• Hello and welcome to Walk The talk. My guest this week is a legend of our times, Sir Mark Tully. Welcome to Walk The Talk.

I don’t like to think of myself as a legend. Legend are things which are over.

• I could have called you the Knight of Nizamuddin East.

Well, I have been very lucky in my life. I put most of it down to luck, actually.

• Good timing. I mean what’s a journalist without good timing?

Yeah, timing. A little bit of timing.

• Timing, instinct. All those things matter.

They do, but luck also matters a lot.

• And intellect helps.

Well, maybe I don’t know. I don’t think journalists have great intellect.

• But look at the book you have produced now. That is an intellectual/spiritual/ political exercise: India’s Unending Journey.

Well, it’s an exercise I am very nervous about, because it’s far more personal than any book I have ever written before. And I honestly did not know what the reaction to it would be. I actually thought somebody would say Mark Tully is not barmy; Mark Tully has become a religious maniac.

• I have heard people say Mark Tully has finally shown his Hindu side. Some people say Mark Tully has finally given evidence in writing that he is an unreconstructed socialist. Which one do you buy?

You know this is an interesting thing. There’s a quote in the book from Dr Manmohan Singh where he says if you advocate the middle world, and the whole book is about advocating the middle world. It’s about not being devoted to Hindutva, but equally not being so secularist that you despise religion. And what Manmohan Singh said is that if you pursue the middle world, you are bound to get hit from the left and from the right. And actually I haven’t been hit from the left.

... contd.