I had a respectful familiarity with the Sri Ramakrishna Mission. Besides reading the excellent books that they have been publishing, I had the fortune of visiting the Dakshineshwar Kali Mandir in Kolkata twice where Sri Ramakrishna met Narendra Nath, who would become Swami Vivekananda. I visited the Vivekananda Rock Memorial in Kanyakumari thrice where Swamiji meditated for three days and nights in December 1892 on a rock amidst the sea. In Goa, I visited a house in Margao where Swami Vivekananda stayed before sailing to Chicago from Bombay on May 31, 1893, and which is now maintained as a temple. But it is only now (in July 2023) that I could read about Sri Ramakrishna.

Published in two volumes and a more-than-thousand-page tome, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna was written in Bengali by Sri Mahendrananth Gupta, under his pen name M, as his eye-witness account of Sri Ramakrishna’s last years. The English translation by Swami Nikhilananda was published in 1942. The book starts in February 1882 and ends with Sri Ramakrishna’s passing away in August 1886. The last of the 51 chapters describes how 16 of Sri Ramakrishna’s closest disciples renounced the world soon after his death, Swami Vivekananda being the most renowned among them, and established the Sri Ramakrishna Math. 

I was born into a Brahmin family that followed the Santana Dharma tradition. There were brass idols and a shaligram passed on by our ancestors, called Thakurji. Kept on a small sandalwood simhasan, they were treated as living beings – given a bath every day, applied chandan and offered puja every morning and in the evening. Nothing happened in the house without seeking their blessings, including going out of the house and reporting to them on return. Thakurji are now with my mother and my younger brother Salil Tiwari is serving them in his house in Meerut. 

I drifted into Vedanta and Buddhist literature but regained my Bhakti roots after meeting Pramukh Swamiji Maharaj through Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam in 2014. I wrote four books –Transcendence: My Spiritual Experiences with Pramukh Swamiji in 2015 with Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, A Modern Interpretation of Goswami Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas in 2019, A Modern Interpretation of Lokmanya Tilak’s Gita Rahasya in 2020, and Simple Spirituality – Recalling Kabir in 2022, all dealing with the Bhakti Marga – the devotional way of approaching God.  

Writing the foreword for the book on Kabir, the renowned author Bibek Debroy, who translated Valmiki Ramayana and Mahabharat into English, wrote, “The COVID pandemic caught the entire world unawares. With many of us having lost near and dear ones, the pandemic reminded us of our mortality in this world and the evanescence of life as we understand it. It naturally makes us reflective, forced to look inwards. Arun Tiwari too looked inwards. A book like this, meant for readers, is actually a book for one’s own self, one’s own search for the truth within.”

What makes The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna special? Before answering this question, it is important to know some salient features of Sri Ramakrishna’s life. Born in 1836 to a poor Brahmin family in Bengal and named Gadadhar (Lord Vishnu), he came to work as a help to his elder brother, who was a priest in the Dakshineswar Kali Mandir created in 1855 by Rani Rashmoni on the banks of the Hooghly (Ganga) River north of Kolkata. After his brother passed away, Sri Ramakrishna became a priest there and lived the rest of his life in the temple, except for the last year when receiving treatment for throat cancer. 

Since childhood, Sri Ramakrishna experienced trances. Living in a temple and visited by people regularly, Sri Ramakrishna used to go into impromptu spells of unconsciousness. Upon recovery after a few minutes, he would sing devotional songs of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and other poets, dance and speak profound concepts. Sri Ramakrishna married Sri Sarada Devi, but lived a chaste life, treating her as Divine Mother. His wife lived with him as a celibate and was revered as Mother. He lived a pious and unblemished life in full public view and his 16 disciples created the great institution of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission, which have 221 centers all over the world. 

Three themes emerge from The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. First, Sri Ramakrishna had God-realization via various traditions. He trained himself in Tantra under Bhairavi Brahmani who lived in the Dakshineswar temple for six years, practised Vaishnava bhakti under a visiting monk, Jatadhari, who gave him an idol of Ramlala, and Vedanta under Naga Sadhu Totapuri, another visiting monk, who ordained him into sannyasa. Second, he interacted with great people of his times, namely Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Debendranath Tagore (father of Rabindranath Tagore), Keshab Chandra Sen, Dayananda Saraswati, and Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya, and won their admiration. Third, he attracted some brilliant young disciples who, after his death, created a formidable institution through their impeccable example. 

