I can get up early in the mornings again. It has been a week. It took me eight months to get here – that’s how long the journey to recovery took.
Psychologists can’t define what resilience is. It is me. No matter how shit things get, I bounce back. The Tiger stays alive, angry and hungry. Because he has cubs to give, produce and raise, so that The Tiger can live again in the future through them. Loyalty to the dawn of time and the origins of what is now called India dictate the resilience of The Tiger. Love for The Tiger dictates the life of The Tiger. For love, you would burn in hell for the thing or the one that you love. Without a moment’s hesitation.
Do you want to know what it looks like to be sick in the disappointment of love and the suffering of death? It wrecks your body. It wrecks your mind. This is what I looked like when I had my long illness:
And yet, here I am. Full of energy and power. Because I have self-respect, love for us as a people, strength and the ability to overcome suffering and transcend death. I have been raised in the religions of power.
And there is still the mission. When he was dying, Nelson said ‘Thank God I have done my duty’. The mission is still there before me.
And? Helen is still in my life. Girl 3 is still in my life. While they are in my life, there is still the hope. I am watching and waiting. I haven’t forgotten. I don’t forget. They are women. They change their minds. They can be won over. Soft water on a hard stone, drop by drop. Patience. Carefully, carefully. There is a chink in the armour. She reads this diary every night. Her mind is open to me.
Leander swam to Hero every night across the Hellespont so that he could love her. And Leander knows that Hero is the priestess of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. She worships love.
I got told off today by someone. Why don’t you sort your life out? Why don’t you just go and get married? Why are you not doing anything to change your life? So, even when you have other things to think about in your life, this is the topic that people are making you talk about.
In fact, it is not my fault that I am single. For the past two years, I have been trying to meet someone. The one I loved, Helen, I asked her out. Twice. It is not my fault she said no. I don’t even know why she said no. She didn’t give me a truthful answer. When I went out with someone else, Girl 2, she ended it over nothing. Over literally nothing. And then, the other women? Girl 3 wouldn’t go out with me. But there is a big age difference, so I don’t hold it against her. And the rest of them? They are racist. It’s no point pretending they’re not. I don’t lie about things.
So I don’t blame myself. It is not me. It is the women in this country. Although it is hurtful when you are being told off, as though you are not a man and not attractive in any way, I know that has got nothing to do with me or my personality. These women can’t decide to go out with me, they distrust me for no reason and they act like they are scared of me. When I haven’t done anything. That is the truth. That is racism.
When I was unemployed after my PhD, everyone told me off because they said that I wasn’t fit to be a worker. That I was lazy and I couldn’t do anything. But you know what? When I landed my jobs in museums and art galleries, I worked every single day and did every single overtime shift that I could. I have won five awards in the museum over the past two years – that’s more than everyone else. I have been promoted. Some people have told me that I am a model employee and some of the other workers have told me that they look up to me and they want to be like me.
So, in actual fact, as I have been saying throughout my whole life, I can do every job and I can do them all well. Like with the women in this country, it is just the bias and the prejudice against the way that I look and my ethnicity that people won’t give me a chance. They give the jobs to fucking losers that haven’t got my ability, talent or passion. That’s this country for you. That’s what you get for being born Indian. It is always supposed to be my fault for everything. When it is everyone else that acts like a fucking racist douche bag.
Every single job I have ever done, which wasn’t some shitty summer job, I have been praised for and even won awards for. Everyone that works with me knows that I am a good worker. Which shows you what these stupid criticisms and this blaming is. It is all fucking bullshit.
If I had a girlfriend, I would be the best boyfriend. Because I prioritise my relationships, I communicate honestly, I do my best to be considerate and listen and I am loyal. But still, the women in this country can’t trust an Indian man. That is what they are.
And I am never going to go out with someone just for convenience. These women might do that. I am not going to do it. To be with me, you have to be beautiful, intelligent, kind, I have to want to talk to you and I have to respect and love you. And you have to give me commitment, babies and a family. I am not going to let this society put me with a woman that doesn’t have any of those things.
