Suneel’s Notes on the King Charles Portrait by Jonathan Yeo

(PhD in Visual Culture and the Law, Currently 2^nd Year Art History Degree with the Open University)

Jai Maa Kaali! Inquilaab Zindabaad! Inquilaab Sada Zindabaad!

(Hail the Dark Mother! Long Live the Revolution! May the Revolution Live Forever!)

(All info gained and discussed here given in the hyperlink below)

Charles suggested the butterfly symbol as identification for the future.

– The butterfly stands for ‘metamorphosis’. When we are seeing the portrait of a King in the outdated, undemocratic monarchy and the reiteration of the same conservative politics, ethics and being. A first born in a patriarchal culture.

– The butterfly is supposed to be oneness with nature – ostensibly to support Charles’s nature work. Is it the red monarch butterfly? If so, the suggestion is that monarchy is natural and unquestionable. When it is a social construct and decidedly unnatural to have someone rule over you. The shared redness of the colours – the royal colour – suggests Charles’s oneness with royalty in nature.

– The butterfly’s transformation is perhaps also implicitly being linked to the transformation of society as we become one with nature. He is being idealised as a hero for the movement for environmentalism and sustainability – but do we have massive amounts of money like he has so that we can be heroes like him? No. It is a false celebration.

– The butterfly is ideology.

– And yet, the interview, Charles says the butterfly is how he will be identified by ‘children’ – the imagined viewer is the child that is gullible enough to swallow this ideology.

– The blackness in the butterfly – which stands out as a deliberate contrast to the overall scheme of red – is ironic given the accusations of racism made against the old guard in the royal family with the issue of Megan and Harry – as though he is being reconciled with blackness. Or it has chosen him and his shoulder for a perch to rest on. This seems like ideology again: a soothing fiction for the public.

– Red is warm. Suggestion that Charles is warm-hearted.

– Hands on the sword – suggestion of Charles as masculine strength and power – pretty ridiculous. Even the portrait artist has to hide it at the bottom of the portrait outside of the focus because it is preposterous to think of him like that. The sword image diminishes the touch of gentleness and warmth from the butterfly landing on his shoulder as though he is a Disney Princess at one with nature. It shows the reality of the ideology – that Charles represents the coercive force of Conservatism, Patriarchy and its rule of (unjust) ‘legitimate’ force in our society.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/royal-family/news/king-charles-portrait-butterfly-symbol-royal-art-b2545308.html

Exhibition: The Time is Always Now – Artists Reframe the Black Figure (Some Notes)

National Portrait Gallery

02.05.2024

https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2024/the-time-is-always-now

Summary: Artwork from the African Diaspora. The website says:

”As well as surveying the presence of the Black figure in Western art history, we examine its absence – and the story of representation told through these works, as well as the social, psychological and cultural contexts in which they were produced”.

Notes:

– The title ‘The Time is Always Now’ comes from James Baldwin in the 1960s writing about the civil rights struggle.

My comment: So the aim of the exhibition is to combat racism and this is what it should be judged on – if it is giving dignity, equality and positivity to the black figure. Is it?

Overall impressions:

Goes through quite a lot of the current thinking about racism like ‘double consciousness’ when non-white people have to look at themselves through a white perspective as well as their own non-white perspective, etc. Educational for people that haven’t experienced racism and don’t really understand what it is like.

The art is presented as educational and as being completely resistant to racism. Can art be unambiguous and not contradictory like that? How easy is it to escape racism and to be free in terms of artistic vision and in your expression?

And how beautiful are the artworks? Were they captivating? Art does not have to be apolitical to be beautiful. But I wonder whether there were any pieces of great beauty in this exhibition.

Some Works Which Caught My Attention

As Sounds Turn to Noise (bronze sculpture)

Thomas J Price

https://www.galleriesnow.net/artwork/as-sounds-turn-to-noise

The artist says this is a composited fictional character ‘which really looks at the value systems contained within portraiture and monuments’. He was supposed to be giving power and grandeur to ‘fictional everyday people’, the under-represented black people excluded from art history and classical sculpture.

My Comment: Why closed eyes? The artist says she is embracing ‘the inner world that she’s manifesting there and trying to bring clarity perhaps, to all this noise around us’.

I wrote a book about the valuation of symbolic blindness in imperialistic, racist and misogynistic Victorian Britain. When blindness stood for power. Are the eyes closed because of this association from the past? Devaluation of sight in this system of valuation as in Western culture – when for Indians it is the queen of the senses and the motor of revolution.

