The Language of Whales; The Exam Essay; Helen’s Writing

08.05.2024

It is always the same problem. You love them. They don’t love you back.

Calligraphy from four years ago. Looking back in time.

I’m sitting here looking at how Helen wrote her name on the piece of paper I saved for myself. It is a precious object. Is it not apparent that I love writing? So how could I not love the writing of someone that I love? I look at it from time to time and think about her. The first letters of her name have a simple flourish on them. The style is not simply plain and unadorned. The letters of the most interest are the ones with a loop in them. I imagine Helen rushing the letters carelessly. One letter is completely malformed, curiously oversized. Is this a habit with her, a constant in her writing of this letter? The significance, if so? One letter is almost illegible. All the letters are uneven and have different heights. I think of her golden hands as she writes and those black eyes looking at the paper. And then, below, she has drawn a smiling face. The eyes are two vertical lines. Why vertical and not horizontal? Is that how she imagines eyes? But Helen is clever – the two vertical lines look like the letter ‘i’ in the alphabet – so even in this simple three line drawing, there is a little game of language – eye/’i’. And this piece of paper was given as a gift on a certain occasion, so one thinks about it more and more, a gift of chocolate. Which is love.

I have a final course assignment which is the most important assignment. So I don’t have as much time as I have had before when I want to relax just before bedtime. It is a lot of work studying part-time on a university course and working seven days a week and doing all the overtime. But, I am The Tiger. I have been raised by the poor where we work all the time for little reward. In the ancient Greek tale, one is the lazy grasshopper that gets away with doing nothing and can’t build a future and the others are the ants that do everything, make everything, build the future and security for all. We are the ants. We are the Untouchables, the lowest caste, the workers. Today I wore my black leather jacket – I come from the Untouchable caste of leather workers. If I cannot perform, who can? Education is a privilege – the poor don’t get it in countries like India. I have every privilege. Why would I forsake it? The true Indian doesn’t live for wealth, power or sex. He lives for knowledge and Enlightenment.

Today was an amazing day for science. They have found out what we have suspected – that whales have a language. It did not make the front page of the newspapers. It got very little media attention. But now we know that we are not unique in having a language. Now we know that there is a different type of being that we can communicate with, with their own culture on this planet. It is an exciting thought. I will follow this story, just like I follow the story of the Herculaneum scrolls.

In this diary, I complain about Helen. I tease Helen. I bully Helen. I accuse Helen. I share my life with Helen. I love Helen. And her? She called me a stranger. She treats me like a stranger. Even like a dangerous enemy. She was the woman that I have been the closest to in recent times. You have to laugh at your fate. At the joke that you are in. At the joke that your life has become. Someone somewhere is laughing. But, you know what? Everyone can laugh but I always laugh the hardest at this life and how sour it is. My friends can’t believe I am single when I look the way I do and when everyone likes me and my personality. Women on the Tube stare at me every single day. But every night I go home to my desk in my bedroom and sit there by myself and then I lie in bed by myself. So if you don’t laugh, what else can you do? Laugh and laugh hard. Why not? It is a joke.

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.

The Suicide Tree

02.05.2024

When I was a teenager, my grandfather told me a story about a tree in the church graveyard in the corner near his house which we used to walk past every time we went to see him and my grandmother. My grandfather used to live in London, so it was always an adventure to go and see him, because we lived in Essex. London was different, exciting.

But the problem was, that we didn’t know what London was really like. In Essex, we were protected in the Indian family. We lived secure lives. We had stability. We were raised the old-fashioned way. We expected adults to be together forever. Marriage was for life. What other people did hadn’t penetrated our lives.

We were just sitting there on the sofa. My grandfather began the story. It was a very short story. One morning, just a regular morning, they found an Indian man hanging from that tree we walked past every day. Dead.

He had married a woman from India and had called her over to England. But then, shortly after the marriage, she started hanging around white people. And then, she left her husband for a white boyfriend.

Everyone said it was a suicide. That the husband had despaired of life. But, my grandfather said, how could anyone be sure? What if it had been a murder?

A story that was forgotten at the time. A mysterious affair seen through the eyes of a teenager. Shocking because it was the first realisation that an arranged marriage was not for life for everyone, like we had been taught that it was. Shocking to think that someone could break their wedding vows like that.