Yesterday, it was sunny. So I undid the buttons on my shirt after work and I showed the whole world my toned chest and my six pack. Women stared at my stomach – they didn’t even try to hide it. One white woman with her white boyfriend stared the hardest. She didn’t even care that her boyfriend was looking at her. And I enjoyed it. Because I like women looking at me. It makes me feel good about myself. This is what these racist women are missing out on because they can’t trust you. A body like a Greek god. But then, when I got on the tube, I put the buttons back up. Because some gay guy came and stood in front of me and then stared at me. And then, when the seat opposite me got free, he came and sat in front of me from his previous seat and started staring at me again. Unfortunately, I have been targeted by gay men around London since the university days. I don’t know why they think that I would be gay. Perhaps it is just wishful thinking.
I gave some money to some poor people in India for education this week. I have done so much work for education for the under privileged in my life on a voluntary basis. I have done many things for society and to change it. But when it comes to my own life, I can’t do anything to improve my fate. Because no one that I love or liked has ever given me an opportunity. But I am not like them. I will give people an opportunity. Just because that’s how other people treat you, it doesn’t mean that you should treat them like that. The King is able to give when he is asked. His arms are full. He doesn’t have the emptiness in his heart.
Two hours studying art history in the morning and I’m going to make a start on it again after having to do some work administration for the payment deadline now.
So, for two years, I have been back into white society with my ‘peers’ (although the ones I hung around the most were all younger than me). And what have I got out of it? How many of them are really my friends? Where is the woman? This is why I have mostly kept to myself as an adult. You can’t live in the superficial relationships you have to have with these people. It is unbearable after a while. You need intimacy and deep friendships and relationships in life. And they won’t give you that. Because you are an outsider and you are different. But I can’t give up being different. Because I am different. You can’t just give up your identity like that.
This war between Israel and Palestine has affected England quite badly. Because it has become about religion and racism here in this country. They are spending tens of millions of pounds policing the protests and a pro-Palestine MP, Leanne Mohamad, is standing in my area on the fact that she wants a ceasefire in Gaza as one of her main points. The very fact that she is standing on that issue shows what the climate is right now in the electorate.
People are fed up with the racism and the Islamophobia that brown people get and they want to make a stand about it. I’m not the only one that is saying it – we are all saying it. We know how we are treated, however much this society denies it and tries to pretend that it is ‘diverse’ and ‘inclusive’.
I’m not for Israel or Palestine – I don’t get involved in things that don’t concern me and which I haven’t researched in great detail. I am just telling you what the situation is for brown people and why we are angry. We know what the real deal is. That’s why we are all angry – especially the sons and daughters of immigrants who were taught by this education system that we were ‘equal’ and entitled to the same opportunities, respect and love.
You are probably wondering why I am talking about Islamophobia when I am not a Muslim – that’s because people assume I am Muslim and treat me like that as well. I’m well aware of Islamophobia.
Pop culture is getting aggressive too. Rap battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar that everyone is talking about.
These people are a fucking joke. Get a real war to fight in. Instead of a petty squabble between two rich people. Celebrity is distraction. The real spiritual war is between the world of diversity (represented in my life by Punjab and the village) and the modern day nation state modelled on Western principles. To be a real warrior, you have to be in a real fight. To be the Tiger and the King of the Fucking Jungle, you have to have lived for twenty five years as an adult fighting and arguing everyone for equality, justice, real inclusion, a real voice and for the dignity of your people. Learning everything you can because that has been your talent – for the people. Someone with real responsibility. Someone that is the hope for their community and the future. Not someone with an ego problem that can’t handle a competitor fighting over trivial bullshit.
Throughout my whole life, since I have been sixteen, people have been complimenting my body. I have always just been naturally muscular. I have high testosterone levels. Today I got two. One woman grabbed my arm and said that I had a good arm. Another one looked at me and laughingly said, ‘what’s up with the muscles’ when I was wearing a T-shirt. People just assume because I am short and thin that I wouldn’t be muscular. So it is always a surprise to them. In fact, I was an athlete at school and known for being stronger than everyone and able to lift all the weights on the rack in the school gym.
I would like to say that my muscles are the result of discipline and dedication, an intensive exercise regime. But it literally makes no difference if I train or not – I have just always had muscles whatever I do. Not bad for what these young women are calling an old man.