Sri Ramakrishna was a mystic. The American philosopher and psychologist William James, in his book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, published in 1902, has established the experiences of a mystic to be as real as any other experience. Like the sensory self that processes sensory inputs, there is a reflective self that interprets experiences, deriving from cultural conditioning, and perhaps from certain patterns of thinking hardwired into the human brain. If you imagine something vividly and absorb yourself in thoughts of the same, they become as real for you as a tree, a building, or another human being. 

As for Sri Ramakrishna’s message, I quote from The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna: 

The Reality is one and the same. He is Brahman to the followers of the path of knowledge, Paramatman to the yogis, and Bhagavan to the lovers of God. . . Who can fully know the infinite God? And what need is there of knowing the Infinite? Having attained the rare human birth, my supreme need is to develop love for the Lotus Feet of God. . . God cannot be realized without purity of heart. One receives the grace of God by subduing the passions—lust, anger, and greed.

A man sets milk in a quiet place to curdle, and then he extracts butter from the curd. After once extracting the butter of Devotion and Knowledge from the milk of the mind, if you keep that transformed mind in the water of the world, it will float in the world unattached. But if the mind in its ‘unripe’ state-that is to say, when it is just like liquid milk is kept in the water of the world, then the milk and water will get mixed. In that case, it will be impossible for the mind to float unattached in the world.

You see, as long as a man is under maya’s spell, he is like a green coconut. When you scoop out the soft kernel from a green coconut, you cannot help scraping a little of the shell at the same time. But in the case of a ripe and dry coconut, the shell and kernel are separated from each other. When you shake the fruit, you can feel the kernel rattling inside. The man who is freed from maya is like a ripe and dry coconut. He feels the soul to be separated from the body. They are no longer connected with each other.

So, I earnestly suggest that you spend some quiet time alone, learn to see people around you as human beings living their own lives, and having their own dispositions and dispensations as you have yours, and never call anyone’s experiences absurd. See this world as a mango grove, pick the fruit that has fallen into your lap, and relish it. Why bother about how many trees there are in the grove, how many varieties exist, and who the owner of the garden is? This life has been given and it is up to us to make the best use of it before it is lost. Live purposefully and try to leave behind a legacy – at least a good memory, a nice feeling, in the hearts and minds of the people you come across. 

Last month, I reread Dante’s 14th-century Italian poem, “The Divine Comedy” (Commedia). These are three works that were eventually blended into one to tell a fantasy of what occurs after someone dies. Inferno (Hell), Paradiso (Heaven), and Purgatorio (Purification) are the titles of the three books. While Hell and Heaven are well-known concepts, purification is a little trickier. The core premise is that a soul takes human birth to purify itself, and everything else one does in a lifetime except this one duty is pointless and amounts to squandering a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

There are four methods to purify: purging bodily desire, purification of the will, illumination of the mind, and unity of one’s existence or will with the Divine. Different religions use different phrases and techniques to communicate the same thing, but they all ask for control over “desires of the flesh” by the “reasoning faculty,” that is the intellect. The human body is described in the Katha Upanishad (I.iii.3-4) as a chariot drawn by the five horses that are the senses; the mind is the reins; and the driver or charioteer is the intellect, carrying the soul as a passenger.

 आत्मानं रथिनं विद्धि शरीरं रथमेव तु।

बुद्धिं तु सारथिं विद्धि मनः प्रग्रहमेव च॥

इन्द्रियाणि हयानाहुर्विषयांस्तेषु गोचरान्‌।
आत्मेन्द्रियमनोयुक्तं भोक्तेत्याहुर्मनीषिणः॥ 

Know yourself to be the charioteer, and your body to be the chariot.

Know intelligence to be the driver, and the mind to be the controller.

The senses are called horses, and they go after the objects of this world.

The Self is the enjoyer using the senses, and the mind, thus says the learned.

So, one way to grasp the problem is to live by do’s and don’ts, which obviously does not work. People frequently find themselves powerless to control their senses. Emotions contaminate reason in a million ways. People flee from what their senses dislike and are drawn to what they enjoy. Thosewho are aware of the dangers of excessive consumption of oils, sugar, and salt continue to do so. They smoke, drink alcohol, and waste money on useless gratification of wishes, such as filling their closets with clothes in the name of fashion and collecting shoes, watches, and various toys in the form of electronics.  