When I think back on that tale from the life which my grandfather told me – a tale I keep on thinking about over and over again nowadays – I remember what happened to him. My grandfather’s father deserted his family for another woman. Which meant that my grandfather was raised in absolute poverty. He later went blind in life because of malnutrition from the formative years of his childhood.

This was the man that had told me the story about the suicide tree.

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

Holiday Day 5: Marianne North, Kew Gardens in London, Queen Mary II Concert at the ORNC Chapel

30.04.2024

‘love skull’

when my heart was of glass

i threw it at your feet

and it burst

so i picked up each shard

with my fingers

and they cut me

then my heart was of shivers

and when I threw it at your feet again

you trampled them down

now my heart is so infinitely small in atoms

and i can’t find it to throw at you again

but still i am looking and hoping

watching and waiting

waiting and watching

breaker of my heart

Yesterday, I rushed my diary so that Helen could read it at night time. I missed out a few things. One of the highlights of yesterday at Kew Gardens Wakehurst was that me and my friend started walking in the labyrinth down there. There is a concentric circle labyrinth and you journey towards the centre. My friend was telling me that it was pointless, because you could have taken a geodesic route from the outside to the inner circle. We like to argue. I was telling him that I am a meanderer. I go the long route and meander into something. It is how I have lived my life. It is what I do on long walks. I like to dilly and dally and contemplate, smell the roses. You might be reading that and wondering how do I manage to get so much stuff done then? Because a journey is an adventure. How many adventures do you get in life? Work you have to do.

Speaking of work, I was telling my writer’s group where I volunteer (one of the many places) that love is work and work is love. Every night I write this diary to Helen. This diary is Helen. I am talking to her. What about Girl 3 and Potential Girl? Girl 3 used to read my diary. I don’t know if she does any more. And I’m not sure whether Potential Girl has ever read it. So why talk about them here? If I am not talking to them? I think about them. I see them much more often than Helen, who I never see at all.

My friend told me yesterday when I told him I have been writing for seven months to her and she has been reading my words every night that it was the greatest love story. If only I could get her. In practical terms, I should forget her now. I should erase her from my mind. But what does love have to do with reason and practicality? Look at her. She has a completely different perspective on life to me. She is Western. I am Indian. She comes from the city. I come from the village. We used to argue about things. But do you know the spirit of The Tiger? Romeo loves Juliet. Paris loves Helen. The Tiger loves difference. A warrior loves a warrior.

So, today, early morning travel to Kew Gardens in London to work on updating my tour script. It has to change with the planting and seasonality. There is also a new art exhibition around the grounds to incorporate into the script.

Then, there was a tour of the Marianne North Gallery – I requested it for the volunteer Tour Guides. It was amazing, from one of my best friends there. She is such a lovely woman and a lovely speaker. She answered all of the many questions that I had and took us through the life of Marianne North, the artist whose life I understand so much. And while she was talking, I noticed the theme of death running through her work which has interested me so much. Like me, she was all alone in the world. No company but the plants and her oil paintings. A solitary soul that adventured through life, that didn’t love a normal, secure life. Someone touched by death that fought to see what is living, growing, beautiful, colourful. She is without a doubt my favourite woman artist.

Afterwards I looked around. I was able to go into one of my favourite spaces which has recently opened up, the water lily house. The water lilies looked amazing against the black background of the pond – they have dyed it that colour with food dye.

We all met up for drinks (and lunches for some) in The Botanist, a swanky bar in the area. I tried one of their speciality soft drinks – raspberry, lychee and orange blossom. It was so perfumed and lovely. It was one of the most delicious drinks I have ever tasted in my life (and I have been in five star hotels, some of the best hotels and restaurants in the whole world).

I walked around Kew Gardens all day. The sun was out. I was in a place I loved. I had a nice lunch there with Harissa chicken, chips and butternut squash. But was I happy? I have started feeling sad again. I wasn’t in the mood to be in that bar. I didn’t want to be in the gardens without a woman. I am feeling the want again. But you know what, Tiger still smiles. That perpetual smile on his face is what the Buddha and Krishna always had. It is the smile of wisdom. Smile even if you don’t feel happy. No one is unhappy with you. Nobody wants to share unhappiness. So just smile instead. Psychology says if you fake an emotion, your body just feels like you are actually experiencing it.

