might have looked like from the outside.

Finally, the piece of the resistance: the final destination of our time travel. In a room, we enter the chocolate house. We are fully immersed now in the space. There is a life size reproduction of Grace Tosier’s image as we descend down the ramp to meet her face to face. A video plays in the space to complete the immersion not only through space in the room, but through vision, sound and characterisation. We have travelled backwards through time into the space of the chocolate house.

What do we make of this exhibition? It covers a lot of ground to make a coherent narrative: this was the chocolate house, with all of its social and political implications at the time, with its basis in capitalism, exploitation, slavery. With its enabling of social mobility at the same time for women like Grace Tosier in this context. All of the pertinent facts are presented. There is balance. And there is a stimulation of the senses with pictures and videos alongside the curator labels. There is the face of Grace Tosier to characterise the whole scene, as well as the images from the country of origin with the people there.

You get a sense of historical immersion in the chocolate house. You get a ticket into time travel into Greenwich in the 1700s – a unique virtual reality experience. An enabling of the imagination. A real journey into another place and time.

My overall sense of the exhibition is that it is interesting, unique, well researched and well thought out. In addition, there were labels for the children which would make them interested in this topic that they love too – chocolate (and the pictures to stimulate their imaginations). This was a conscience driven exposure of the past and its evils, the foundations of the public forums and the discussions that they bred that have lasted into the present, the foundations of the modern day nation state and its present evils in the evils of the past.

I did feel a certain want in the exhibition – I wanted to know more about Grace Tosier, the character that we meet face to face. A curiosity about her. But of course, the reality is that while we have a name and an image, we cannot expect a biography in a historical exhibition like this. Part of the fun is imagining her life, too. Part of the fun is being stimulated to know more – and the chocolate house exhibition certainly does this. So, in summation, a stimulating and unique experience which fosters a self-reflection on the economic and political origins of our public forums and our public discourse, what has made us and this state into what it is today, a real journey. A real experience of learning.

Why I am the Lone Man in this Country; The Indian View of Marathons, the Olympics and Alexander the Great

21.04.2024

As is the case every year, the marathon came back to London causing the usual chaos and aggravation. I remember we were in a lecture theatre at university and some seedy politician was claiming that the United Kingdom is based on Ancient Greek principles and therefore the Elgin marbles rightfully belonged to us. Everyone laughed. It was a rare occasion when even the sheep in this country could see the bullshit that the politicians spout for what it actually is.

However, that politician was indicating something in this culture. It mindlessly celebrates Ancient Greek institutions which are (I would say obviously) wrong and of dubious pedigree. Democracy? The Ancient Greeks didn’t include women or immigrants or the slaves that did all the work. And how can something be right just because the majority want it to be that way, at the expense of the (thinking) minority? The Democratic leaders were all douche bags that had no principles and just pandered to the sheep.

It is the same with the celebration of Greek sports and athletics. The Marathon (now if not originally) is a competition. The Olympics is a competition. But how arrogant were these ancient Greeks to make someone a winner and everyone else a loser in their ruthlessly and recklessly and destructively competitive collection of city states? How arrogant and ego serving are their games which we are still playing now? It is the mark of an arrogant culture.

It is the same thing with Alexander the Great. How corrupt, greedy and how much of a douche bag do you have to be to go and conquer other countries in the name of arrogance, egotism and pride? And yet this Western culture looks up to this asshole because ‘he conquered the world’. But as we all know, he conquered the known world but he couldn’t conquer India. India killed him. Because India kills arrogance and pride. It is the foundation of our culture and our thinking. We worship Kali because she is the killer of ego: that is what her insatiable blood thirst targets.

But what do you expect people to celebrate in this egotistical culture of neo-imperialists? That aren’t yet properly ashamed of and divorced from British Imperialism and its racism?