The statue stands right at the front of an exhibition where we are looking – a guide to how we are supposed to see the rest of the exhibition?

Composited photographs from Victorian Britain by Galton were used to isolate supposed ‘racial features’ – how distanced is this sculpture from that process of racism and essentialisation when we are talking about race and the black figure reframed?

Ivan (painting)

Jennifer Packer

https://www.studiomuseum.org/artworks/ivan

My favourite painting in the whole exhibition. This is an intimate portrait of one of the artist’s friends and family. It is about a ‘human relationship’, not a person.

The face is caught in a mood of introspection. A thinking man. A reflection on thought and on the minds that give us our personality, that create our relationships with others. The restricted palette of pink is beautiful: textured, cloudlike, dreamy. Details make up the piece, there are no flat colours, many many colours. Complication. Nuance in technique. The enigmatic meaning of the feet – one clothed foot, one bare. The play between the spectacle of the body and the covering of the clothes, the ‘outer’ and the ‘inner’. A drip of paint falls from the black figure as it escapes into liquid from form. There is an air of insubstantiality, dissolution, as though everything is melting away.

The thoughts of this thinking man are what are highlighted by the artist in the personal relationship. So is she connected to him because he thinks? And what is the emotion here about that connection and his thinking? It is a mysterious image, a puzzle. Maybe her thoughts about him are unresolved, oscillating between definite form and the cloudiness that informs the image. An ambigious, contradictory and paradoxical image.

Seeing through Time

Titus Kaphar

Seeing Through Time, 2018

A painting I found very beautiful too.

This is supposed to ‘dismantle’ an exclusionary Western visual representation and to subvert it. The artist is replacing the white female figures from neoclassical style paintings with black women. The artist deconstructs the western representation and removes it from the picture through cutting, etc. Then, he inserts the black figure – inclusion.

In this painting, the black serving figure for the white woman then serves the black woman instead, so the racial power disappears from the image.

The white figure disappears and becomes a black face. However, there is a sophisticated point to this image: the white figure is still providing the frame for the black face. Blackness is still being seen through the frame of whiteness. If you look carefully, one of the eyes is cut off by the outlines of the white figure that has been cut out. The black eye is limited by the white outlines that have been given to us from history. There is a tired self-awareness in this image.

The black face inside the white frame looks sad. Her own body is missing – the black body. Even her hair – with all of its power and symbolism – is not being presented. We are seeing the fragment of a black woman’s body – she still hasn’t achieved full representation. The image conveys the sadness of racism and the artist’s rendition of the black figure. It is still a work in progress, still unattained. The Time is Always Now…

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.

The Turner Prize 2024 – ‘Punjabi’ Art is Shortlisted

24.04.2024

What’s on the Turner Prize shortlist this year in terms of ‘Punjabi’ art? Covered with a giant white doily, a red Ford Escort vehicle is presented to us. The ‘art’ is in front of a photograph of a family with the car.

Rosie Cooper, director of Wysing Arts Centre, who sits on the judging panel, said Kaur sees the vehicle as a “representation of her dad’s first car and his migrant desires” and it “blasted snippets of uplifting pop songs referencing freedom and liberation throughout the space”.

https://news.sky.com/story/artist-who-covered-sports-car-with-giant-doily-nominated-for-turner-prize-13122021

Suneel’s Comment

Obviously the artist shortlisted in this country – when they are Indian – would necessarily be female. This is what ‘diversity’ means to white people when it comes to the Subcontinent – the women. Their books, their art, their cinema. It is all celebrated. Because they are heroic ‘victims’ of Indian culture to the West. Us men are to be ignored and marginalised. Because we are the ‘oppressors’ of women in this culture.

And what about this piece which white taste has valued? The big white doily is the key. It covers over the car. The migrant desire – according to the rules of white society – is to be covered over in whiteness. The white doily – the whiteness – is self-consciously patterned and artistic – it is the touch of art in the piece. Otherwise, there would just be a car and a family snapshot. The white doily – the whiteness – is what creates this exhibition as a piece of art work. It is what demonstrates ‘taste’, ‘selection’, artistic ‘discrimination’ (the pun is intended).

And what about this ‘migrant desire’ which – despite the capture of the car in the whiteness that is like a constraining net – blasts songs of freedom and liberation (laughable)? It is ideology at work. The veil of ideology covering over the vision of the car, the white veil over things for the migrant experience. Blinding the eyes and vision. Interfering. Coming between self and object, mind and reality. Art is the white veil itself. What else is? They sing of freedom. When they are the exploited. They sing of liberty. When they are constrained and bound by the white net.