Picked up a new uniform for volunteering there – as is often the case, I have to wear women’s clothes in these types of places. Even though I am muscular, the only size that fits me is women’s because they never have men’s in small. I had a chat with the Volunteer Managers – they are super nice and super likeable.

I picked up some plant books in the library and also managed to get some in the charity shop when I went down to the Old Royal Naval College in the evening for the concert in the chapel to celebrate Queen Mary II’s birthday. The music was sublime. As I was listening to it – the vocals always make me experience absolute pleasure – the music was evoking all the emotions of that place and everything that has happened in it. It was the composer’s birthday so we sang happy birthday to him. I wasn’t going to, but then I remembered that singing always makes you feel better about yourself. So I joined in.

Dinner was Thunderbirds Chicken in Canary Wharf. The holiday is almost over and then it will be home cooking again.

Two compliments on my clothes today. The gardener at Kew Gardens said I looked like a rock star. Every single person at the Old Royal Naval College said I looked really cool and really smart. I have my own personal sense of style – I don’t copy anyone and I wear bright colours and think about the combination of things. That’s why people like what I wear.

Even if you don’t want to carry on going, you have to think about your responsibilities and carry on going. Today I was so tired. I was walking about the world with no woman in it. No comfort. They did an experiment on monkey babies with a wire mother with food attached to it. The monkey babies suffered with the wire monkey. They preferred a stuffed toy which was soft and comforting, not the food. They spent more time with it. Comfort is missing from my life and I am suffering as a result. The man that needs a lot of love and affection is not getting it from anywhere. I am suffering from love starvation again.

Holiday Day 4: Wakehurst Kew Gardens and Oxted

29.04.2024

my mind is i think about you

my tongue is i talk about you

my ear is I ask for advice about you

my heart is I love you

My friend’s advice is never to write about Helen again and only talk about the other women in my life. He said that she is not going to value you unless you are going out of her life. But this diary is itself a conversation with Helen. Otherwise, it is redundant.

I woke up early in the morning and started doing my art history assignment. It is taking so long to do this one piece of work. I’m quite happy with what I have done so and it only needs minor amendments. I have a whole day to finish it off coming up soon.

My friend picked me up in the car and we made our way down to Wakehurst. A few ideas we discussed were having recycled English so that people could re-use it – just quoting from other people. Another one was my daydream of making a shirt from scratch: designing the pattern, making the cloth, dying it, cutting it up and sewing it all together. Other wacky ideas I have: creating a jelly and ice cream shop in London with exotic ingredients that you couldn’t get at other places. Other topics of conversation: the appeal of Sherlock Holmes, hydraulics and lake management, all the things I want to study and don’t have time for, how many books we had in our libraries at home. We talked about The Secret History with Donna Tartt where they all study Ancient Greek as a community. I told him how much I loved that book because I studied Ancient Greek at school and I was obsessed with Ancient Greece and the ancients myself as a youngster.

Wakehurst was amazing, with all these beautiful views that you can see. We started off in the Millenium seed bank – the conservation work which is what led me to Kew Gardens.

The two women at the ticket desk gave me a very wry look as we went in and even my friend noticed them both looking at me. He commented that I looked like a super rich person. It is an observation that other people have made before. One woman told me that my face just looks like cash. Another guy told me recently that I dress like a millionaire.

I had chilli con carne in the cafe and later some chocolate fudge cake even though I started off the trip with a triple chocolate muffin.

Today, all I could think about was Helen and having her with me in Wakehurst. Libido is up to massive heights.

I sat in a birdwatching observatory with my friend for perhaps the first time in my life across the lake but the most birds we saw were sitting in front of a swathe of trees.

We left Wakehurst at about five and went down into Oxted. We had quite a journey up the hill. We travelled through some quite boggy grass and then up a steep hill which was about 45 degrees we guessed. Then through some thorny undergrowth and obstacles up to the top. It was an amazing view though, even though I couldn’t get a good photograph of it on my smartphone.