And this is how we come to it, why I am the lone man in this country. Because I don’t bow down to the government, laws, the crown or the political institutions of this racist and neo-imperialist country. I keep my head held up high for myself and my community. I don’t lick their feet and run my life by their rules and standards. I don’t let them devalue me. I would topple them in a moment if I had the opportunity for intruding in my area and in my life and trying to destroy us and our culture. In the name of justice, honour and truth, which this country does not have, whatever it says. I acknowledge no one above myself, least of all the white supremacists who have dishonoured my mother and my people. I only bow down to my mother. Out of love. No one and nothing else. Only love rules in my world. Not the hate of the western world. That’s why I am the lone man in this country. I am not a fucking slave with no self respect or individual conscience. I write my own laws for myself and follow them.

At work, I had the opportunity to give a tour to a mother with her daughter that had just qualified as a medical doctor. I felt the pride of the mother when she told me about her daughter’s achievement. I like achievers. I am an achiever myself. It is what we respect. I felt fond of them both.

I talked to one of my new friends at work who I like a lot and have liked since the first time I have seen her. She is a very charming and loveable person.

Not much else happened in life. Except for the fact that I thought I saw Helen come in with a man. It wasn’t her, it was someone that looked like her. It was just a moment of surprise.

I was reading the column in the Metro newspaper when people talk about people they like on the Tube but they do absolutely fucking nothing about it. Because they are cowards and dumb. I have actually talked to someone on the Tube that I found really attractive. It was a few years ago. It was a Japanese woman that got on with her friend. I liked her. I gave her my seat. She bowed to me. I started talking to her when we got off. If it wasn’t for the fact that she couldn’t speak English properly. She was super cute and super friendly. I could tell she was attracted to me because she kept on looking at me and smiling at me. That is life. So when I read the Metro, I look at these people around me and wonder how the human race even continued with people like this around.

Paris’s Love for Helen

20.04.2024

husn tera hai nangi talvar

your beauty is like a naked sword

jido haath lagein

when I put my hand upon it

to ghayal ho javein

then I am wounded

aankhein teri

your eyes

ekh aag

a fire

jis mein hum raakh ho javein

in which I become ash

aag he aag

only fire only fire

jis me hum choor

in which I scatter myself

baatein mein jaddoo

in your words a magic

har baat qayamat

every word a calamity

humein manzoor

i accept

gum-e-dil-e-mohabbat

the sadness of the heart of love

ae mere huzoor

my mistress

jo rehte hai humsein itna door

that stays far away from me

20.04.2024

Do you know what Paris’s love for Helen is? Paris can’t sleep because he is sick of love for Helen. Paris can’t get out of bed in the mornings because he is sick of love for Helen. When he sees other men following Helen around, Paris trembles all over. Someone is going to take Helen away from him. When he sees other men following Helen around, it feels like Paris’s stomach is falling apart. He feels like he is going to faint. And when he is sick like that, he has to talk to people and smile and nod at them when the only thing he can think about is Helen in someone else’s arms, Helen not being his, Helen gone away forever.

When Helen is there, he can’t look at her because he loves her so much. She is the only thing he can think about.

Paris hates himself for loving Helen because he knows that she is never going to be his. Paris hates being sick in love.

Paris hates the fact that Helen isn’t in his arms. That he is not stroking her cheek. That he is not caressing her hair.

Paris hates the fact that Helen knows he loves her and she doesn’t care about it.

What does it mean to be Paris? Paris went into Greece and he took Helen from the king in front of everyone. It didn’t matter how many people were there. Somehow, he took her for himself.

What does it mean to be Paris? To keep Helen as his, Paris fought against the whole of Greece. To stop someone taking her away, to defend her, he fought against everyone.

How lucky Paris was that he could have Helen. And die when he wasn’t going to have her any more.

I talked to a woman that had a puppet in her hand today. She was using the puppet to talk to me. It wasn’t a performance. It was a real conversation. She carried that puppet around to the evening. She had that puppet with her as her friend. So many people tell me that I am handsome all the time. And today, for the first time, a woman said it to me through the puppet. I said that the puppet looked cute. The woman made the puppet say that it looked cute from all angles and that I was cute as well, dashing. Was she trying to flirt with me through the puppet? Or was she just being nice and playful? I was interested in an exhibit at the gallery that she is at and I mentioned when I was going – should I have done that? I was just making conversation and I wasn’t thinking about what I was saying because I was distracted by today.

