The moment you enter Bhutan, you notice that there are no traffic lights. It is almost like you've stepped into a Shangri-La or a vortex of time 200 years ago. Those kinds of experiences are very much of the countryside of Bhutan, where people are truly happy in the sense of not creating and wanting more.

When I started on the path, too, I really thought I would become a yogi in a cave, but I didn't have clarity about my path. When I evolved in the ashram for six months, I learned a lot, but I realized that it was not my natural state of being. So, I came back to the world.

I think his karma became to serve in nature and not to serve in the world, while I think my karma is to be in the world.

In the yoga sutras, they have this beautiful analogy that the journey of life is like the flight of an eagle, or the journey over multiple lifetimes is like a flight of an eagle. First, the eagle stretches its wings high, high, high, and experiences everything that the world has to offer in terms of flight. It's growing and flying and it's experiencing, and then it brings its wings down gracefully and that is the completion of the journey.

I think it is really a personal journey of purification, rather than whether something external is going to be good or bad. Anything external will always live in that polarity - a combination of good and bad.

The first novel that I wrote was because I was having very interesting sorts of experiences, for Indians of my generation.

There is a role for growth and experiencing the world, and pushing the boundaries of that, and then there is a time to bring it within. All people are at different stages of that journey.