Like most people, I used to think it was creepy that older men were going out with young women about half their age. And now that I am around women half my age all the time and I am single, I can see it from the other side. They are the ones that are single and looking. They are the ones that you can start a family with. In this society, it is thought of as an imbalance of power to go after a woman that is that much younger than you. Because in this society, people keep on thinking of you as a child until you hit later life. But let me ask you. Are you a child in your early twenties? No, you are not. You are an adult. Either you are an adult, or you are a child. And, if these are the women that are fertile and won’t have birth complications, if these are the women that are actually available, then what is the problem? Where is the power imbalance? What power do I have being a man that is older than them? If I have it, why does this society treat me like shit based on the fact that I am an Indian man? It’s funny how I’m supposed to have some sort of power of being a man when I get no benefits and rewards from it, only demanding responsibilities for other people. What about a fucking perk for a change? Like my own family and children? And a relationship with a beautiful woman?
I am so fucking busy all the time. I never get a real break from working. Do you know why? Because I have no woman to make time for and relax. I can’t relax until I get that woman. I am stuck.
So, the summer has come. And I think of Helen in her low-cut dress that I saw her wearing once. But the memory is a sad one. Because all she did that day was talk to one of those white men that always hang around her and follow her around so that no one else can talk to her. And that’s who she likes. And what can anyone do about it?
I am suffering from sadness at the moment. And while I was being sad, I was thinking about a quirk in my personality. When someone has really hurt me and disappointed me, I can’t talk to them properly after that. Because the whole time, I am thinking about how much they hurt me. Even thinking of anything to say becomes very difficult. So this is the problem. How can you go back to having the old friendships and the old feelings for someone that you know doesn’t love you back? Now that you know it?
fly where you are flying no one asked you parade the feathers and despise the look break my head with your beak still every night i throw the seeds into the air hoping that you that you the birds can feel my love
You can read more of my poetry and my other books including fiction and prose on my personal blog which features the Open Access MEHMI PRESS:
Someone looked now at the posts on this blog. Perhaps to see what I had written in my diary today. It is a Friday night. While I am at home, studying and working, it is the time for the western world to party. Could it be Helen? Is she missing me? Why is she not partying?
I wonder if I stopped writing this blog, whether Helen would be happy and relieved or sad. To me, her behaviour is ambiguous. But I see her with the eyes of the lover. I want her to love me. So I imagine that she does. It is wish fulfilment. But if she loved me, would she not be with me?
Everyone knows I like giving gifts. Perhaps no one really cares that I give them a gift. Still, we have our feelings and their expression. It is the one time that you can really show someone you care about them. The things that you cannot say in words. So I gave someone a gift today. I don’t approve of drink, but I gave them some books about drinks and a bottle of the stuff. They are going to drink anyway. If it makes them happy, just play along.
That is the difference between me and other people. Even if I don’t like it, disapprove of it, I will let other people do their own thing. I don’t try to control anyone. I will say what I have to say – that it is bad for you. That there are reasons why it is wrong. But they are not my children that I can boss around and expect obedience from. They are grown adults. If they don’t want to listen, you can’t force them. If they don’t love you, you can’t force them. If you see them choose someone over you, there is nothing that you can do about it to stop it happening. Even if it is Helen. What you can do is keep your distance away from them so they can’t hurt you. Even if they were your friends.
I don’t have any beef with anyone that stands between me and the woman I love. After all, it is her that chose them over me. But I don’t want to talk to them or be around them. That is my choice. Why should I be forced to be around them and talk to them?
Everyone says you should talk to someone that broke your heart. Why? In everything else I can be nice. Not when it comes to that. And if you do talk to them? All I would think is that there is still some chance.
When you love someone and they don’t love you back, you feel like you are not good enough for anything. Because they have not valued you. But what have you done wrong? All you have done is be yourself. And if that is not enough for someone, what can you do about it?
People are probably thinking that I write ‘what can you do about it?’ a lot. That is reality. You are powerless. You are powerless in love. You can’t force love. You are powerless in racism. Because, again, you can’t force the racists to love you. You are powerless in the popularity contest that is life unless you sell your soul to become a sheep like everyone else. You can’t force people to like or love you.
