‘One life and so much to do’

Suresh Kalmadi is a Congress MP, the President of the Indian Olympic Association.

What does Spirituality mean to you?
It is about trying to be good and do whatever I believe in. For the rest, I let my wife take care of that side of things. She is a quite spiritual lady. She keeps going to temples and places of worship. And I am quite happy to “delegate” it all to her. She drags me at times to religious places. But for me, I do not need too much of it.

Do you believe you are guided and protected by a superior force?
I definitely believe there is such a force, though I never delved too much into it. I cannot disbelieve the fact that there is someone out there shaping out destinies. But I believe destiny is only 5%. The rest is mostly about really hard word, and luck of course --- which is random, and which is about being at the right place, at the right time. Nothing ever came easy to me in life. I always got what I wanted but had to work hard for it. If you look at the lines on my hand, you can see how much they criss-cross. They are always very clear and go to the end, but with a lot of struggle. I often feel that others get it easy while I have to fight for it. But that is destiny I guess.
On the other hand, I have had luck for sure. If you look at my air force batch, half are no longer here. I participated to two wars, in 1965 and 1971 but lucked out and made it out safe. So much is about luck when it comes to getting back home safe from a war. And then I left the air force before something bad could happen.