We had dinner in an Indian restaurant with a group of young women that were celebrating a birthday. I ordered too much food and had to get it bagged up to take home at the end.

I was falling asleep on the way home, but I know that Helen is probably reading my diary. So I have made an effort to put together the photographs and to write this blog. Because I have gotten used to sharing my day with her. I still love her. I think of her as mine. I want to tell her every night that I love her and think about her. Maybe she will change her mind about me.

Holiday Day 3: Four Museums, Five Exhibitions

28.04.2024

Me standing next to the poster of Mother India, the film I got my name from. In real life, her co-actor Sunil Dutt saved the actress playing Mother India from a fire which broke out. Her name is Nargis, a flower – why women are flowers for me. They fell in love when she looked after her hero Sunil (her son on-screen) in the hospital.

The purple flower is broken – purple for Athens, my identity at school was Athenian in Athens house… 💜

The Valentine’s card made thinking about Helen this year.

Museums and a charity bookshop aside from copious amounts of art history study, where I managed to make myself well into the assignment (still 3 hours of wake time left since it is only 20.38 as I am writing). Here’s the itinerary:

1.British Museum – Greece, India
2.The Wellcome Collection – Jason and the Adventure of 254, The Cult of Beauty
3.The British Library – Beyond the Bassline: 500 Years of Black British Music
4.The National Portrait Gallery – The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure, Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In

I will write about each of the exhibitions in due time – all except for The Cult of Beauty.

What can I say about the cult of beauty? In reality, Helen is the most beautiful woman in the world to me because she was kind to me. It was her behaviour that I was attracted to. She is beautiful. There is no question. But I did not notice her when I first met her. The effect was over time based on her behaviour. It is the same with all the women that I am interested in right now. Over time. That is the essence of beauty in real life – beauty through relationship.

As I was looking at Greek art and Indian art, I was struck by a curious thought. We all know that the ancient Greeks got a new confidence when they defeated the might of the Persians. It shaped the racism that was to come afterwards. I have been shaped similarly. I have been shaped by the Indian Independence movement when we beat the British. Because the quest for me is still freedom. I don’t believe that India has got it yet. Because the nation is not freedom. The Western law is not freedom. Anarchy is freedom. The village is freedom. Self rule in its unmitigated form. Dharma, not law. Freedom is still to be achieved. Freedom is still to be fought for. The war is not over yet. The scholar is still in the war. I am still being shaped by the past victory to consolidate our position. It is not suspicion – it is fact. The prize is still for the taking. Remain The Tiger. Don’t break. Tiger is still alive. Tiger has been alive for six thousand years and will live until the end of time. For freedom from oppression.

I am shaping to the new layout in my room. A new place to think and to dream and to create. I stare at the bookshelf for inspiration. I stare at it with love. It is what I want to become. So many books to read. So many things to learn. Hope springs eternal. Ambition is undefeated. The dream of education.

I saw the Rosetta stone today. I saw it with Helen. We read it together. I still have my memories if nothing else.

I compared the ‘Crouching Venus’ with the ‘Crouching lions’ in the Nereid monument. The woman is defensive, the lion is aggressive. The woman retreats from the gaze, she is hiding. The lion is fierce display. The woman is shame, the lion attack. The woman looks as though she is not moving at all, the lion looks like it is just about to flash like lightning. Which one, though, is the more powerful? That shame will douse any flame from any man. When you see them shrink from you as though you were a wild beast, all you feel inside is dismay. The lion, you would fight with. With the woman, you have to turn away.

I saw Michelangelo’s Pieta in the shop and I really wanted it. I am looking for a sculpture in my room now there is space so that I can be like Freud who collected these curios. My statues of the Hindu gods and goddesses are in the corner we have made for my mother to worship. I won’t get a female nude because of my mother, of course. The naked Kali she tolerates because that is the religion. I will have to find something else that I am interested in.

