'I believe in luck, not chance'

Do you believe you are guided and protected by a superior force?
I believe in luck but I do not believe in chance. Everything I have achieved has come with hard work; I have slugged every single day of my life and never had an easy moment. That always got me to the next level of success but each one of them comes with its issues and pressures. When there is success, people watching from the outside only see the rosy picture, they do not understand that we all go through cycles and that there are dark periods as well. On the other hand, to succeed, one also needs luck. Being at the right place, at the right time. For instance, I have had the same factors available to me in the last thirty years but they did not work as well ten years ago. The country is now going through a boom so I am peaking at the right time. Had the country been booming when I was 25, I would not have known what to do with it. Now, who gives me that luck, who blesses me? I have never really given it a thought. I just know that neither talent or hard work nor luck alone are enough. You need both.

Do you believe you have a special mission or purpose in this life?
I would not talk about a specific mission as objectives in life keep changing. But being born in a fairly successful family group, there was a huge peer pressure to accomplish something, no matter what form it would take, to be up to that legacy and carry it a bit forward. My father was famous at a young age, my uncle was a famous politician so there was no way we would not try and become “someone”. There was no place for goofing off. Fortunately, I was always in a boarding school, which gave me a bit of distance and the space to create an identity for myself. Back then, I thought I would become a ceramist like my mother and take over her business. Architecture was not on the cards. But when circumstances threw me into it within my father’s practice, I gradually learnt to like it. I had to make a conscious effort though to distance myself from my father and asked him to let me go. He was very upset about it, but without it I could have never found my own identity. Being a versatile artist, he went back to other media and withdrew from architecture. It was a huge gesture on his part.
At the beginning, my goal was to become the biggest design firm in India. Then I realized it is enough to be the best. Further on, I understood it is also not about being the best but rather about being satisfied with what I do. I figured out I could either be an idealist, in a boutique firm with two or three signature projects, or take advantage of the country’s boom and become a huge design firm. I decided to do the latter and commercialize my practice. I am glad I made that choice because the times we are going through are like a big storm and what matters is size, experience, critical mass. As a large firm, exciting opportunities keep coming and I feel good being part of a larger story, talking about creating new towns, shaping the way people will live tomorrow. Now my mind works on taking this forward, both by venturing into real-estate, and thinking of the legacy, of interacting with the next generation of architects, of philanthropy.

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