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 Karan Thapar is a veteran journalist, television anchor and columnist

What does spirituality mean to you?

A belief in something bigger than myself, in a factor that guides me, in a spirit that exists, symbolizes hope, comfort, assurance --- all of that in a loose way is what the term spirituality suggests to me.

Do you believe you are guided and protected by a superior force?

I believe there may be a God. When I was younger, maybe because I was less sure of myself intellectually or embarrassed, I would deny the existence of God. It was then the fashionable thing to do. But the truth is that even at that stage, I did believe in the Lord. It was mostly a form of superstition, but still I did not want to offend Him in case He existed. Especially at times of exams, I would get into deals with Him: I would give up things I loved in exchange for an excellent result. I was putting pressure on Him, believing He was morally bound as I kept my part of the bargain.

When I grew older, I realized what intellectual hypocrisy this was. I was escaping from the fact that I felt the need to believe in what you may call God, or a force. And I have had this need to this day. It is not a belief anchored in religion, I do not know the rituals of the Hindu faith, my prayer or worship are not defined by any custom or practice. But this belief fulfils a need --- and why should I deny it to myself?

Do you believe you have a special mission or purpose in this life?

I do not believe in any form of predestination, and knowing if I am part of some greater plan or not does not matter to me. I think it is a question of talent, and luck. I ended up in this career by a series of accidents. In school I wanted to be an academic. Later in Oxford I decided to be a journalist, and wrote to six British newspaper editors saying pompously that I was the right choice for them. Four did not reply, one told me off, and the sixth actually rang the number I had given. He said he was astonished to receive such an audacious letter, and was tempted to meet me. He proceeded to invite me for lunch. It happened to be Charles Douglas-Home, Foreign Editor of the Times of London. A week later I was hired.

Charley played an incredibly inspiring role in my life, of course not one I would call spiritual, but definitely that of a traditional guru, much more in an Indian sense that in a British way.

To begin with, I had to spend some time abroad, in Lagos, Nigeria. I had not been trained as a journalist, I had never been one. Instead of filing my pieces to the desk, Charley had me send them to him. Every single night for three months, around 11 or 11:30pm, he would hold a tutorial and talk me through the piece on the phone, teach me my job. What an incredible and generous thing to do! And he did not even know who the hell I was! I was a complete stranger who had written him an arrogant letter. He just took me on, and protected me.

Fourteen months later, as the Nigerian government was displeased with a couple of my articles and removed my accreditation, I moved back to London and joined the Times there. A few months later, Charley asked me to do leaders, the unsigned editorial pieces that go out as the paper’s opinion. I was only twenty-nine years old, and two years before I had not even written one article. But Charley pushed me. So for the next nine years, the Times’ opinion on India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and so on were written by me.

Charley gave me all the confidence because he saw some spark in me which he was prepared to risk and nurture. I did not get everything right, but he covered up, supported me and helped me. Though many people viewed him as arrogant, extremely opinionated, with aristocratic airs, I saw him as someone tremendously inspirational. And I told myself that if I ever am a boss with younger people working with me, I should do the same three things: spot talent, nurture it, and have the courage to stand by that person when he or she is making mistakes.

Today, when I look at my profession and what I do, I love doing one-on-ones, I enjoy discussion programs, but I’d like to do more documentaries, more audience related television shows. I would like to make my programs more serious and have them shed light rather than generate heat. Programs that generate heat become a spectacle, they are very watchable but they do not actually take the argument further. Programs that shed light are demanding of your attention and concentration, they can be boring if you do not care about the subject but I think they are more rewarding.

So I would like to push the balance towards shedding light and less towards generating heat. At the moment I end up generating a lot of heat. My commissioning channels see a certain aggressiveness and argumentativeness as my USP, as something that attracts attention. They believe that the audience concentration span is very short, if you demand too much from them they will switch to another channel, so one should keep it at the level of a fight. I personally think it is not right. I am sure that when audiences begin to get what they are not getting, they will learn to like it. But you cannot ask people to like what they have never experienced! And in any event I do not think current affairs on television should be popular, in the sense of being on par with entertainment. It ought to be for those who care, with minimal standards of quality bellow which one should not go just to attract eyeballs.