The car. The phallic symbol. Red to signify status and dominance. Gross materialism. Migrant desire is couched as greed. Desire for masculinity in this patriarchal white supremacist society. Desire for control – one drives a car.

Desire for freedom – the car represents freedom. A cliched symbol of freedom the car. But this one is caught up in the net. Even the music – they blast snippets of songs about freedom. Even musically, the freedom is partial, disrupted, interrupted, punctured by purposely oppressive silence.

Do you know what the net signifies in India? The net of maya – illusion. Gross materialism. Trickery. What comes between us and the understanding of reality. The doily is perhaps maya. This white culture and its control, its limitation of freedom for the migrant. The doily becomes kitcsch art – described by several art historians as the artwork of a capitalistic, unthinking and unfeeling, philistine and totalitarian society.

Yet, there is a paradox. If I remember correctly from the Metro newspaper article that I read today about the art piece, the doily also represents the Sikh and Indian workers that worked in textiles factories in huge numbers when they first migrated here to the United Kingdom (Metro 24.04.2024). So this net of whiteness is being created by the migrants themselves. Their deference. Their blind adulation. Their willingness to be exploited. Their inability to revolt against the systems of power.

So what are the migrant desires of the Father in this image? As seen through the eyes of a Punjabi woman? Desire to criticise the wants of the Father? Or an attempt to be sympathetic to his wants?

The artist writes:

‘In this show I am having a conversation with personal histories,’ explains Kaur, ‘exploring improvisation and political mysticism as tools to reimagine tradition and inherited myths.’

https://list.co.uk/news/43283/jasleen-kaur-alter-altar

But is this a re-imagination? Look at the piece again. It tries to base itself against reality as ideology – against the photograph, the representation of reality. The photograph has the Indian family in it. The base unit of Punjabi and Indian culture. The finished art exhibit has no family in it. It has a relationship merely to the Father in a patriarchal system of culture. A Father that wants to be covered in whiteness. Is this what is valued in this culture? Probably. The probability is on the side that adulates whiteness and patriarchy. The family is forgotten in favour of the Master. In favour of isolation and individualism. In favour of the desire for mastery and control and power.

‘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.

Future You: 21st Century Skills Exhibition

London Transport Museum

19-22 April 2024

These are my own personal views of the exhibition and do not represent any of the views at any of the organisations I am working in.

This exhibition is a triumph of energy and imaginative problem solving from the children, the future. It is a reaffirmation of the fact that the human race has always solved any problems that have come into its path and will do so again. That we do not lack inventiveness and ways of thinking around and through things. Even with problems that we have created for ourselves. It is a reaffirmation of optimism in the world and in the future of our children and the species. This world which we have spoilt can be fixed. That is the message of the exhibition.

Six primary schools were set an imaginative task in collaboration with the London Transport Museum – they had to find solutions for the climate change crisis. Aliens had told them that their planet was no longer liveable and they needed to start over again in an environmentally friendly way. The inspiration for their planet-friendly technology was to come from animals and plants.

As I walked around the masses of reclaimed cardboard boxes and lollipop sticks, the resourcefulness of the children was in abundant evidence. These cast away objects had been magically transformed. They had become something again. They had become the visions of the future. The tinkering of the children, with the artistic designs, showed their enviable creativity and collaboration skills.

Inventions were strewn about everywhere like a mad scientist’s frenzied laboratory:

‘The Helpful Bumblebee cleans the air and rubbish. The Earthly trees stop flooding and pollution as well as cleaning the Earth and so prevents coughing and sneezing. The Legendary Pigeon sucks in pollution through its nose.’ (Exhibition Text).

The models for each of the animal inspired inventions were cute and beautiful in their way – the innocent and sweet and simple beauty of children’s art and the infantile imagination.

The young artists and inventors had become curators too, and told us about the most interesting and important facts about the exhibits in the museum. It was beautiful to see what they had learnt and what had inspired them to share.

A nice touch was to show an old poster that imagined the future in London as a skyline with skyscrapers and flying vehicles. The idea that we have always dreamed of a better future for transport, that we have always had dreams which have changed this world that we live in for the better, that allow us to make a fantasy world that we live in in reality. The strength and far seeing sight of our mind’s eye.

