What is spirituality for you in your day to day life?
Every day begins with thanks giving, I bow before the holy book and thank God for another day. I then sit in meditation for a while. And afterwards I start painting, which is also a form of meditation for me. When I come up to the studio around 6.30 or 7am, I can see all the birds, parrots, and other peacocks on the terrace. It is the most divine part of the day, till noon. Only in the afternoon do I interact with other people. I have made a conscious decision not to answer phone calls, and not to have a mobile phone. I felt I had to protect myself. Otherwise it can be so overwhelming. In 1974 when I began exhibiting, there were two galleries in Delhi. Now there are more than 200. They constantly want to come and visit, see works for shows and so on. I could spend my life doing that.
Once the afternoon meetings are done, I go for my evening walk, and while walking I say my prayers. If I am driving somewhere during the day, I listen to some spiritual music, hymns from the Guru Granth Sahib book set in ragas, or poems from Kabir and so on.
So basically I remain plugged in and connected to God as much as possible, all day long.

What is the role of spirituality in your work?
Whether I am working on a spiritual series or any other subject, painting is fundamentally a deeply spiritual thing for me. And often I feel like a channel for something way beyond me. I paint something and then I wonder ---- how did it happen? Was it really me? So every day I feel this energy flowing through me. I was asked for instance to paint Sai Baba. I had not the slightest clue of how I would go about it. But somehow, it happened. And I realized it must have had some quality because when it was unveiled in front of a thousand people, they could relate to it. In that case as so many other times, it definitely did not feel like I was the one who painted it.

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