Eradication, in all its grim and violent forms, has seldom borne fruit worth the bitter seed from which it sprang. More often than not, it leaves in its wake not order but anarchy, not renewal but ruin. The true unguent for our wounded world lies not in the obliteration of what we fear or fail to understand, but in the difficult and holy work of charity. It is only when we resolve to love—yes, to love—even amidst our prejudices, that we may begin to rise above them. This, and nothing less, shall be the salvation of our civilisation.
It has often puzzled my companions—and not infrequently provoked their concern—that I can live quite blissfully without tethering my feelings to another through the flesh. From time to time, I do indulge the bodily appetite, though never as one enslaved to it, but as a man might sip a cordial on a cold evening: not for nourishment, but for warmth. Yet, truth be told, these encounters have seldom offered more than a fleeting quenching of the senses—a momentary hush upon the clamour of the body. They have never been the hearth at which my spirit is warmed.
My innate satisfactions—those rich, inward raptures that steady the heart and animate the imagination—have ever resided elsewhere: in the slow bloom of a letter composed with care, in the vibrant silence of a painted canvas, in the quiet company of books or the solemn symphony of thought. These things, immaterial though they be, have never left me barren. Indeed, they have fashioned for me a more durable fellowship than many a bedfellow ever could.
When, some time ago, I parted ways with a woman with whom I had shared four years of companionship, I felt no rupture of the reason, no weeping wound. Life, with its curious resilience, proceeded untroubled, and I with it. My friends, startled by my composure, presumed some grave suppression of grief. One, with the tenderness of a mourner and the persistence of a preacher, insisted that I must be grieving in disguise—that I had, in some subterranean way, murdered the very meaning of what we had. When I explained, gently but firmly, that a thing lost is, quite simply, lost—and that I did not find it fruitful to steep myself in sorrow over what could not be reclaimed—she recoiled, as though I had committed a blasphemy against the human condition.
More bewildering still was her reaction when I disclosed that my life’s concern did not rest in marriage, nor in the rearing of children, but in the pursuit of coherence—in truth, in beauty, in divinity, or whatever invisible thread binds the disposition to eternity. At this, she declared me less than human and fled, as though I had exposed not a philosophy but a crime.
Modern sentiment is insistent upon the notion that man must, from cradle to coffin, be cradled yet again—this time in the arms of another; that companionship of the romantic sort is the keystone of happiness, and those who live without it are either broken or bereft. And yet, from my earliest youth, I have stood somewhat apart—neither miserable in my solitude nor longing for its end. I have often wondered whether this marked me as defective. But reflection, that faithful old friend, assures me otherwise.
I possess—by what unearned grace I do not know—a naturally cheerful spirit, a modest taste for pleasure, and a temperament more inclined toward activity than brooding. Whatever impish passions once flared within me have, I suppose, been gently dimmed by time or tamed by temerity. Thus, I have come to believe that not all artists must be tormented, nor all solitary souls sad. There is more than one way to be human, and more than one melody in the plainsong of joy.
And yet, I cannot help but notice the deep confusion that seems to have seized the age. We have mistaken the intensity of appetite for the depth of meaning, and thus, the act which was meant to signify love has been swollen into a counterfeit of love itself. Sex, when torn from its rightful place—as sign, seal, or sacrament—becomes a poor prophet and a worse tyrant. It promises union but delivers only the echo of it. It mimics intimacy, but without the metaphysical gravity that true intimacy requires.
We are told that to live without constant romantic entanglement is to live a diminished life, as though eros were the only wing upon which the spirit could soar. But there are loftier loves—agape, caritas, even philia—which ask not for possession, but for presence. They do not burn so brightly, perhaps, but they endure the night. And when the fever of youth has cooled and the flesh grown silent, it is these loves—humble, unswerving, radiant in their invisibility—that remain.
If, then, I am strange, let it be said that I am strange only in this: that I have refused to let the cry of the bosom drown the whisper of the music. For the music, when it listens, hears a hymn no physical pleasure can compose—a music that plays not for gratification, but for glory.
On the Folly of Superiority Between the Sexes
I have never quite understood the impulse—so persistent and yet so ill-founded—that leads men and women to speak of one sex as superior to the other. Such talk strikes me not only as a category error, but also as a profound failure of imagination. It is as though one were to declare the violin superior to the piano, or the sun to the moon—not recognising that their powers are not in competition but in concert.