This was a beautiful exhibition – full of dynamism, an adventure into a mad scientist’s laboratory. An excursion into possibility and the resilience of the children’s mind that can respond to the death of a world to create new life and new beginnings, to build a world entire, the world of the imagination. The desire for a better world from the innocent that have not been corrupted by dismay and stagnation in the selfishness and greed that is around us. But which rejuvenates itself in animal and plant life, in caring and positive change.

Echoes of the Blitz: Underground shelters in Ukraine and London

London Transport Museum in Covent Garden

Dr. Suneel Mehmi

01.04.2024

All views in this article represent my personal views as a private and political individual and do not represent the views of any of the organisations I work at. My expertise? My PhD involved the early history and reception of photography in its political and legal contexts.

‘Don’t survive it. Live it.’ These were the words that someone said to me recently. Survival is the most important thing for us as a species. In the field of psychology, they tell us that the human mind is geared towards survival. That’s where we get our intelligence from: evolutionary adaptations for surviving. But with survival, you have to live it too. You have to experience the fight.

The new photographic display ‘Echoes of the Blitz’ shows how we have to live through our survival. The exhibition ‘explores how Underground stations and metro systems provide shelter to citizens during periods of war – now and in the past’ [1]. How, when you are confronted with death and mortality, when you look death in the eyes, you fight for breath, sense and security. How you find shelter in unexpected places in extreme circumstances and still make a life for yourself. How throughout history and its rivers of blood, throughout the modern period and the supposedly ‘civilised’ Western world, people have hidden in fear to preserve their life, children, culture and heritage.

In total, the photography gallery displays:

‘70 striking images, including historical images from the Museum collection alongside 38 contemporary photographs by six renowned, mainly Ukrainian, documentary photographers.’ [2]

Some of the most recognisable images of the war have been of people sheltering in the London Underground shelters and these icons of memory are given an update and a new relevance through a juxtaposition of the scenes in the Underground shelters in Ukraine.

According to the London Transport Museum, what we are seeing is:

recent photography of ordinary Ukrainian citizens in extraordinary circumstances. They are shown sleeping, waiting, cooking, washing clothes, caring for their pets and creating temporary make-shift homes in Metro stations in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and its second largest city Kharkiv. These scenes are ‘echoed’ in the black and white archive images of Londoners taking refuge in Tube stations during the Second World War. [3]

The aim of the exhibition is to:

present strong parallels of human experience across different locations and conflicts. This exhibition documents the resilience of people in Ukraine and London during times of war and the reality of having to escape from aerial bombardment. [4]

Other comments have been made about the aims of the exhibition. Matt Brosnan, Head Curator, London Transport Museum, said that the photographs ‘show the resilience and tragic reality of war’ [5]. Stefan Günther, Project Manager, Photo, n-ost, said that the exhibition is ‘an opportunity to perceive the current war in Ukraine on a very personal level, away from the wider political and media glare’. [6]

I think that the exhibit makes concrete the idea of Ukrainians rather than Ukraine. All nations are fictions. It is the people there that are real. And in these photographs, we see the people directly and how they are having to live. And it is photography and its truth that allows us to see the reality behind the abstractions of the newspapers. It is photography that allows us to see them face to face and come directly into their lives. As a matter of fact, the frames of the exhibition invite us to do this. The black and white World War photographs have black frames. These photographs are framed and closed off to us – because as we know, the past is a foreign country. However, the photographs of the Ukrainians are not framed. We are in direct contact with them through our eyes and our perspectives. We are immersed into their world. There is no separation from us through the device of the frame. What is happening there is spilling out into our world, including us. Asking us to contemplate, sympathise.

Some historical details taken from the London Transport Museum website allow us to see the facts behind what is being portrayed:

London’s air raid sirens sounded almost every day for eight months from September 1940 to May 1941 and again between June 1944 and March 1945. Sheltering in Tube stations overnight became a routine. There were special admission tickets, bunk beds on the platforms, refreshments and, at some stations, libraries, music and live entertainment.

In Kyiv, sheltering in the Metro peaked at around 40,000 people at the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022. Some stayed overnight, others for days or weeks, returning to the surface only for groceries or to wash. Those who lost their homes lived underground for months.