Dante’s method is another option. In Divine Comedy, Dante transports the reader to a fictional world and introduces them to great characters who explain why they are there. Their stories have the capacity to leave an impact that not only lasts longer but also leads to transformation, allowing people to stay away from dangerous habits and inclinations by choice and intent. Dante has constructed different levels in the three realms of Hell, Heaven, and Purgatory in a fairly magical fashion, and what effort is greater or inferior to the others comes out in a way that cannot be readily ignored. Hell’s souls have lost the ability to reason.  

Dante begins the book by stating that he found himself in a dark wilderness midway through his life’s journey because he had strayed from the straight and true. This has an immediate resonance with the reader. Who doesn’t think so? Mid-life crises are well recognized – family, careers, businesses – there are always more people who feel stuck in their lives rather than that they are prospering.  

Dante conjured three animals to obstruct his exit from the wilderness: a panther, a lion, and a she-wolf. These animals embody desire, pride, and greed. People live and die in suffering, as if eaten away by one of these three creatures. The Bhagavad Gita (XVI. 21) refers to them as the three portals to Hell.

त्रिविधं नरकस्येदं द्वारं नाशनमात्मन:।

काम: क्रोधस्तथा लोभस्तस्मादेतत्त्रयं त्यजेत्॥

 This is the threefold gate of Hell, the destruction of the self.As a result, one should avoid lust, rage, and greed.

Next, Dante takes us on a great voyage guided by the soul of the first-century Latin poet Virgil. Virgil guides him through Hell and Purgatory, but he is unable to enter Heaven. Dante’s youth inspiration Beatrice, who has died before, takes over there.

 Hell is a nine-level spiral of torture. Here, those souls languish in eternity who lived by animalistic desires shunning human reason and committing violence upon others. On the gate of Hell is an inscription that reads, “Abandon all hope, you who enter here.” What a strong message! We enter hell the instant we lose hope. As we progress deeper, we encounter people whose depravity grows inexorably, culminating at the centerof the Earth, where Satan is bound. He is up to his waist in ice, flailing his bat-like wings. Our misdirected passions are like a raging whirlwind that never stops.

I find the story of Count Ugolino della Gherardesca, a nobleman from Pisa, Italy, particularly compelling. He is kept at the lowest level, where sinners who betrayed those with whom they had close relationships are imprisoned. Ugolinowas a political traitor who harmed his country for personal gain. In retaliation, he is portrayed chewing Archbishop Ruggieri’s head, as a dog consumes a bone. Ruggieri had imprisoned Ugolino in a tower with his children and grandchildren and starved them to death. What could be more agonizing than seeing his four children die of famine before him, as he was the last to die? But, even if Ugolino must die for his crime, why are his sons put to death? This did not occur in Pisa’s renowned leaning tower, but rather, in a different building nearby. How much terror lurks behind some of these seemingly gorgeous structures? 

Two ethical trips in this life are detailed in the Purgatory journey, which is depicted as climbing a mountain. One is the pursuit of happiness, which can be attained by adhering to the teachings of philosophers and dealing with fellow beings with loving-kindness. The other is a spiritual path to eternal beatitude through acts such as prayer, service, and penance. Purgatory, however, is more than just paying off the debts acquired when one sinned; it is also about reflecting on those sins and altering the psychological inclinations that lead to sin. The objective of life is to shed the baggage of previous lives and become a pristine spirit capable of merging with the One of this creation. 

Journey through Heaven, Dante’s final and most beautiful section of his poem, has much to teach us about happiness, the perfection of the intellect, the nature of authentic liberty, the thriving of community, the role of love in learning, and the profound connection that the good and true have to aesthetics. It is especially pertinent for people who have dedicated their lives to education. This beautiful book struck me as Dante’s hymn of gratitude – a tribute to all his guides and to guidanceitself as a work of grace. The book is freely available on the Internet. You merely need to set aside some time to study this brilliant piece of work.

We frequently overlook patterns of change since they are typically spread over a hundred years or more, and the average human life span is approximately 70 years, minus 20 formative years in which people begin to know the world beyond their local environment and others in the family and community. However, as technology has revolutionized the globe, first with computers, then with the Internet, then with mobile phones, and finally with the Internet on mobiles, change has accelerated. It is now evident and unmistakable.