There is one place that I am powerful. In my thoughts. In my thoughts, I know what no one else does. In my thoughts, I can see what no one else does. In my thoughts, I am The Tiger. In my body, I am powerful. I am strong. I have stamina. I have total energy. In my body, I am The Tiger. In education, I am powerful. It is my jungle. In my territories that I know, I am powerful. But in love and like, in popularity, I am not powerful. There, I am not The Tiger. Because there, there are no Tigers. There are the idiots and the white man. Not us. That is reality.
Today’s activities. Jury service. University study. Getting the presents and then commuting to give the presents to her. Then, at home: work emails, remote overtime for work (one and a half hours) [you are asking what? Graphic design, workshop planning and writing, a PowerPoint to go with it – I was making suggested amendments]. Volunteering work – sending my artwork to the writing place I volunteer at for world peace. Leisure activities were browsing in a bookshop, reading about how to improve my writing style (this is just more work, but I’m not doing it for pay or volunteering). And this diary? This diary is work. Love is work. Work is love. And here, work is hope. Love is hope. What is the hope? Every night, I say ‘Helen, I love you’. Every night, I hope that Helen is saying ‘I love you’ back.
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 am on jury service. You are not allowed to write anything about it or tell people any details.
But there is something happening right now. I won’t go into it. So all of the energy has come flooding back. It took one moment. If you have been reading my diary, you will know me. You will understand. There is a guaranteed way of forgetting about all of your problems.
So I got myself a haircut, got myself a shave and took a shower finally. And then I took a photograph of myself to remember myself in this moment. Hope again. Trying again. Becoming new once again. The armour comes off one more time. If the sword is going to go into my chest again, then I will chance it.
In this photograph, I believe I look handsome and attractive. It doesn’t matter what other people think.
I am going to spend the evening reading. There is so much reading to be done.
I didn’t do exercise in the morning and I skipped breakfast again. I had to do exercise after jury service. But tomorrow is another day to try and get better. Tomorrow, I am going to get up early and do what I need to do. All it took was a change of scene and the stimulation.
My thought about Helen today. I think about her. It is not a secret. Every time I told Helen what I was doing, she wanted to do it herself. A language that I learnt. A university course. Photography. I wonder about what she was saying. Do you know, Girl 3 had all the same hobbies and interests as me? Potential Girl has the same interest as well. And despite having all of these things in common, I am not with any of these women. Despite talking to them all the time and being around them for six months plus in each case. It just goes to show you. It doesn’t matter what you do or who you are. There is always some excuse.
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.
You can either believe in the power of love and keep on writing. You can keep on hoping that Helen will change her mind. Or you can believe in the power of hate and separation. And expect that Helen will never be with you. You can either hope that Helen is free. Or you can despair that she is with the white men that she is always hanging around and that she has become someone else’s. You can either believe that Helen reads this diary, these letters to her. Because she has some feelings for you. Or you can believe that she does not read, does not love you, never thinks about you. What choice would you make? We live in the dream. The dream of love.
Slowly, slowly, the drops of water wear away the stone over time. Her heart is stone. Her eyes are stone. The water is each word wrenched from the heart of The Tiger. Each drop falls on the stone. It seems impossible. This love is impossible. This woman is impossible. Even fate itself is against The Tiger. He never sees Helen. He never talks to her. All there is is this meeting place. The meeting place of minds and hearts. And even here, Helen is silent. Even here, Helen is invisible. What The Tiger has is his memory of her.
And the memory today? While I was eating, I was remembering how Helen told me that the Indian diet is unhealthy and the diet from her country is healthy. Those are the kinds of conversations I was having with Helen. Arguments.
But do you know something about The Tiger? The Tiger fucking loves fighting. He loves the fight. The dance with the words. A warrior loves a warrior.
When you don’t want to live, there is a reason to live. When you don’t want to go on, there is a reason to go on. You have sworn revenge. For injustice. For dishonour. For love. Revenge gives you a meaning and purpose to your life. Revenge gives you the power to go on. You are filled with anger. And for your revenge, the revenge which will change the world and everyone in it, you live the life of The Tiger. The Tiger has come alive for one reason. The eyes of The Tiger have opened for one reason. Once upon a time, The Tiger was not the Tiger. Now, there is only one purpose. The revenge of success. The revenge of transformation.