Kharkiv, close to the border with Russia, experiences more frequent shelling. People spent more time in the Metro there, creating comfortable homely spaces with bedding, tents, carpets, decorations and toys. [7]

After you have read the blurb of the exhibition, the first photograph that dominates is ‘Woman in tent at Dorohozhychi station’ by Maxim Dondyuk, 2 March 2022. The woman defensively has her hand held to her shoulder, covering her chest: a striking image of someone in need of protection, someone that has to defend themselves from an unjust attack. She has to comfort herself with that hand on her shoulder. The woman stands out isolated from the crowd behind her that is not visible, vulnerable and isolated, perhaps like the situation of Ukraine itself – a country that has been left to fend for itself by the ‘civilised’ world of modernity which has disappeared when it is needed. She looks directly at the camera: she implores us to look upon her as the fate of her people, the innocent civilians subjected to the imperialism of the modern day state and its brutality, to their unjust greed and their uncontrolled and obscene desire for control, domination, land and resources. She asks us to acknowledge our role, the roles of our countries that have left her in this position. Does she ask us why? Her face is touched with sadness and suffering. She is in – through the connotations of the opening of the tent – in the dark den of despair, half-eaten by the hole, the absence.

In terms of its historical importance, the exhibition features one of the first ever photographs that were taken when the war broke out and the Ukranians sheltered in the underground stations. Viacheslav Ratynkyi, that on the very first day of the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022 he went down into the Metro and brought a camera so that he could document the situation. [8] The people have used the edges of the stairs along the walls as seats to create a clearing in the middle so that others can move up and down. They have been resourceful to give themselves make-shift seats that would be extremely uncomfortable to sit upon for long periods of time. They have had to adapt for survival and protection as a group, a group and species bound together by necessity and the cruel games of the politicians and the modern day states that are supposed to serve and protect them, the states that are supposed to be bound by the laws and justice. In response to the unjust throne of the state and its modern day king, who cannot sit as he should, the people sit heroically and patiently, in solidarity and suffering. They begin the long wait for peace, the desire of every thinking and feeling human being. These people are the human contrast to the inhuman face of power and brutality, the fascism of the modern-day state.

When I say I am Indian and come from India, it is the India of the people, not the India of the politicians or the intolerant and oppressive citizenship that they want to create. The state that they create is not India. What they create is corruption. We, we the people, we are India. And here, in this photography exhibit, we have the Ukrainians and Ukraine. These people are not defined by the war. In this exhibit, we see them doing the things that we all do every day: listening to music, learning, reading, dying their hair. Holding each other for comfort. They are victims of the state and the politicians. But they have organised themselves. They have created a space away from the brutal games of the state and its quest for total domination. Across world history, across the suffering that man has created, we look at the victims of the politicians and how they have tried to carve out another space and another reality beyond what the unimaginative and corrupt state has imagined. People who live through their struggle for survival. With resilience. As I look at these photographs, I know that one day, the modern-day state with its evils will fall. It has to. Because the spirit of the people will one day overcome the absurd egotistical limitations of geographical and racial boundaries. You can see this in the people and the photographs. You can feel the power of pure being. The desire to move out of the control of others. The spirit of resistance. The spirit of overcoming. Because these people are not trying to create a nation state down there in the underground shelters. They are trying to create a human community: a sphere of protection and life. It is a world meant to foster life – the world that we are trying to create by countering domination with the philosophy of live and let live, by countering selfishness with the desire for preservation, by countering the desire for destruction and death with the desire for life and the future.

If you want to see what a real hero looks like, don’t look at the soldier with blood on his hands, the killer for the state. Look at the everyday hero that fights for survival in an oppressive world and the games of control around them by trying to create another reality – the reality of peace and life. Freedom from death, envy, killing, exploitation. Freedom from the state and its obscenity and blood lust. The people that have created history, tradition and culture by surviving – by fighting to survive and live through that survival – and not by dying and killing in war.

[1] https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/news/new-echoes-blitz-underground-shelters-ukraine-and-london-photography-exhibition-now-open#:~:text=A%20new%20photography%20exhibition%3A%20Echoes,now%20and%20in%20the%20past.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

The Love Story of One of My Favourite Friends

27.02.2024

She is one of my favourite friends in museums and art galleries. She is a special person. She has helped me a lot. She promised that she would tell me this famous love story from her culture because she is as interested in psychology, people and relationships as I am. And now I have heard it. And I will share it, just like she shared it with me. Originally, her grandmother shared it with her, alongside many other folk tales.

Once, a man asked the woman that he loved how much she loved him. She answered that she loved him like the morning breeze on the flowing meadows in the mountains. He was angered. He thought himself rejected. Did she have a love for him that was like the wind, nothing, meaningless? Was he no matter at all to her? When he loved her so much? He struck her down. He killed her. It was an act of revenge for the rejection that she had given him. It was an act against the failure of reciprocity: she could not love him like he loved her. He had become ego: he thought that only he could love, that she was heartless, that only his love was important.

