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00:05 I didn't know how I was supposed to sit on the bar stool
00:07 without the bar.
00:09 So Muzaffar stood in front of it and took comfort.
00:13 So I thought I'd stand behind it.
00:16 My life is actually, much like Muzaffar said, a journey.
00:21 But within the journey, there's continuous travels.
00:24 Because Francis Bagzia and I, we restored
00:27 32 properties in 18 states.
00:30 So we were always traveling up and down.
00:32 And one has to be passion to travel.
00:35 It's always difficult to choose one story out of so many.
00:39 But I thought of one which is from Uttarakhand.
00:43 I have a summer house where I write books
00:47 in a place called Ramgarh in Kumaon,
00:51 from where comes Namita Gokhale, who was originally Namita
00:54 Pant, the writer who wrote "Paro" and many other books.
00:58 And she founded the Jaipur Literary Festival.
01:02 She's a close friend.
01:03 So she lived in a house which belonged to her sister.
01:06 So she called me one day and said,
01:09 I'm going to take you to a temple
01:11 because I want to go and do some puja.
01:15 Now, that's not a good start with me
01:17 because I'm not somebody who really
01:19 believes in God in that sense.
01:22 So I said, well, I'd come for the journey.
01:24 But you do the puja.
01:26 So she said, fine.
01:29 Because I went to Kailash Mansarovar
01:31 and I walked 400 kilometers.
01:33 I did it all on foot.
01:34 But I went for the mountains because the cosmos is
01:37 eventually the god.
01:38 And if we are to believe in a god today,
01:40 I think it's internet that would make a better god because it
01:43 has no color, no boundary.
01:45 And it unites people rather than divides people.
01:48 Anyway, so we set out on this journey.
01:50 And she said, can we take your car and your driver?
01:54 So I said, but of course we can because he was sitting idle,
01:57 doing nothing.
01:58 So we set out from Ramgarh to Jageshwar,
02:03 where there is an amazing temple.
02:07 It's a 1,000-year-old temple, they say.
02:09 And the legend of the worship of the Shiva linga
02:14 originates from there because that
02:16 is where Shiva's linga was apparently cut off.
02:20 And so there is no deity in the temple.
02:23 There's just a flat piece of stone.
02:26 And people worship that.
02:30 And the story is interesting because Shiva,
02:33 in the Shiva Purana, they say, was a handsome young man
02:38 with--
02:39 what shall I say-- a flattering phallus.
02:44 And he roamed naked, begging for alms in a forest.
02:48 And it's the saptarishi's wives who he went to ask money from.
02:54 And the story is very complicated.
02:56 But when the rishis came back, they
02:59 said that their wives had looked at Shiva with lust,
03:02 so they kicked them out of the house.
03:05 That's a very, very complicated story.
03:07 So we are going to this temple.
03:09 And we go there.
03:10 And I make photographs.
03:11 And Namita Gokhale does her puja and meets the pandits.
03:16 And then we have lunch.
03:18 And we are driving back.
03:20 So she says to me, do you know-- actually,
03:23 I don't know how many hotels you've got, where have you got.
03:25 Give me a card of yours.
03:27 I know her quite well.
03:29 But she said, you know, the card has a map and all this.
03:31 So I said, oh, where's my card?
03:33 So I'd left my bag in the restaurant where we had lunch.
03:38 And we had already driven one hour in the mountains,
03:41 circling the mountains.
03:43 And I was feeling sleepy after lunch
03:45 because I wake up at an earthly hour.
03:47 So I said, why don't you go and get the bag?
03:50 And I'll just get off here and have
03:52 a siesta in the pine forest.
03:55 So she said, what a good idea.
03:56 But even the driver had lunch with us in the same restaurant.
04:00 Why don't we just send him?
04:02 And you and I can both sit down here.
04:04 And there were some shafts of sunlight.
04:06 So we got off.
04:08 And we sat down.
04:09 And I said to her, you can't sit next to me
04:12 because I won't be able to have a siesta if I've
04:15 got somebody sitting right next to me.
04:17 So you go and sit there.
04:19 And I will sit here.
04:21 And I will lie here.
04:22 And I put my hat.
04:23 And I had a little siesta.
04:25 So as I got up, there was a board over there
04:29 which said, Paleolithic Site.
04:32 There were some caves.
04:33 And there were some rock paintings
04:36 within the caves of this kind of triangular men
04:39 with two legs and so on, the primitive art, which
04:44 we had seen because there was a board there.
04:46 And you go through the cave.
04:48 And we'd come out.
04:49 And then we'd sat down.