I got a finial bangle of some Egyptian cats to wear. One of my friends told me to get a bracelet a while back instead of getting my ears pierced. It was expensive, but what do I work for anyway if I am never going to spend the money? I have wanted one like it since I was a kid but never got round to it. I love finial bangles and torques. I was going to get the lion one first – my middle name is ‘Sim’ which means ‘Tiger’ from the Sanskrit word ‘Simha’ like the god ‘Nar-Simha’ (Man-Tiger). The word is the same for ‘Tiger’ and ‘Lion’. However, I got the cat, because the Tiger is a cat too. And I liked the design better and it was more visible than the lion design. The woman serving me helped me to put it on and take it off, although she actually looked like she didn’t want to serve me. That’s kind of what you expect from a lot of these women. The one in the charity bookshop was exactly the same. Why do you work in retail and customer service if you don’t actually want to even talk to someone when they are engaged in a one minute talk with you?

Books I’m interested in that I saw:

How to be a Renaissance woman – the role of women in chemistry and botany as they made make up for themselves
Plant Life – laser cuts and flaps in this children’s book

I was watching the dancing hands of an Indian woman as she was talking to her husband or boyfriend on the tube as I got back. It was an energetic dance. I had my headphones in and wouldn’t have understood her language anyway. All you can do is observe as an outsider and speculate on what they are talking about and why her body was moving like that. Next to me, a very beautiful Indian woman was sitting there. She was the most beautiful woman I saw all day. She looked at me as I was getting off, then walked past me as I stood on the escalator. As I passed through the barriers, I saw her walking towards the end of the tunnel. Believe it or not, I started walking fast – it was a race. I wanted to see if I could get past her. Before she finished going up the stairs, amazingly, I managed to get past her. I won the race. How could she beat me? I have the body of an athlete. I can walk as fast as some people can run. Why did I race her? I’m an athlete. I’m competitive. I don’t like anyone beating me. Helen has won. She beat me. But that is something I can’t do anything about. Because in the arena of choice, the women are the queens in this country.

Astounded by how silent London is when you are a lone bachelor around the town. The only people that talk to you are other men – quite a few in the tube today and then one in the shops on the way home as I was carrying flowers. No wonder so many men are desperate for female company. Luckily, I work in the industry that I work in which is full of beautiful women to talk to.

Why don’t I just buy myself a wife from India and the children will come? People have asked me. People tell me to do it all the time. Why not? Because I have principles. Because I am a lover, not a buyer. I am not going to buy someone with my British passport and my superior wealth to them. Despite this culture calling us Indian men misogynistic pigs (when they are misogynistic themselves), I believe in choice. Not arranged marriage with its casteism and its inequality. And because I want someone that I can talk to things about – someone who has had access to art and culture and the frame of reference that I know about and have studied for them to talk to them. I would rather go it alone than compromise on love and my principles. But what do I get for having principles: the treatment I get from women here in this country. You can’t win, whatever you do. Not if you have been raised like an Indian man in a white culture.

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 Sense of Injustice; Giving my Tour to Schoolkids; What Happens to You When a Woman Says No

24.04.2024

You are wondering. Yes, I thought about Girl 3. Yes, I was sad today. Yes, I thought about Helen. Yes, I was sad about her too. Yes, I thought about Potential Girl. And then, I also thought about the new interest in my life. If you are reading, I think about you. In your mind, you are free. You can think what you want. Nobody can take that away from you. And no one can take love away from you.

What happens to me when a woman says no to me when I ask her out? I stop talking to them. I avoid them. Why would you want to be around them after that? They don’t value you. Even when you try to force yourself to talk to them, you can’t any more. They obviously didn’t care that much about talking to you. They weren’t connected to you when you thought that they were connected to you. You don’t want to bother them with your presence when they are not even interested in you. And? You are disappointed in them and angry with them. Because you thought they liked you. But they didn’t. They don’t see you as a man. Anyone can say anything they want about it. Everyone says to me that you are wrong for not talking to them. People can say what they like. Where is the motivation to talk to them after that? They have just stuck a dagger in your chest. They hurt you. A lot. You have suffered. And then, these people want you to joke around with them and act as if nothing has happened, that you don’t care? This is this culture. A culture of lies and pretences. Where you are not even allowed to mourn in peace without someone destroying your mental composure by being right in front of you and you are never allowed to even touch them or be connected with them in any way.

