Can you share a unique experience that changed or shaped your spiritual beliefs?
My spiritual growth has been a very gradual one, there have been no dramatic awakening moments. But still, the encounter with my guru twenty years ago did mark a turning point. It has enabled a deeper and broader understanding of so many things, including my own Sikh holy book and further exploration on so many dimensions.

What have been your main spiritual inspirations?
This whole approach to life and spirituality did not mushroom by chance one day. It is the result of everything I saw and experienced as a child. When partition took place, my family was vacationing on this side of the border, so my grand-father went back to Lahore to rescue his parents and in-laws, but also the holy book. Few people actually know that out of 36 poets comprised in the book, only seven are Sikh, all the others being Hindu and Muslim. So since childhood, prayers and reading from the holy book would take place every day. Not a day would go by without me spending time on my own in the prayer room. My great-grand-father would visit every day both the gurudwara and the Hindu temple. My grand-father would never charge poor individuals as a doctor. My mother, despite barely having enough to provide for our family, would always find a way to make blankets, quilts, food for poorer ones. So there was this great secularism, this wide, embracing and loving ethos which I imbibed on a daily basis, and which I try to live to this day.

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