I can see here in your offices figures of deities, are they important to you?
I worship Shiva. The temple I have built in my place, Hazaribad, is a Shiva temple. I worship Shiva because I consider him to be the original spiritual power.

Is that a family tradition?
No, there is no such tradition in my family. My father was agnostic and did not believe in many of these things. My mother was a traditional Hindu woman chanting prayers all the time, but we did not have family traditions around worship.

When facing tough challenges, and the shakti is not there, where is your anchor?
There are two things: you take life itself as a challenge, and you chart out a course, you start on that course, then once you have charted it and started on that path, it is a general movement in that direction. It is a general kind of shakti propelling you. Then you need special kinds of shakti at times of special challenges. So I pray or hope it will come to me. Sometimes when it does not come, I try my best to meet that challenge. My direction is set, I am walking towards my objective. The speed and the clearance of roadblocks will vary from time to time.

That direction, that road, when did it become so clear?
It’s actually been clear from a long time, from my early adulthood days I would say. It was a general direction to be as useful to society as possible and be regarded as a good man.
I met very briefly someone who told me something which stayed with me ever since. He said, “when I die and am taken to the burning pyre, I want people to say ‘he was a good man’, and genuinely say so”. That impressed me a great deal. That day my direction in life became much clearer, I thought it is something worth striving for --- when I am done, for people to say, “he was a good man”.
Then family and peer group pressures propelled me in a certain direction of school, college and so on. Back then, getting in the top civil services was considered the ultimate thing. So I got propelled in that direction, I succeeded at the IAS exams and then advanced on that course.

... contd.