I read a psychology article recently which argued that if you hold onto a sense of injustice, that it destroys your mental health. Look at the bullshit of this society. You have to hold on to the sense of injustice. Otherwise there would be no justice in this world. There would be no change, no revolution. Look at the sciences and the thinking of this so-called civilised society. They want to keep us down. They want us to spit out our anger. We won’t. It is what we are. Do you think Gandhi let them fuck him over with their injustice? Do you think he forgot about it? That is why there is an India that is not lorded over by the British. He didn’t think about his ‘mental health’ that this article is talking about. He didn’t care about himself. He cared about us. The people. For the people, your life is nothing. Your pain is nothing. Your blood is nothing. Everything is for freedom and justice and truth. And if you can’t sacrifice everything, then you are not a man and you are definitely not The Tiger. And we are The Tiger. That is what Punjabi men are known for. So we hold on to injustice. We hold on to our humiliation and the dishonouring of our mother. This is not Western ‘knowledge’, it is Indian duty. Jai Maa Kaali! Inquilaab zindabaad! Inquilaab sada zindabaad! Hail the Dark Mother Goddess! Long Live the Revolution! May the Revolution Live Forever!

20 schoolchildren. That’s how many I had for my tours that I have written about women, fairness and art history. The first group was amazing. They had this woman teacher that could read my mind. She was fantastically clever. Everything that I was saying, she got straight away because she told me that she has also been trying to shape the children according to feminism. So we worked together as a team shaping the minds of the children. If you want a teacher, that is the kind of teacher that you want in life. Someone that cares about justice and has social commitment. She was so pleased with my tour that she brought me over another group of schoolchildren so that I could deliver the tour to them! That was the proudest and happiest moment of my tours there in that context. And I hope that the seeds have been planted for the future.

The holiday is on. Two days with my friend, then about four days by myself. It is going to be amazing. Friday is just coming. I am excited.

The Bird Flies

23.04.2024

Sometimes I wonder how you can be happy in this life. Today, Girl 3 was sad. Sad things have happened. She won’t admit that she is sad and I can’t intrude on her like that. It is in the way that she was speaking. And, I like Girl 3. She is one of my best friends in those contexts, whether she thinks of me like that after I asked her out. How can you look at them and not be sad when they are sad? And she is flying away from me. It is happening. I knew it would happen. It has started. Her, I forgave for not going with me. Because the situation was different. She is not like that. Now, I am sad for her. But, she is young. The future is all open for her.

When someone is in my life, I don’t want them to ever go out of my life. But this is life, this is this world – you have to keep on watching them go out of your life. And? And? I cannot cry. Do you think that I can tell Girl 3 that I am sad for her and don’t want her to go? Of course I can’t. That is the situation. Maybe she will read and she will know.

If she was mean to me, I like to think it was out of love (and not because she hated me). So I forgave her every time.

So I was sad all day and I am sad now. That is life. You shouldn’t care for anyone. Because when you do, you have to be sad when they are sad and worry about them when they are worried.

But maybe, she will not be gone from my life. You never know. Sometimes, things happen. Even unexpected things and things you have realistically given up hope on. Pandora’s box always has hope in it.

So, for those reading, Girl 3 came a while after Helen. With Girl 3, I have not given her names. Although what I think of her as is Kali the mother goddess. Because she is all fire and rage. She has my personality. She suffers a lot.

What are the names that I have given Helen? So many names, because I have met her in dreams rather than in real life:

– Helen: the most beautiful woman in the world

– […] honey: because of her sweetness and the sweetness of her voice, the music of her words, and because of the country she is from

– Mallika-e-Hindustan: the Mistress of India (because I am India), because there is a word for what her name means in Hindi that is only very slightly different from Mallika (mistress)

– The Impossible Woman: because Helen is impossible to get, to talk to, to be with. She is the dream.

Whatever happens, even if Helen is with someone else now, I know that I loved her. I loved her. I asked her out. When I thought I saw even the inkling of a chance, I asked her out again. I never bothered her. When it came down to it, I told her that I loved her in front of everyone. I don’t care about the repercussions. I haven’t done anything wrong and nobody can say that I have. I am not going to accept it.

Even now, I think about her a lot. She didn’t let me love her, so nobody knows what would have happened there. One day, I will stop writing to her. One day, the news is going to hit me directly – I am going to have to see with my own eyes that she is with someone else. Maybe I have already seen it. That is the horrible thought.