Ankit Agarwal, a friend of my younger son Amol for the past 15 years, just visited me. He is from Meerut, my hometown. Ankit and Amol previously worked together at Infosys and Oracle. Ankit left Oracle to pursue his interests, which were vastly different from entrepreneurship. He discovered some employment in Europe that he could accomplish from home using the Internet. He reasoned why he was living in Hyderabad and moved to Goa with his wife, where they found a coastal home for half the rent they were paying in Hyderabad. After 6 years, I saw him – fit and full of the confidence that comes from living a happy life.

He brought me two newly published books, one on Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the other on Swami Vivekananda. I asked him how he got his work done, and his response was thoughtful and insightful. “I can effectively balance time, money, and freedom, Uncle,” he said. “I am both my boss and my employee, generating decent money, and working no more than 40 hours per week in a flexible way determined by my degree of enjoyment rather than when to start and when to close.”

 My father, who worked a 9-to-5 job for 30 years, would findthis ridiculous. Even the street dog recognized his rhythm and would leap around him in pleasure when he returned home from work in the evening. But even I was shocked becausethough I have retired from work, I continue to log 10 hours of reading and writing as if I were living in a monastery under the abbot’s supervision.

 I have no doubts regarding the significance of earning money. Money is the backbone that supports everything that makes life good – education, a well–furnished house with 24×7 facilities, a car and gadgets, travel, and healthcare. Money leads to financial freedom; however, it rarely leads to time freedom. People neglect social functions and family obligations due to work and are unable to attend to their elderly parents or be present for parent-teacher meetings at their children’s schools. Ankit has attained financial independence as well as complete control over his time, which he spends on pursuits that bring him pleasure and happiness.

 After Ankit left, I ordered Time Money Freedom, a book written by Ray and Jessica Higdon, which was published in 2020. While Ankit’s decision-making predated this book, reading it helped me better understand this new concept. An intriguing read, the book contains ten guidelines that the writers developed from their own lives and businesses to change one’s life to achieve its maximum potential. Though I don’t endorse it verbatim, it stimulates the reader to break free from the hypnosis of the status quo and complacency and live to improve one’s own and others’ conditions. Lethargy and procrastination are like weeds in a garden that, if not pruned, turn life into a jungle.

 Individualism pervades the American way of life. There is heroism in the quest for happiness, power over others, and possession of resources, be it oil in the old days or knowledge in the new. The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged(1957) by Russian-born American writer Ayn Rand present the idea of man as a heroic being, with happiness as the moral goal of his life, creative success as his best action, and logic as his only ideal.  

The introduction of computers provided an excellent chance for Indians to move to America. Few American kids were pursuing advanced education, and Indians filled that void most effectively. Since the 1970s and 1980s, when waves of Indian graduates flowed into Northern California’s Silicon Valley, exceptional Indians have produced breakthroughs, pushed boundaries, and held positions of power in the worlds of technology and media. Almost all major US technology businesses have technology pioneers of Indian heritage, including Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Ajay Bhatt, the father of USB, and Vinod Dham, the father of the famed Intel Pentium processor.  

 The four major technology companies in the world –Microsoft (Satya Nadella), Google (Sundar Pichai), IBM(Arvind Krishna), and Adobe (Shantanu Narayen) – are led by Indian-origin engineers, and the incumbent World Bank Chief (Ajay Banga) and President Biden’s Chief Advisor for Scienceand Technology (Arati Prabhakar) testify to the individualistic streak of the American culture, where merit and competency trump all other factors. Unfortunately, engineers remain in the shadows of the Indian industry, which is dominated by powerful families and investors. Individualism is passionately practiced in India but is hidden beneath ideological jargon in which every leader claims to work for the poor and oppressed while living in prosperity and luxury. On a recent trip to Silicon Valley, my buddy Dr. S. Chinnababu met an American billionaire sitting alone in a coffee shop like a commoner.  

 So, what Ankit is doing appears to be the correct course of action. Job security is becoming less and less important with each passing year. People’s ways of communicating, conducting business, spending money, and earning money have all altered. Online food, grocery, and other goods delivery, as well as networked taxis, have resulted in a massive number of self-employed persons. They may not be their bosses in the same sense that Ankit is, but no one can boss them, and they can choose to go offline. Even street vendors are sourcing the goods they sell from worldwide supply chains and a variety of products. There are services that accept consumer orders for food, including fruits and vegetables, pick them up from local retail shops, and deliver them “instantly,” which means within 15 to 20 minutes. Allthese people are their own bosses and employees.  