It happened after this – who knows how long after? – that he went up into the hills in the flowing meadows. The sun beat down on him. It punctured his skin, it vanquished his eyes, his whole body hurt from the heat. But then, like the kiss of a loving mother, the morning breeze washed over his body in a balmy embrace. And then, the tears sprung into his eyes. This. This is how she had loved him. This was the love that he could not understand. Her love for him was the love of solace, cure, repair, protection, shelter, caress, survival, everything that was needed, everything that was wanted. Her love for him was her life entire. There could be no love greater.

The ego of love was vanquished. What was his love for her compared to her love for him? Her who he had struck down and killed was the true lover. It was him that could not love in the right way. He had been a monster of delusion and insecurity. He had thought the wind had no weight, no form, no appearance, no reality. In fact, the wind was everything. It was the heart’s and the body’s greatest desires. His disbelief in the love was like the disbelief of the invisible God in the old days: he had been seduced by the devil and become an infidel, doomed to hell.

The man’s egotistical interpretation and its form of closure was a form of violence, a murder of the other. Of love and the lover.

When I was a child, my grandfather would tell me stories like these. Not about love. It was not the story of a grandmother to a beloved granddaughter. Tales of folk wisdom. From our culture. From cultures around the world. And then, when we had finished listening, he would ask us to tell him the moral to be found in each treasure. When we had interpreted the story, he would tell us the morals that were in it.

I watched my beautiful friend speaking, imagining her as a child listening to the woman that she loved so much, the storyteller. I loved my grandfather most for his stories, for teaching me. And when she finished, and I was still looking at her, we talked about what the story meant for us.

My initial thoughts were that the story was about the different languages of love that women and men speak. As someone who has had troubles himself, it seems that there are two different styles of expressing love. Some people – I am not saying they are exclusively women – express love in a veiled or concealed manner. They cannot say what they feel out loud in direct language. They think that would be too coarse, that it would expose their inner self too much. These people are scared. They are scared of love. These people – like the woman in the story – believe that their lover should be able to read their minds, know exactly what they are talking about and saying, feeling in their inner core. They imagine their lovers as the most gifted of communicators, as people able to interpret their every gesture, every tone in their voice. They forget about ambiguity which is structural to language, mistakes which are endemic, difficulties, lack of comprehension stemming from culture, background and socialisation, the gendering of people in every manner. These people feel that their lover is an extension of themselves and that communication doesn’t have to travel across a distance and a medium. For these people, the lover is an unquestionable expert in them: someone who cannot ever be wrong.

The man is like me. He wants a clear, unambiguous declaration of love that he can understand because he has difficulty understanding women. He hasn’t experienced the same world as women – the flowing meadows in the mountains and the wind there. He is not scared. He never fears. He is a man of violence, a fighter – he comes from the culture of fighters who act first and then think afterwards. That is why he speaks bluntly. He does not allude to things, he does not compare. He wants simplicity. And he does not understand people that are scared of their own love. He does not think it is coarse to share your feelings. They are what you are. They are what you experience. They are the way that you see other people and the world.

Then, while I write now, I see the story to be about the egotism of the man’s love. He cannot understand that the woman loves him in a different kind of way – the superior kind of way – and expresses this in a different kind of way. He feels he is not important to her because of this. He is insecure. He is wrong because ego has taken over. He is insecure because ego has taken over. How could he ask her how much she loved him in the first place? It is not a contest. He does not accept the love that she gives him by being with him. He has to question. Then, he makes it into a contest. For her, love truly is everything. She cannot say it out loud. It is a realisation that he has to come to later on in his life, in the solitude of the mountains, when he is close to heaven and the angels. For him, love is not everything. Because how can you lay a hand on the one that you love like that? How can you kill her? Even if she does not love you, that is her choice. Even if she loves you and for some reason, she cannot do anything about it, that is her choice. The man cannot respect a woman’s choice. He does not have respect for women. He does not understand women. When someone doesn’t love you and doesn’t return your feelings, you can’t kill your own love for them. No matter how hard you try. But that is what he tried to do by killing her – he tried to kill his own love for her.