We live in the world of our enemies. They hold the seats of power. They are demons with human faces. They rule the world with hate. They lie. They live shameful lives. They oppress the people. They seduce with the love of power. They have dishonoured our mother. Yet they live lives of privilege, ease and happiness. This is not a hallucination or a story. This is the world that we are living in. The world that must be transformed so that it becomes habitable again. Sometimes I look at this world and I know why the human race has survived like it has: because of the selfishness and oppression of its people, those that take and do not give but pretend to have a benign face despite it all, despite the absolute corruption of their power. The seduction and propagation of selfish power.
I gave the tour I wrote at the Gardens. I have had to change so many things to take account of the seasonality and the planting and the new places that have opened up. Without passion, you cannot perform. Without passion, you cannot revise and relearn. All I do these days is to learn things, interpret things and share those interpretations with other people. That is what it means to have a voice and to contribute, to change this world of ignorance and apathy through education. I live the life I was expected to live – without any of the rewards.
I went to Neasden Temple today and it was the first time I ever went there. It is the most beautiful building that I have ever been inside. I am fortunate to see, fortunate to live, fortunate to be there. Fortunate that I was able to go there from volunteering in the Gardens because it is nearby. I bathed the idol in water twice, once as myself, once as my mother. My mother is Hindu. This is her religion. Inside the inner space, the carvings were astonishing. The hand of a human had created this field of worship. The hand of a human had sculpted the dream to make this place.
And then, radiant with beauty and the gift of worship, I went into the exhibition space to do with Hinduism and India. It was a celebration of our culture and our achievements, which are not given credit in the Eurocentric and hostile West. Mathematical discoveries, medicinal discoveries, astronomical discoveries, insights into the human condition, the way to live, the way to celebrate and protect life on this planet. The way of living and thinking that has been there since the dawn of time and will be there until the dying moments of the human race on earth. The longest continuous way of being in the world. I have been raised in the religions of power to be powerful. That is why I am The Tiger. It is not just a name. It is who I am. The product of thousands of years of continuing, immortal civilisation. The splendour of India.
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.
I never used to have a bedroom of my own until I was eighteen. And even then, for years, we had the only computer in the house in my room, so everyone was always there all the time.
Since I have been a teenager, I have always had posters of women in the room. Women are beautiful and they are the most beautiful visions in the world to me. So why would I not want them around me all the time? The first poster was of Jennifer Lopez.
Today, I spent the whole day buying, building and putting the bookcase into my room. There were piles of books everywhere cluttering the whole place up and I am half way through so many of them or have just started.
This is how I have planned my room to look now. I moved the desk from the wall where the bookcase is now. So now I am sitting in front of the window which has the better view and the light.
You can see all the subjects I am interested in and all the languages I am interested in learning when I have the time. You can also see that I am a neat and tidy person. I like to live in beauty. I don’t want any mess around me. There is enough mess in human society and ugliness for you to have to see the same thing when you are at home.
We went down to the IKEA, me and my parents. I marvelled at the taste that you can buy in interior design so cheaply. So many different contexts that I travelled in throughout the day. And it all looked so good. I love interior design. Of course I do. I love all art and culture. I value talent. I’m not like other people that can’t give it its value.
When we’d got the bookcase, I built it together with my father. We did the job in about an hour. He was in charge, of course. I just followed the instructions and helped out without being told what to do most of the time. We were smacking the bookcase with our hands and slapping it about to get the dowel rods in and pushing the pieces together with brute force – that’s how we do stuff. We don’t need tools. We can do the job with our hands because we are tough and strong – although we did use the hammer here and there.
This is the bedroom where everything happens. I do most of my thinking here. I do my writing here at my desk. I make my artwork at my desk. I am always looking at beautiful people and beautiful things. And I just look at the books I own sometimes, thinking how lucky I am that I can be surrounded by art, culture and education.
The room has been planned and arranged by my mother. I didn’t choose the colours or the layout. She gave me the biggest room in the house for me. Women want to arrange their territory. Why would I interfere with that? With things like this, I let the woman have her way. I have lived in the smallest bedroom in the house for about seven years before this bedroom. I have lived in a shared bedroom for most of my life. I can live in any situation. But you can see how I have arranged and the stuff I build up around me. I try to live the life of beauty, art, culture and education.
There is a great feeling of satisfaction when you have arranged your space and the basis of your culture – your reading, writing, art-making and thinking space. Life feels organised for once.
diary of a lone man 