 Blaming the system, exploiting employers, terrible bosses, bad leaders, inflation, and the stock market, while still widespread, is losing relevance and getting relegated to a hobby for idlers. Despite the flaws in the educational system, people who are dedicated and motivated are making progress in life. The only thing that will benefit you in the future is you and your ability to structure your life around honing abilities and working with discipline. What I learned from Ankit is a new technique to develop a dependable career – a way of life that puts you at the mercy of no one; employment that is flexible enough to provide you with the money, time, and independence you desire. God bless the next generation of Indians who will lead the new world.

As the first Noble Truth, Buddha declared that life is suffering. According to the legend, Prince Gautama Siddhartha was restricted to his palace by his father, who worried that he might become an ascetic due to a prophecy made at the time of his birth. However, on his first trip out of the palace, Gautama saw four things: a man bowed with old age, a sick person, a corpse, and a wandering ascetic, and wondered whether this was all there was to life. He felt a spiritual urgency and became a wandering monk, which eventually led to his enlightenment.

This is a story that each of us is living. In our busy lives, surrounded by activities – chasing happiness, comforts, friends and loved ones, and more wealth – blank moments stare back at us, questioning the fruitfulness of life in this intrinsic vanity fair and narcissistic theatre that we have turned our lives into. However, because we are extensively conditioned by society, we emerge from this discomfort sooner rather than later and return to our fantasy of daily life, of earning a living and making money, a large portion of which goes into the system that generated the delusion. In this process, we try to avoid the truth of our existence, and this inevitably creates pain.  

The reality is that each one of us has come into this world, not at our bidding, and must depart someday, not at our chosen time and not on our chosen terms. Understanding this Reality is the first step towards enlightenment. I am not an exception; I am like everyone else. What applies to me applies to everyone else and vice versa. Others also value their viewpoints, ideas, and judgments in the same way that I do. Like me, others like a certain hue, a certain flower, or a certain meal, but their preferences differ from mine. The stubbornness that my choices and preferences are superior and must be followed by others, is the source of my anguish.

Reality does not need or seek our approval. We will just make ourselves sad in the end by resisting reality. Our suffering stems from a single belief: that reality should be different than it is. We have been taught that the world should be a certain way, and when reality falls short of our expectations, we are disappointed. However, that upheaval originates within us, not from the outer world. Reality is unconcerned with what we want it to be. It simply is what it is.

No amount of adamantly denying facts will change the world. Yet, we frequently act as though this isn’t the case. We oppose reality with growing zeal and obstinacy, as if the universe will bend to the will of a single person. This is childish hubris that must be overcome as we mature into adults and even approach old age. We suffer the false belief that if we are unhappy enough, the world will notice and bend to our will. People do this by worrying themselves ill, overworking, or withholding love from others whom they perceive do not love them properly.

All of these approaches are unsuccessful attempts to change reality by making people unhappy. They are all inoperable. Even those whose jobs indicate that they serve you – maids, drivers, security guards, hotel servers, vendors, and so on – are there as part of a social contract, not because their lives are less important than yours. Accept others as if they are doing their best. Remember, they would have done better if they could. Recognize that like you do what you want, others also have the right to be themselves.

We are continuously bombarded with political and commercial propaganda, thanks to electronic media. We are conditioned to learn a stimulus that is designed to elicit a response to determine whom we vote for in elections, what we buy with our money, and whom we love and hate. This sponsored propaganda is neither knowledge nor entertainment. Who is the owner of the TV channel? How much money do TV anchors make? In debates, who is opinionated and who is knowledgeable?

There is a continual attempt in public discourse to make people feel nervous and uncomfortable, in the hope that they will feel better by purchasing specific items, following particular leaders, and strengthening a creed. It is a subtle game of controlling people and making them serve vested interests. You can’t change it, and neither can anyone else. The best that can be done is to recognize the reality – differentiating what is genuine from what is fake. The ability to see the motives behind actions is a great skill. 

These are the times of Kali Yuga, the Age of Decadence, with struggle, dissension, disagreement, and contention. Injustice and inequity prevail, and the right actions do not always result in the right outcomes. According to Hindu mythology, Kali Yuga began when Shri Krishna’s incarnation ended and would span many thousand years before the planet is destroyed and re-created after a period of dormancy and another cycle resumes. You have to embrace the current way of circumstances without panic or despair like a bird stranded on a rock in the middle of the ocean. 