And finally, the moral of the story is what love means to the lover. It is what only the lover understands. Love is everything. Love is the protection against this hard world and the suffering within it. Love is the greatest comfort that you can experience. Whatever happens in life, I have been protected by the love of my mother. No matter how difficult things have gotten in life or the serious problems. Other people have money to protect them. Or their race or status or class. What we have had to protect us is love. In this one area, we are the powerful. Because the love of an Indian mother from the village is the breeze in the mountains in the morning. It is the love that the Indian man looks for in a woman romantically. So he looks for kindness, comfort, release from suffering, release from the brutality and arbitrary despotism of this world and its weathers. The happiness of comfort. And the man in the story killed the one that gave him all that. It is a story about ingratitude, the privilege and complacency of the men that get that kind of love and can’t appreciate it, the men who have no value for how lucky they have been, how destiny has embraced them. The selfishness of their love, the smallness of their hearts and their minds. And also – the reality that, nonetheless, the women will be with them anyway and give them the most precious thing in the universe – their hearts and the comfort that comes with it.

Empress of India; The Obscene Dance of Death; The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar; What Katy Did and Suffering; Role Models

17.02.2024

My secret name for her which I call her in my head is ‘Mallika-e-Hindustan’ – Empress of India. I am India. Mallika is similar to another word which is the word for her name in Hindi as a direct translation. The name comes from a Hindi film about love which stars Aishwarya Rai who won Miss World for India and is commonly regarded as Indians as the most beautiful woman in the world. The title for this historical queen is quoted in the movie in this fight scene below (link). It should be clear by now the nature of the love – a warrior loves a warrior. Scene here:

The obscene and naked dance of death is coming once more into my life again with one of my dearest and closest friends. You do not want to look. You have to look. It is the ugliest sight in the world. If not with this operation, soon. It hit hard today. But, I cannot cry. Whatever happens. Only in anger. When she stopped coming to the reading group and was fighting against the cancer, I called her every week to bring the group to her and share what we were talking about. To support her during her fight with the illness. During Covid, I called her every week. We have been talking every week for the past six years or so. Do you know how kind she is? She is dying and instead of thinking about herself, when I went over, she invited one of her friends over to introduce her to me because she knows what is happening in my life. She wouldn’t even talk so that I could talk to her friend instead who she had decided she wanted to introduce me to, for me. She thought of me and my problems instead of herself. After she had just recovered from cancer, she raised funds for a hospital in a poor country by writing a book which she sold at her church. Even though she was exhausted. She became a nurse because she thought it was her duty. She is a special person and no one will be able to replace her. She is my ideal of a woman. Beautiful, dutiful, friendly, family-oriented, good-natured, active, socially committed, kind, aspires to education, loves poetry, art, literature and learning, good at conversation, makes you feel good about yourself, always compliments you (she told me I looked so handsome when I went to meet her).

The bad stuff always happens to the best people. My best woman friend at university, Sita, one of the only ones who talked to me because I had skipped the first year and wasn’t in any of the cliques, she ended up being hit by a lorry on a bicycle. I think about her a lot. She needs help now around the clock. She was such a beautiful woman who loved to dance. All around you, there is suffering. Sita’s story:

https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/familys-battle-after-tragic-accident-16238521

I watched Wes Anderson’s adaptation of ‘The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar’ by Roald Dahl. The story is about India and its philosophy, how it is an antidote to the selfishness of Western society and of its idle rich who have no empathy with the poor. And in that story, death is a prominent theme – the first one with the gift of yoga learns to focus his attention and concentration on his beloved dead brother. Death shapes life. Love and loss shape your life. You can’t escape it. Everyone I know is younger than me. They weren’t raised by their grandfather who died. They didn’t have to be the husband for their grandmother that died. What can they know about what it feels like and what it does to you? What do they know about anything?

Roald Dahl was my favourite author when I was a kid. And I was thinking of the most memorable books I read as a child. I have been a bookworm my whole life. I remember ‘The Hobbit’. But most of all, I remember ‘What Katy Did’. I have thought about that book throughout my whole life. Katy is a naughty girl that becomes an invalid. First she lashes out at everyone and the world because she suffers. But then her cousin who is an invalid and the sweetest person in the world, who makes life happy for everyone despite what she is suffering inspires her. And then Katy becomes good. She makes everyone’s life happy despite all the problems she is going through in her life. And now, I have met Katy in real life. She is one of my closest friends.

Somebody at one of the places where I work told me once that everyone says be like Suneel. And today, after something that happened, someone came and told me that I was one of their role models. I don’t want to be a role model for anyone. Everyone is doing the same job. I am not a manager. But people come to me like I am. Some people have told me that I can’t be like everyone else because I have power and authority over them when I am on the same level as them. It is sad. What I have chosen not to do, I have to do anyway. But that is life. People expect things from you. People always expect a lot from me. It has always been the same since I was a kid. The teachers used to make me do extra work in class because I used to finish everything quicker than everyone. At home, all of the most demanding things, I had to do, all the emotional support. My mother has told me that I am the strongest, the one with the iron will, the most stubborn. Everyone expects absolute strength from me. And it is because of that that I am strong.