04:50 So just as I got up from my siesta,
04:52 I see a gentleman coming out of that cave,
04:56 walking in my direction because I was actually on the place
05:00 which led out from there.
05:03 So he said very nicely-- he sees this white bearded man sitting
05:07 in a pine forest under a tree.
05:09 So he said, namaskar in a very Bengali fashion.
05:13 He looked Bengali too.
05:15 So I wished him.
05:17 And he said-- he didn't speak Hindi.
05:19 So he said to me, [NON-ENGLISH] or something.
05:22 And I said, I'm just sitting in the forest.
05:28 I'm resting.
05:29 What do you do?
05:31 So this man says, sweetness business.
05:35 So because he realized I'm not understanding Bengali,
05:39 so he wanted to say he made Bengali sweets.
05:41 So he said, sweetness business.
05:42 I said, where?
05:43 So he said, in Kolkata, in this place, that place.
05:46 And then he wished me because I must have looked like a babaji
05:49 sitting in a forest.
05:51 And he walked off in that path where
05:54 Namita was sitting further on and to the road.
05:59 A few seconds later arrived another man from the same cave.
06:04 And he looked like his photocopy.
06:06 So there was no guessing that he was his brother.
06:09 And he walked up to me.
06:10 And he also said, namaskar.
06:11 And he wished me reverently because of age, I suppose.
06:16 And he said the same thing.
06:19 He said, what do you do?
06:20 So I said, I read people's palms.
06:24 So he was very interested because the Indian
06:27 is so gullible.
06:28 He's always wanting to be told what's going to happen to them
06:31 and so on.
06:32 So immediately, he gets on his knees.
06:34 And he presents me his hand.
06:37 And he was wearing a ring in each of the fingers
06:40 and in the thumb.
06:42 So I was only entertaining myself.
06:45 So I said, no, no, I don't read the palm like this.
06:47 I read it like this.
06:49 So he said, OK.
06:50 So now he gives me his palm with all these rings.
06:55 So I look at the rings.
06:59 And I say, mishti doi, rasagulla, sandesh, cham cham.
07:06 So that man is completely bewildered.
07:09 So he steps back.
07:10 He lies down flat on the grass and does dandavat pranam
07:14 because he's saying, wow, this man knows all about me.
07:20 And Namita is sitting there and saying, what's happening?
07:25 So then he came and said to me, tell me more.
07:29 So I said, now what should I invent?
07:31 I said, you're going to have a second shop.
07:34 But you must stop mixing and adulterating your sweets.
07:39 So he said, sorry, sorry, sorry.
07:42 He said, from today, I will never do it again and so on.
07:47 And this went on.
07:47 And then he said, tell me more.
07:49 I said, no, I only tell one thing in one day.
07:52 You can come back later if you want.
07:54 So then he got up.
07:56 And he is going like this.
07:59 And Namita is sitting there saying,
08:02 what's this man done to this man?
08:04 And he left.
08:05 And on the road, there were some people standing.
08:07 So he was talking to them.
08:09 And he was saying, this man knows the future
08:13 of the whole world and so on.
08:14 So Namita then came running to me.
08:17 And he says, what did you do?
08:20 So I tell her the story.
08:22 So she said, how extraordinary.
08:23 What a wonderful place.
08:24 What are we doing in Delhi?
08:25 Why don't we just live here?
08:27 The Indian is such a gullible person
08:31 that we could just set up an ashram here.
08:33 They'll all be bringing food for us.
08:35 And we'll live it up and have great fun.
08:37 So actually, if you travel with an open mind in India,
08:41 wherever you go, and if you mean no harm to people,
08:45 I think you're very well received.
08:47 And depending on the vibrations that you create with people,
08:51 you also get the same if you're nice to people.
08:55 So my motto in life, which I'd like to share with you,
09:00 is actually a very simple little couplet, which says,
09:03 [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
09:11 So there is no one destination.
09:13 Not that if I get to Lucknow, I would have reached what I want
09:16 to, because every journey is long.
09:21 And we don't know when is the last step which we will climb.
09:25 And it won't be there.
09:26 And we'll be out of the world.
09:28 So you should take life as a journey
09:31 and travel, contribute, read, share,
09:36 so that the great places become even greater.
09:38 And if there's bad tourism, if people are not nice,
09:42 there's also good vibrations and bad vibrations,
09:47 so that there is an incentive for countries,
09:51 for destinations, and for people to do better
09:54 in their destinations.
09:55 Thank you.
09:56 [APPLAUSE]
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10:01 (upbeat music)
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