The challenge is to remain good and do what is right even when everything around you is unjust and the people you live with are unreasonable. It is vital to understand that acceptance and agreement are not the same thing. It is possible to accept reality without agreeing to it. Whether we like it or not, we must admit that injustice exists. However, accepting the existence of unfairness does not entail that we approve of it. Acceptance allows us to perceive reality for what it is. Our erroneous notions of denial collide with reality’s granite, causing a spark that eventually burns us. The acceptance of reality makes dealing with it much easier.

Accept the existence of others as a part of your life and reality.  Allow life to live through you by letting go of your biases. The unpleasant things, challenges, difficulties, disputes, and quarrels are all created to bring out the best in you. Take them as a learning experience, learn from them, and move on. Accept that suffering will always be a part of your life; there is no getting away from it. The best advice I have ever come across is that of Mahatma Gandhi, who said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” If you want others to be kind to you, start by being kind to them. If you wish to get more money, start by giving a little to those in need. And if you want others to tell you the truth, first start telling yourself the truth.

Books are precious in the sense that they capture the authors’ thoughts and retain them even after their lives, and in changed times. Those books that remain popular even after decades are called classics; those that remain relevant even after the passage of centuries become scriptures. 

Confined to home on health grounds, reading books has been my lifeboat lest I am drawn into despair. Recently, I concluded reading Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography, My Experiments with Truth, and discovered a new meaning of the word “Truth.” Gandhiji even called Truth God and said that if one wants to meet God, it can be done by living one’s truth – as simple as that. 

But then why don’t people do that? Instead of observing their minds and deciphering their feelings, they seek solutions in the world – rush to religious places and follow dogmatic habits. Instead of living the truth of their lives – facing the reality of the moment – there is a tendency to escape in imagination. Instead of fighting, they choose a flight to survive. But the real problem arrives when this avoidance of reality leads one to a false reality. 

Coming to the book of Gandhiji, it is a wonderful read. It is amazing how he has written about his errors and moral lapses, which we all have but hide. Gandhiji went to South Africa as a failed lawyer back home and faced terrible discrimination meted out to Asians and local Blacks there. Over the years, he developed a non-violent method of dealing with oppressive rulers and gained recognition and popularity in the process. When he relocated to India after spending 20 years in South Africa, inspired by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, he joined the Indian independence movement and took it to the masses. The rest is history.  

Gandhiji mentioned in his autobiography, a short book, Unto the Last, by English author John Ruskin (1819-1900), which formed his political ideology. It was given to him by Leon Polak, an Englishman living in South Africa. Gandhiji paraphrased this book in Gujarati and called the idea Sarvodaya (Well-being of All). The economic development of a nation must include the upliftment of the person at the lowest level in the societal hierarchy – the masses living at the bottom of the pyramid. So, after I finished reading Gandhiji’s book, I located Ruskin’s book on the Internet. 

Oh my God, what a treasure of wisdom it is! 

Ruskin opens the book with a parable mentioned in the Bible (John 20). A vineyard owner went to a market yard and hired some workers on a day’s wage of 1 penny. When he found many sitting there still not hired by anyone, he added a few more at noon, and even some more towards the evening. He paid everyone an equal wage of a penny at the end of the day. 

The workers hired in the morning protested as to why the latecomers received equal wages. The landlord asked them how it affected them. Ruskin added that it was no wonder Christ was betrayed for 30 silver coins by his disciple – “So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.”

England in the days of Ruskin was going through the Industrial Revolution. Many factories had been created, filling the air with smoke and fumes and pouring industrial waste by exporting their products throughout the vast British Empire. Workers performed repetitious factory work under the worst of conditions, and their families lived in poverty and ill health in crowded slums. 

Ruskin’s mother taught young John to read the Bible from beginning to end and Ruskin could differentiate early in life between right and wrong behaviour, and righteous and immoral ways of living. While growing up, he found the social conditions of the world around him deplorable. Ruskin envisioned a better society in which commerce was conducted justly, workers were treated fairly, people lived fulfilled, happy lives, and clean air, water, and soil were recognized as essential to human life and protected from industrialism. Ruskin felt that the business elite must improve the conditions of the lower classes out of moral responsibility.

The book includes four essays. The first essay, titled The Roots of Honour, deals with employer-employee relations. Ruskin insists that the employer must deal honourably with the employees. Ruskin writes, “And as the captain of a ship is bound to be the last man to leave his ship in case of a wreck, and to share his last crust with the sailors in case of famine, so the manufacturer, in any commercial crisis or distress, is bound to take the suffering of it with his men.”

