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Major H.P.S. Ahluwalia has climbed Mount Everest. He was injured in the 1965 Indo-Pak war and went on to open the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre in Delhi

What does spirituality mean to you?
I do not have much of a spiritual nature. But if you say religious, then yes, intensely so. Those are beliefs and values deeply inculcated by my mother especially and I have lived with them since childhood.
Every morning, she would say her prayers in front of the Granth Sahib and at the end, she would stand up, get us children inside the small temple and tell God “if you gave me children, let them be worthy of it”.
So those things got stuck in our minds. We had to lead honest lives, we had to achieve.

When you say I am more religious than spiritual, what does spiritual mean?
I still don’t know what the exact definition of spirituality is. How does it relate to my daily life? I don’t know. I associate it with those old gurus. Maybe being a disciple of theirs means being spiritual. But somehow it doesn’t talk to me. I have a set of clear principles and that’s it.

You never modified or questioned those principles?
No, I haven’t. They are very simple and have never changed. For instance, it’s about having the right role models, and I always insist on it when I talk to younger people. Not merely a cricketer. But someone who can really teach you concrete values and useful things for your daily life.
For me, it was my mother and my grandfather. He was religious and in particular, he was religious about punctuality. It really was something crucial for him. It taught us the value of time. Because in fact, if you don’t value time, you don’t value life.

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