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Nayantara Sahgal, Author.
What does Spirituality mean to you?
It is the third component of a person’s make-up. There is the physical, the mental and the spiritual. The spiritual looks beyond the five senses, it is concerned with yearnings we have and that sometimes we cannot put a name on.
Do you believe you are guided and protected by a superior force?
I believe we are responsible for our own actions but at the same time that there is a universal intelligence and consciousness. This intelligence impacts my life in the sense that it gives me the feeling I am not alone. When passing through very troubled times --- and it has often happened in my life --- I rid myself of the responsibility. I just tell whoever is out there “You look after it now, I cannot bear it anymore”. Then it is gone for me, I have passed on the responsibility, I can go through the ordeal. But I do not believe in a controlling destiny, or a force ordaining it all. We control our own journey and we reap whatever we sow. Whatever energy is out there only exists to help us in the same way Krishna is always shown as Arjun’s charioteer but would not do the fighting; Arjun had to do the fighting. And on the overall, I have to say that my life has gone through many turbulent times. My parents and my uncle Nehru --- who lived with us and was really like a third parent to me --- were always in and out of jail. I then had a tempestuous marriage and divorce before living for several years with the man I would later marry. This was extremely unconventional back then and it was not easy, especially as I am not a flamboyant person by nature, I do not like to have all eyes on me. Besides, I had to raise three children without any support because I had nothing from my first husband. So I faced emotional ups and downs and financial hardship, which in fact forced me to write, especially for newspapers, and become a political columnist. But I do not worry about the cause of all those turbulences; I just know I have had a very full life, and never a dull moment. Sometimes I would long for it to be dull, to know that tomorrow will be like today. But it has not happened yet.
