When I applied my logical mind — see, I grew up on European philosophy and Kafka — I had no words to describe what was happening within me. It was too beautiful. When I spoke to the closest friends I had, the only question they asked me was, did you drink something, did you take some drug? This started happening over and over again and in about six weeks time it became a reality. Everything about me changed in six weeks.

• In your case it did not happen with sadhana, going to the hills, praying for years, growing a beard. You did not renounce your family or family life.

I must tell you this incident. I don’t know whether it is relevant for you. When I was just about 14 years of age, my mother always treated me like her elder brother. I was the youngest in the family. My other three siblings were all older to me. Even when I was a child, somehow they didn’t treat me as a child. I was never cuddled, taken on to the lap; somehow they couldn’t deal with my extremely logical questions. In India, mothers don’t have to come and say, ‘I love you’ because in India they are not given to such public expressions of love. So one day, she expressed herself in some way. For me, it was just a casual question: suppose I was born in the next house, would you still feel about me in the same way? She just broke down, tears came to her eyes, and she went away. And I thought, what did I do? I just asked her a simple question. But 15 minutes later, she came back and touched my feet and she was still crying. Why I made the point is that renunciation is not about going away.

... contd.