The sexes are not identical; thank Heaven they are not. They are not even symmetrical, as though cast in the same mould with minor adjustments. They are complementary: each possesses what the other lacks, each is weak where the other is strong, and each reaches its fullness only in union with the other. It is a great pity that modern thought, so often enamoured with notions of equality, forgets that equality does not mean sameness. A lock and a key are equal in value, but their functions are not interchangeable.
To speak of superiority between man and woman is to miss the point entirely. It is a bit like asking whether the heart is more important than the lungs. The question betrays a deeper ignorance—not of biology, but of purpose. For the design is relational. One gives what the other receives; one begins where the other ends. They are halves of a whole, reflections that find their meaning only in relation to each other.
And is it not the height of folly—indeed, of arrogance—to compare where one ought to cooperate, to boast where one ought to bless, to dominate where one was meant to delight?
When each humbly acknowledges the glory in the other, when man and woman cease to be rivals and begin to be allies, then—and only then—do we catch a glimpse of the harmony intended from the beginning: not a sameness of roles, but a oneness of purpose; not uniformity, but unity.
Ah, but when was the last time you truly let yourself go—wholly, unapologetically, gloriously yourself? Not the polished, presentable version you parade before the world, but that inner child who once laughed without permission and danced without music. I confess, for me, it was a long time ago, at one of those parties where the air is thick with the stale scent of adult concerns. The conversation meandered grimly from one sorrow to the next: sickness and scandal, the frailty of economies, the looming shadows of war and death, and the general conclusion that the world was teetering on the edge of some vast abyss.
And just when it seemed we might collectively dissolve into a puddle of solemnity, an old man—white-haired and wonderfully unbothered—rose from his chair, lifted his glass, and cried out, “Play time!”
Play time.
It was not merely a declaration but an invocation. At first, of course, the room recoiled. Whispers rustled like dry leaves—“Has he lost his senses?” “Is he drunk?” “Senility, perhaps.” You see, it is a dangerous thing in modern society to be unguardedly joyful. We have come to equate gravity with wisdom, and frolic with foolishness. But I tell you, there was more wisdom in that man’s outburst than in all our gloomy prognostications combined.
For there is something divine in the impulse to play—something that connects us to the wild joy of being alive, to the eternal laughter at the heart of the cosmos. It is the mad, inexplicable gladness that reminds us we are not machines grinding through productivity charts, nor merely minds churning through data and doubt. We are souls—souls made for wonder, mischief, and glad-hearted delight.
Too many, I fear, have forgotten the value of a little holy madness.
So let us ask ourselves—not with guilt, but with a wistful sort of hope—when was the last time we allowed joy to take the reins? When did we last leap before looking, sing before speaking, or dance when no one else heard the tune? And if it has indeed been too long, then perhaps, like that old man, it is time to stand and declare, without shame or irony, “Play time!” again.
It is not the mingling of flesh and blood that makes us kin, but rather the mysterious alchemy of the heart—that invisible thread by which fathers are made of friends, and brothers of those who share neither cradle nor name. A family, in truth, is a curious little fellowship: a band of assorted souls meandering through the wilderness of life, borrowing toothpaste, disputing over desserts, hiding shampoo like ancient treasure, waging petty wars over bedroom doors, and yet—almost in the same breath—wielding the comfort of love with the very hands that inflicted the wound.
And yet, so familiar is their presence, so constant their orbit, that we grow forgetful of their gravity. We take them lightly, these characters of our private stage, as though the play would run on with or without them.
But today, in a moment of idleness, as I wandered through the shallows of televised distraction, I stumbled upon the trailer for Mukhbiir, Sammir’s latest work. And there he was—not merely performing, but inhabiting a character of great depth and tension. My heart, I confess, swelled with a pride I could scarcely contain. Yet it was not the craft of his portrayal that arrested me most, but his eyes. Ah, those eyes! They held the menace of a drawn sword and the mercy of an open hand. In one instant, they could wound; in the next, they could woo. They carried, as great eyes do, the power to terrify and to gladden, to command and to console.
How strange, how sudden, to see in him not the boy I once watched grow, but the man he has quietly become. Just yesterday, it seems, he was the younger brother in jest and in truth. Today, he stands with a stature all his own. And oh, how proud I am of him.
My Dearest Brother
On the matter of the exhibition—what a triumph of the soul laid bare!