The second essay is titled The Veins of Wealth. Ruskin defines wealth as power over man and disagrees with the science of getting rich by forcing people to work at low wages and generating profits by trading. “The true veins of wealth are purple — and not in Rock, but in Flesh — perhaps even that the outcome and consummation of all wealth are in the production of as many full-breathed, bright-eyed, and happy-hearted human creatures as possible.”

The third essay, Qui Judicatis Terram (Who Judge on Earth), deals with the idea of justice. When men are treated and paid justly, we go from a society where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer to a society where everyone has a chance to rise in economic status. “Government and co-operation are in all things the Laws of Life; Anarchy and competition the Laws of Death.”

The fourth and last article, Ad Valorem (According to Value), defines value, wealth, pricing, and production differently than political economists. According to Ruskin, value is that which leads to or sustains life. “A horse is useless, and therefore unsaleable, if no one can ride, — a sword, if no one can strike, and meat, if no one can eat. Thus, every material utility depends on its relative human capacity.”

Ruskin then summarises his economic thinking as an axiom, “THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE. Life includes all its powers of love, joy, and admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal and using his possessions, over the lives of others.”

Ruskin wants political economists to focus on the type of products produced by a society, how widely these things are distributed to the populace, and how well people use them. Most crucially, he sees a true science political economy and true merchant and manufacturer company as producing a nation of healthy, engaged employees who live meaningful, joyful lives. For Ruskin, “That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.”

Mahatma Gandhi might not have been followed by Indians in their lifestyles. But he has certainly not been forgotten. The picture of Mahatma Gandhi adorns the Indian currency. He is revered as the Father of the Indian Nation and with all our defects, there is an awareness about the treatment given to the poor in modern India. When I say this, I factor in the vastness of my nation and there may be pockets of darkness. Awareness towards the rights of the poor is fundamental. Treat the poor around you with respect and deal with them kindly.

India had a glorious culture of charitable hospitals and educational institutions. There has been a drift and it must be corrected. There are more than 150 billionaires in India, said to be the third-highest number in the world. Few of them are quite active in their social service. But if each one came forward to establish an autonomous and self-sustained world-class institution in public service – education, healthcare, law, whatever, adopting the basic civic amenities of a town in the process, we would have achieved something where most other countries have failed. 

Much before Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1976 and Karl Marx wrote Das Capital, Kautilya – also identified as Vishnugupta and Chanakya – wrote अर्थशास्त्र, Science of Wealth, in around 300 BCE.  Ancient India was a land of plenty, called the Golden Bird, and Indians saw the world as one family – वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम् – and desired the happiness of all – लोकाः समस्ताः सुखिनोभवंतु ।

The Scottish philosopher Smith’s world was about how the wealth is created. He saw adventurous sailors crossing seas, conquering new territories and bringing wealth home, leading to industrialization. Smith famously said, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love.

The world of the German philosopher Karl Marx was about how this wealth is distributed. Industrial Revolution had happened by his time, and there were wealthy owners of factories and poor workers employed there. According to Marx, capitalists take advantage of the difference between the labor market and the market for whatever commodity the capitalist can produce. Marx famously said, “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.”

India favored badly after local kings were dethroned by invaders, and finally, British established their rule and destroyed the local economy. In my lifetime, I have seen the hegemony of the capitalistic United States, the dissolution of socialist Soviet Republic, the rise of communist China, and the transformation of my own democratic nation from a food-deficient nation to a 3-trillon dollar economy with good, if not the best, education, healthcare, and civic amenities, if not for everyone, to a quarter of its people and improving by the year. 

I was born in a middle class family. My grandfather, whom I have never seen, was a retired railway employee who gave tuitions in the neighborhood after retirement and constructed a three storied house in Meerut City, a cantonment town of British India, north of Delhi. My father worked in municipal administration and with the help of my mother, who was a schoolteacher, could send me for engineering education. My employment brought me to Hyderabad in 1982 and both my children are brought up here. We remain in middle class but have moved up from local to cosmopolitan standards of living. 

Thanks to my 33 years tutelage with Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, which started with working under him in the missile laboratory and being his aide, and consequently my exposure to the higher echelons of the society when he had risen as a national figure, I traveled to many countries and met hundreds of people of consequence who generously shared with me their experiences and wisdom. 