Hugs, Orpheus; First Month of the New Year; Why I am The Tiger

27.01.2024

Diary views have gone up again for the third day in a row. What is the interest for all of the people reading?

It has been a whole month in the year. I have achieved a few new things. I went to an event and talked to someone. I applied for a new job. I joined a new volunteering place. I have started two important writing projects that will get some exposure. I have started up exercise and weights again in the mornings. I have even forced myself to start making art again even though I don’t feel like it.

Even for her, who I was never going to look at, talk to or interact with ever again, I have done what she wanted so she just gets everything her way and wins in everything. I am not a sore loser. What I asked her for, for some reason she couldn’t give me. That is life (that is my new catchphrase, taken from the ‘Such is Life’ discussion in John Wick 4 – it’s what a person going to be executed said about his experience when asked about it). At least one person should be happy in life. And it is women’s choice in this country anyway. Why should everyone suffer?

You know why I am the Tiger? The tiger is known for his strength, ferocity, aggression and the ability to kill and maim. The tiger is the king of the jungle. No one can beat the tiger. I have arguments with people every day about how I live my life and what choices I have made. I can fight against the whole world. I don’t care. No one ever beats me in words, no one can persuade me, no one can make me deviate from the path I have chosen. The tiger is capable of fighting alone, hunting alone, living alone. But the tiger is also known for having a big heart. The Punjabi community, the community of tigers, have the biggest hearts in the world. We are known for it and it is our boast. Other people can’t take an argument like me, they can’t last. It hurts their peace of mind too much. So for them, I keep my mouth closed. The tiger only hurts others and fights if he has to. That is the meaning of being powerful and strong. Having control, discipline and empathy. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter who is right or wrong. It is the relationship that you have that matters. Everyone has their own path in life, their own meaning, their own belief, their own way to their destinations.

In the morning, the simple woman that gets on the bus with me all the time – wherever I am – started approaching me. I lifted off my headphones – I listen to a lot of Hindi film music. She asked me if I loved her. I said the same thing I say to her all the time: ‘Everyone loves you’. Why not? She is a nice person even if she is eccentric and invades your space. She asked me where my family was from and how old I was. Then she told me that I was like her son – she was about ten years older than me. And then, surprisingly, she gave me a hug, the third hug this week.

When I got to work, I got two more hugs from someone. So I have had five whole hugs this week. That is more than I probably had the whole time I was doing my PhD over several years. That’s the kind of love you get from the ‘educated’ white middle classes and their women that pretend they are ‘woke’ and inclusive in this country. They only fool other white people.

Someone at work told me that I seemed like I was in a really happy mood today. I have a philosophy at work which I have told some people. Whatever problems I have in my life – and there are a lot of them – more than other people could handle – I smile at work and joke around with everyone. Most of the time. In this line of work, we are all professional actors. We hide our own feelings. We get along with everyone. We don’t think about ourselves. We think about other people. When I was growing up, my grandfather told me the same thing a few times. When you laugh, everyone laughs with you. When you cry, no one cries with you. And anyway, all my friends from yesterday night were at work today.

Thinking about a Hindi film called ‘Mera Naam Joker’. Whatever the clown hero did in his life, he couldn’t get the woman that he loved. They all left his life for something or someone else. And the clown? He had to make everyone else happy. That was his fate. That was the only way that he could get some kind of love for himself.

Someone asked me why I didn’t just get an arranged marriage in India. Because I want to be loved for just me. That’s why. Not for a visa. Not for money. Not for my ‘Western power or identity’. Someone that likes me for me. No agenda. But we live in the world. No one loves you just for yourself. They love you for your skin colour. They love you for what you have, like your height and your own living space. They don’t love you for being honest with them, caring about them, thinking of them first. Doing things for them. Being in love with them.

Have you ever thought much about the myth of Orpheus? He had to look back when the woman he loved was in the realm of death, separated from him. But can you imagine a myth where he doesn’t look back? Orpheus has to look back whatever happens. Because he loves her. So at least Orpheus can look at her. Even if she is no longer his, at least he has the sight of beauty in front of him. That consolation isn’t a cheap one. It means something – another look at the woman you are separated from and that is never going to be yours.