To create anything truly worth the name of art is to undertake a perilous voyage inward. It is to stand at attention before one’s own conscience, which, like a silent and incorruptible sentinel, measures each gesture, each expression, by the standard of truth and integrity. Artistic creation, if it is to have any worth, must emerge from the crucible of personal trial—must arise, as it were, from having traversed the dark wood where no path is certain, and where no companion may follow. The further one ventures along this inward path, the lonelier and more singular the experience becomes—until, at last, what is formed is not merely a work, but a testament: an utterance that is necessary, irrepressible, and as near to final as our mortal means will allow.
And yet, how much of our joy is found not in the present moment—for the present is ever fleeting, vanishing even as we grasp for it—but in the recollection of what has been, or in the anticipation of what might yet be. Memory is not merely the storehouse of knowledge; it is the soil in which meaning grows. What we call pleasure is so often the warmth of what was, or the gentle hope of what is to come. The mind turns backward and forward, like a man surveying distant lands from a narrow ridge, and from that vantage it shapes both delight and sorrow. Thus, our happiness depends not upon the moment itself, but upon how we reckon the journey behind and the road ahead.
And I must tell you—every frame, every fleeting image, I loved. It was not merely seen, but felt, as if each bore witness to something holy and unrepeatable.
The Stay!
In a strange and quiet way, the experience was a kind of awakening—an opening of the shutters, so to speak, to a world I had not yet truly seen. Until now, life had passed before my eyes like scenery glimpsed from the window of a moving train: acknowledged, perhaps, but never truly known. But now—why, I cannot say—things no longer rest merely on the surface of my perception. They press inward, as though the soul itself has grown more permeable, more exposed to meaning than before.
It is as though I have discovered within myself a chamber long kept hidden—a place deep and still, which until now I had neither entered nor suspected. And everything I see, hear, or feel now makes its way into that secret place. What becomes of it there I cannot yet tell; but I know it is no longer lost. It goes inward, as if the soul has begun to gather its own language, slowly and in silence.
And perhaps that is what it means to learn to see—not merely to look upon the world, but to let it touch the innermost self, and there begin its quiet work.
On Departure!
We are, it seems, ever the observers—spectators of our own lives—gazing outward upon the world, yet never quite rooted within it. Something—or Someone—has turned us about in such a way that, in all we do, there remains the unmistakable air of farewell. Even in our joy, there clings that strange ache of parting, as though we are always looking back over our shoulder, always departing from the thing just now beloved.
It is like the man who, having climbed the final ridge, turns for one last lingering gaze upon the valley he has called home. He pauses—not merely to look, but to feel the full weight of what he is leaving behind. So it is with us. We live, yes—but as those whose living is woven through with the quiet sorrow of departure. We dwell among things beautiful and dear, yet our hearts are ever loosening their grip, even as we hold fast.
And so it was with me. To leave you—each of you—was no small wound. It tore, not with noise or violence, but with that deeper pain that belongs only to love. It was excruciating, yes—but only because the joy had been so deep, and the fellowship so true.
Subi Samuel!
As I stood upon those great stone steps at the Taj, facing the vast and measureless ocean, the wind came upon me with such relentless force that it seemed to pass through flesh and sinew, straight to the bone. There was in it a kind of ancient voice—restless, ungovernable, full of memory. And there, with the roar of the waters before me and the gale pressing against my brow, I felt, not merely the chill of the air, but the chill of something deeper. My thoughts, ever inclined to wander down hidden corridors, led me to a quiet revelation: that my long-held dread of the sea was, in truth, but the veil for another and greater fear—that of death itself.
It came to me, not with terror, but with a kind of solemn clarity: that death is no stranger to life, but its constant and hidden companion. It is stitched into the very fabric of our days—not only in the grand farewells, but in the little surrenders, the unnoticed endings, the slow relinquishing of youth, of illusions, of all we cannot keep. We pretend otherwise, of course. We live as if death were a punctuation yet to be written, rather than the faint watermark beneath every word. But perhaps the true art of living is to learn, little by little, how to die—to give things up with grace, and to meet the inevitable not with panic, but with peace.
And then—I turned, and saw you.
You, my brother. In that moment, as suddenly as the wind shifts, my restless spirit quieted. My heart, so lately adrift, came to anchorage. For in your presence there was something unshakable—a strength that did not clamour but simply was. You stood there like a sentinel at the edge of the world, and in you I beheld a love that mirrors the sea itself: vast, unsearchable, and without end. And I knew—yes, knew—that I need not fear death, nor the ocean, nor any shadow that may rise. For so long as I walk beside you, I am not alone. Your love, like the sea at its best, is deep, and good, and without measure.
With love that does not waver.
Your younger brother
F