It was through Dr Kalam that I met Govind Bhai Dholakia, a prominent diamond industry person well known for his philanthropy. When he invited Dr Kalam to visit his factory in Surat, Dr Kalam deputed me to meet Dholakia-ji and understand his model of wealth creation and charity. Dr Kalam and Dholakia-ji articulated on creating a knowledge foundation for organized skill development needed as technology raises its level from gross to subtle. Dr Kalam departed in 2015, and I remained a part of the knowledge foundation that Dholakia-ji had created as per Dr Kalam’s vision.

I visited Dholakia-ji many times, participated in his societal work – especially the population health project in his native village Dudhala and surrounding areas in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat. I met his family members and employees and other people in the society with whom he had worked. Three things I found different in his world. First, though he could not study beyond primary school, his penchant for education, especially of the girl-child. Second, his support of needy patients in their health crises, both using his connections in the medical fraternity and financial support.  Third, his emphasis on an addiction-free life and a penchant for the joint family system. 

These are not mere ideas and sentences written as vision, mission statements on his company website, which does a business of 2 billion dollars every year, but these define his life. He supports a large number of schools. He has played a pioneering role in the creation of Kiran Super-specialty hospital in Surat so that no one has to rush to Mumbai for a medical emergency. His family – his six siblings and their children and grandchildren – more than 1500 people now – meet once every year and stay together for a few days.  

It was during the coronavirus pandemic that I broached the idea of writing a book about him. He was reluctant in the beginning but, perhaps impressed by Wings of Fire, which he had read in Gujarati and immensely liked, agreed. Then came the language barrier. So, his long-standing associate and educationist Kamlesh Yagnik joined me as the co-author. We had 48 Zoom sessions during the lockdown and published Diamonds Are Forever, So are Morals. Bhiku Parikh, Labour Party member of the House of Lords, wrote the introduction and, like a cherry on the cake, the Prime Minister of India has written a paragraph acclaiming the book.

I got another bestseller book to my credit, but that is not the point. During the writing of this book, I learnt a great deal about wealth or rather aspects of wealth. Indian society and a large part of it still live with the ancient mindset. They work hard and expect to be taken care of in need. Govind Bhai used his wealth to whatever extent he could to address this issue. The only prohibition he enforced upon the people who worked for him was zero tolerance of addiction – tobacco, alcohol, gambling, for example. 

Employees in Govind Bhai’s company – Shri Ramakrishna (SRK) Exports – are treated as family. I have participated in the 50^th year celebration of his company in 2014 and dined with 20,000 people – from small children to aged parents of employees, everyone was there in the celebration. Expenses for children’s education and medical care for the elderly in the employees’ families are borne by the company, and the deserving would automatically get a job upon growing up. 

As a good biographer, I must ask him how he got this idea of utilizing his wealth. He narrated to me a dream he had transiting in London from a business breakthrough in Antwerp, Belgium. I quote from the book: 

Goddess Lakshmi was saying, ‘I have eight forms, Adi Lakshmi, Dhaanya Lakshmi, Vidya Lakshmi, Dhana Lakshmi, Sanatana Lakshmi, Gaja Lakshmi, Dhairya Lakshmi and Vijaya Lakshmi (आदिलक्ष्मी, धान्यलक्ष्मी, विद्यालक्ष्मी, धनलक्ष्मी, सन्तानलक्ष्मी, गजलक्ष्मी, धैर्य लक्ष्मी और विजय लक्ष्मी). Depending upon your goal—spiritual enlightenment, food, knowledge, resources, progeny, abundance, patience, and success, I support them with abundance and success. So, tell me son, what do you want?’

I said, ‘O Mother, give me spiritual enlightenment.’ The Goddess smiled and said, ‘Had you asked for Dhana Lakshmi (धनलक्ष्मी), I would have established you here controlling a quarter of the Diamond business of the world. Nevertheless, you asked for Adi Lakshmi (आदिलक्ष्मी), so go back home. I will always be with you, giving you enough for all your good works. Do whatever charity you want to do without any fear.’ 

So, the issue is not what wealth you want; the issue is for what you want it. If you are clear in your heart and mind, the symbolic words used here to mean intent and thought, you will get whatever you seek. 

I can see capitalism, communism, and socialism as three different streams emerging out of this one spiritual spring. Simplicity is what matters in life. If the life is complicated, no wealth is sufficient. Even the wealthiest people live miserably. I have seen Dr Kalam rising to become a great scientist and the President of India. He lived a very simple life – all belongings that could be packed in two suitcases – and yet I receive every year the royalty of Wings of Fire for having worked with him.