I made someone’s day by pointing out that the brooch she was wearing was a Paisley design. She really needed that information and by chance I provided it to her. She kept on thanking me over and over again. That is what it means to have and to share knowledge.

I went to a chocolate tasting event. At first I could follow it, but then the thoughts took over.

Someone told me I looked tired today. What can I say? I can’t sleep properly. This is the biggest disappointment in my life. In a life filled with so many disappointments and betrayals.

let me clasp at the snake

and suck at its venom

let me be one with the hurt

and death

give me the paper and the pen

that I might maul it with my

blood

the cross with its cruel nails is the shelter

the thorns adorn the crown

for the man that is god

that loves the unloving other

Day Off: The Flow of Research; One Happy Memory; Supporting my Friend, etc.

16.04.2024

Pretty depressing day. Such is life. When you think about your problems.

I spent the whole morning and into the afternoon doing my art history assignment. I just need to write it up now. That is going to be the hardest part because I am losing motivation in doing things and I am distracted nowadays. It has got to the stage where even the important things are pointless now.

But there is one thing about research and contemplating artworks and fitting them into your stories – you are lost in the flow. You forget about everything and everyone else. Because that is when your mind truly focuses on things.

When I was volunteering to teach English to refugees and migrants and give them the extra help that they needed, I used to have conversations with them at the end of the lessons as a group. They used to look forward to that part. It gave them a chance to talk and listen to each other’s stories. One day, I asked them to share a happy memory from their childhood. Do you want to know something peculiar? None of them could share a happy memory. Whether they blotted out any memory of happiness from their childhoods, or they literally couldn’t remember anything, they all came out with sad stories of unhappiness. That’s human nature for you.

But I have many happy memories from my childhood. Reading books and living in the adventures – we went to the library regularly although we didn’t have many books at home. Visiting my grandparents and then sleeping in the bed with my grandfather while he told us stories into the night time. My grandmother who made the most delicious chicken curry when we were visiting and fed us snacks that she made like fried bread and gulab jamun. Sometimes, they would buy us cream cakes. Holding my mother’s scarf while she cooked and talked to me in the kitchen. When my father bought me a top of the line Sony Walkman with a radio in it when he was working abroad because it was the thing I most wanted in the whole world to listen to my music on. Eating ice cream on the beach with my family. Going to the shops with my parents for the groceries. Going to school and being around my friends. It is an endless list. I had a very happy childhood.

Afterwards, I went to visit my friend. She has suffered a lot. But for me, she is always positive. I gave her a bouquet of white roses. I always bring her flowers when I visit her at home. I kept my little troubles to myself because she has big ones in her life and in her family at the moment. It was my job to listen so that she could unload and feel a little better and to say things to support her. I have started saying goodbye to her about ten minutes before I have to leave because she never wants me to go and will start talking about other things.

Next, I went down to the shops at the big mall in Stratford. It is a depressing place. The sales assistants don’t interact with you in any way when you are buying anything, the ‘book shop’ didn’t have any non-fiction books in it and the smallest range of books I have ever seen in a book shop, everything and everyone looks so cheap and mean. And that area is more up market than the area that I actually live in. That’s what it is like to live in a type of ghetto. I went to the Marks and Spencer’s clothing store and bought myself some nice white T-shirts because summer is coming up. I have never actually bought a white T-shirt that costs more than five pounds in my entire life. As a result, they look cheap. But, in summer, white is one of my favourite colours. So, for the first time in my life, I have spent twenty pounds on a nice, white T-shirt that I actually like and looks good on me. I bought two of them. After all, in my life, there is just me to spend that money on. No family of my own. Where else is it going to be spent? Was it a case of retail therapy? Women are going to look at my muscles in those T-shirts in the summer. I am still ripped. I’ve attracted women with my body before. If you have to get superficial, you have to get superficial.

Motivation is so low that I can’t be bothered scraping off the beard off my face. I don’t like beards. They are not a good look and they add age onto your face.

Now that the diary is over, I have to do some remote overtime for work. Just work. Nothing else. For nothing.